I think I can answer that -- Jim hangs out more over on NASASpaceFlight.com than he hangs out here. I'm pretty sure that's the NSF.com he refers to...

-the other Doug

There is also something of a polyganality in the bright(ish) drifts in Oppy's drive direction in the left image. The surface is lightly scalloped in the drive direction, with small ripple-like features that are smaller and have very different sets of orientations and morphologies from the dark-sand ripples we've been driving on.

I think what we're seeing ahead of us in this image is a suggestion of the jumbled blocks that eroded away to leave this flat surface.

I also think that the large polygons in the dust "above" Oppy in the left image may argue for a surface coating of ice, or of a water table high enough to keep the surface of the annulus damp, *after* the ejecta blanket was emplaced. I'd think that you would need a dessication process to account for the polygonality, which assumes water (liquid or ice) either on or in the surface...

-the other Doug

Congratulations! You are now interned on Insignificant Dwarf Object T-5674, formerly known as Earth. Please ignore ze faint odor of gas....



-the other Doug

Good anaglyph, James! Gives me a very good sense of perspective. And I notice that a lot of the little pits I thought I could see in the MOC image are really there. The ones I can see don't look deep enough to trap a rover, though...

-the other Doug

Now, that's the kind of response I was looking for. I wanted people to start thinking in terms of depositional vs. erosional processes in the annulus material.

I wonder if, perhaps, the annulus surface is indeed older than the surrounding terrain, though. I can imagine a situation in which the surface into which Victoria impacted looked a lot like the surface we see around the original landing site, and that the shock effects that created the annulus (which is, after all, the ejecta blanket from Victoria) "cemented" the surface, making it more resistant to erosion than the materials that make up the etched terrain. Thus, the ejecta blanket is preserved much closer to the condition it was in when it was formed, while the surrounding terrain has undergone more significant aeolian erosion and deposition.

I was also making a small jibe at the prevalent thinking about crater counting and relative age determinations. I think too many planetary geologists go with crater counts as indications of relative age, without taking into account erosional processes and the ability of different types of material to retain craters...

-the other Doug

It's really obvious to me, as I look at the close-up of the annulus in the MOC cPROTO image we've been using for mapping, here, that this surface retains a lot more craters than the etched terrain does.

By classic planetary photogeology, that would make the annulus an *older* unit than the etched terrain. From the differential in the crater count, I'd say a *lot* older.

What do y'all think?

-the other Doug

Seems to me there is another way of approaching the "planet definition" question.

Method of formation.

The inner planets and the gas giants / ice giants were formed by accretion via the dynamics of a rather tightly planar accretion disk. These planets were formed as part of the accretion dynamics of the Sun itself.

the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are both clouds of matter that seem to surround the Sun in a roughly spherical array. The material out in these clouds do not appear to have been formed within the main accretion disk that made up the original solar nebula.

Yes, I know this would reduce us to only nine planets if you count Ceres, and eight if you don't. But perhaps "planets" are objects formed from the dynamics of the original accretion disk, and everything else is debris that accreted outside of these dynamics? Therefore, a planet would have to occupy the plane of the ecliptic in order to have been born directly from the original accretion disk...?

-the other Doug

Just don't expect the first Victoria rim pan to look a lot like, for example, the Endurance rim pan. Endurance is a decent-sized crater, but Victoria is going to be a little more like walking up to the edge of a canyon than looking into a hole a few city blocks across.

It's going to be as impressive as hell, but in a far different way than anything we've yet seen, I think...

-the other Doug

I like it! And then we have the opportunity to have the following conversation:

"Hey, how many fries do you get in the Cosmic Size?"

"Billions and billions..."

-the other Doug

Must've been a real hard thing for an ol' Florida boy to admit, that he couldn't stand the thought of seeing another orange again as long as he lived... I think it was "I like an occasional orange, really do. But I'll be damned if I ever see another one again." Or something like that...

The really bad line had something to do with "in another twelve [expletive deleted] days, I ain't never eatin' any more!"

My favorite aspect of the episode, though, was that Tony England, their CapCom, came back right after that and told them they were on a hot mike, and then later on, at the end of the second EVA, the crew was pushing for an extension of the EVA so they could finish up a few tasks. Young, making his point, said "You said all we was gonna do tonight was sit around and talk." And England responded, "Oh, we like to hear you talk. Especially on a hot mike..."

-the other Doug

I'm not a fan of blind drives in the annulus quite yet -- yes, the surface looks good, and there look to be no problems with getting stuck in the ripples. But when I look carefully at the high-res versions of the cPROTO MOC image of Victoria and its surroundings, the annulus surface appears to have a lot of small dimples in it, arrayed in fracture lines that are somewhat reminiscent of Anatolia.

I'd hate to be barrelling along (well, as close to "barrelling" as Oppy or Spirit ever manage) on a blind drive that intersects a meter-deep dimple. Local slopes inside such features could be more than Oppy can manage, or worse, they may be full of soft, dark sand -- rover traps.

At the very least, I'd like to see one of these things close-up and make sure they're not hazardous before we set out on long, blind drives. It would be horrible to lose Oppy so close to Victoria because we got too cocky...

-the other Doug

Yep -- that's why they called it "Breakfast drink, orange." No semblance of a suggestion that there was any real juice in it.

My favorite recollection, though, was John Young's graphic descriptions of what his potassium-laden orange drink was doing to his lower intestinal tract, and how this was going to affect his future purchasing decisions... so to speak...

-the other Doug

"This *is* the IAU, is it not?"

"Yes, sir, it is."

"And... you really don't have any definitions of what's a planet, do you?"

"Ummm... no, sir. We don't. Sorry."

"I see. You do realize, I'm going to have to shoot you, now."



-the other Doug

That would be nice, and I believe that at least one or two of the impact sites were already photographed by the Apollo J-mission pan cameras.

However, of the six landings, only four ascent stages had controlled impacts. Apollo 11's ascent stage was allowed to slowly decay, with no planned impact, and no one has any idea where it might have impacted. All of the rest of the flights had planned ascent stage impacts, but in the case of Apollo 16, switches were left mis-set and the ground command circuits were not enabled. So, after they separated from their LM, it simply tumbled into the distance. As with Apollo 11, that stage impacted eventually, but no one really knows where.

Several man-made craters have been imaged on the Moon, including some of the S-IVB impact sites and at least one of the Ranger impact sites. However, those craters are so small, about the only thing you could determine from the orbital imagery (mostly taken by Apollo pan cameras) is that the craters exist. Those cameras imaged at about 1-meter resolution, which isn't much worse than what we'll get out of LRO, so I don't know how much better the upcoming probes are going to do in gleaning information from them...

-the other Doug

Not as impressive as it will be once all four sets of solar panels are up and deployed. Depending on the sun angles, that is going to be one bright s.o.b. as it passes overhead!

-the other Doug

Cute little story -- though, I will note, the Atkins craze that seemed it would last forever back in 2004 has already run its course and is being supplanted by newer, even stranger, diet fads.

I have to admit, I was *such* a space geek when I was 13 years old, I not only demanded my folks buy me Tang, I used heavy clear pastic wrap, an iron, and my bottle of Tang and made myself some Apollo-style drink bags. They actually worked pretty good, once I got them filled. Not having a water gun that fit into my soda-straw stems didn't help...

-the other Doug

Snoopy's ascent stage is too small, I think, to be sighted visually or skin-tracked by radar from Earth-based locales. And the gravitational environment in Earth's neighborhood is a little too "bumpy" for our current models to accurately predict where it would be right now.

The people back at Houston had to have had a pretty good initial take on Snoop's trajectory -- they monitored its systems up until it ran out of battery power (which was more of a pacing item than anything else, including its cooling water). And I can well imagine that they continued to track it as long as its transmitter lasted. So, they had a really good idea of the vector and speed of the module as of last contact. But that's just not good enough for the current models to define a present position.

In general, Snoopy ought to be in a solar orbit fairly close to the Earth-Moon system, unless a close pass by Earth or Moon ejected it (either out of plane or into a larger or tighter orbit). It's even possible that it could have been re-captured by Earth for a time -- such a thing seems to have happened to Apollo 12's S-IVB, more than once. The overall energy added to the module wouldn't have been enough, all by itself, to have created a large separation from the Earth-Moon system.

As to your statement that all of the other flown LMs are lost -- well, yes and no. Of course, the descent stages of the landed LMs are still sitting on the lunar surface, and might be re-visited at some time in the future. The RTG fuel element cask from LM-7 (Aquarius) ought to be sitting, intact, on the sea floor in the mid-Pacific. And while I have never heard of any debris being recovered from LM-3 (Spider), I know that at least one of the fuel tanks from LM-1 (Apollo 5) survived re-entry and was recovered from somewhere in Africa. And there *might* be some recognizable pieces in the debris surrounding the LM ascent stage impact craters from the six landings. (Yes, only four of them were sent into controlled impacts, but all six of them did impact the Moon -- and they weren't traveling fast enough to completely vaporize them.) And, don't forget, there is also a single LM descent stage impact site on the Moon, too -- Snoopy's descent stage. It was also not traveling fast enough at impact to be completely vaporized, I don't believe.

As for an intact crew cabin from one of the flown LMs, though -- you're right. Snoopy is the only surviving example. But finding it is going to be about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack the size of Nebraska.

-the other Doug

And in this passage of Mike Brown's comments, I see a rather striking agreement with the points I made yesterday:



-the other Doug

I would be really interested in seeing the mini-TES runs as we have approached the annulus and as we embark onto it. If the annulus is primarily hematitic, we ought to be able to determine that fairly easily with the mini-TES.

What will be very interesting is if the annulus does *not* appear very hematitic to the mini-TES...

-the other Doug

Yes, it will!



-the other Doug

I always thought that the rhinocerous was the horse designed by committee...



-the other Doug

OK, I was a touch confused by what they were calling planets -- I was thinking that, past Neptune, you'd have Pluto, Sedna, and Xena. I was still thinking of Charon as a moon of Pluto.

Seems all of our paradigms are resisting this shift, to one degree or another...

But, yeah -- I like your version much better than mine!

-the other Doug

So, is the new nursery-rhyme mnemonic for the planets going to go something lik this?

"My Very Educated Mother, Catherine, Just Served Us Nine Pickled, Spicy Xylophones."



-the other Doug

I thought our definition of "arrival" at a crater was the point at which the pancam and navcam lenses can see the floor of the crater down at least to its geometric center. Just seeing the far wall isn't enough.

-the other Doug

I think that the concept of "planet" has really nothing to do with the scientific hierarchical classification system. As far as that goes, I think we have five major classifications -- ISSRO's (Inner Solar System Rocky Objects), GGO's (Gas Giant Objects), IGO's (Ice Giant Objects), KBO's (Kuiper Belt Objects) and OCO's (Oort Cloud Objects). A separate set of classifications can be applied to moons of these objects.

I will restate, though, that when an average citizen of the Earth asks "What are the planets?" he/she is asking something similar to "What's the layout and population of my town?" They don't want to gain new scientific insights into the Solar System, they want a number and a set of names they can wrap their minds around, feel comfortable with, and go out armed with the knowledge that they at least know the basic layout of their own little corner of the Universe.

For example, there was a time when the population of a town was only expressed in the number of adult white males that lived there. Then women and minorities made it clear that they needed to be counted, and so the concept of what made up the census of people in a given place changed. What we're arguing about here is similar to the little old lady who complains that the census says she lives alone, when she actually lives with her fourteen cats, and she demands that the cats be counted in...

In other words, your average person, in my humble opinion, doesn't care about the fine scientific distinctions. They want to know the names of the streets in their neighborhood, the names of the families that live nearby, and where City Hall, the grocery store and the shopping mall are located. They don't want (or need) to have their "naming of things" stretched out to include detailed numeric representations of every street, path, walkway, sidewalk, and alley, nor do they have any need to know the names of every cat, dog, gerbil and flea that lives near them. If you give them such a detailed accounting, they will simply ignore it. They will know it exists, but they just won't care.

I think that's why this whole issue with Pluto is getting some people energized. They don't really care why something is named a planet or some other thing, they want to know the equivalent of the street names in their town and where their friends and acquaintances live. They want to know the names of, and a little about, the "places" in our Solar System, and if that list grows from 9 to 256,347, they're going to ask for (and get!) a list of just those places they ought to consider "important."

In the end, it's that list they ask for -- the one that defines the "important" places in the solar system -- that will be the list of the "planets." At least, it will be the only list that anyone beyond a small handful of scientists will ever memorize or feel that they "know"...

-the other Doug