JPL just laid off their entire K-12 education department.

M20 lost ~20 of its ops team to layoffs and is just trying to keep things together. ( MSL is similarly struggling, as are other operational missions )

It's important to have dreams.

It's just as important to remain grounded to reality.

M20 is a mission that is very very VERY strongly focused on getting to the targets they need to reach, get the samples they need to get, and keep the vehicle alive and functional until they can deliver those samples to whatever comes down the pipe from future MSR architectures.

Sight-seeing side-quests are something that's simply not going to happen.

Adding new attachments or starting new threads have now been disabled.

I've held back from really hammering on trying to snapshot it until after 12/1 because that's when I'll disable attachments. Then I'm gonna try anything/everything that might get a snapshot of that stuff out of server ( including asking the hosting company very nicely if they could do it for us )

And it doesn't have it.

Yeah - it's definitely a different vibe for sure!

Yup - 24 gig or so according to the invision admin panel, but I've been unable to pull that much off via FTP and asking the server cPanel to snapshot the server causes it to break.
Attachments will get get disabled here soon to give me ( and anyone else who wants to try) some time to try and snapshot all of them.

Snapshotting the pages themselves - I've already managed to use a download tool and the printable-view option for forum thread to capture a snapshot of pretty much every page here - about 90 meg.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/imf6e3m50xq6...kk5l8z&dl=0

It's not exactly browsable in that form, but one can search the unzipped folder for text fields and it'll bring up results pretty well.

I moved your comment from where it didn't belong, to here.

I setup a discord server as a place people might want to congregate after this place closes. Not a replacement.

For what it's worth - most of the regular contributors from this place are already posting on that discord server regularly, and the breadth depth and quality of discussion is already at or above this place. Maybe it'll stick longer-term, maybe it wont. Who knows.

A few people have mentioned maybe setting up a new forum elsewhere - you should feel free to do the same. I wish you well if you choose to invest the time and money to do so.

Just complaining is neither constructive, nor welcome.

I've not had any total success yet - I'll absolutely take a look at what you've linked to - thanks for the pointers.

I'm also going to reach out to the server hosts to asks if they can snapshot the entire system and send it to me in some way come the shutdown at the end of Dec.

I wanted to interrupt this thread to turn peoples attention to important forum news they may not have seen

UMSF will close, Jan 1st 2025


http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8823

I wanted to interrupt this thread to turn peoples attention to important forum news they may not have seen

UMSF will close, Jan 1st 2025


http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8823

I wanted to interrupt this thread to turn peoples attention to important forum news they may not have seen

UMSF will close, Jan 1st 2025


http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8823

No - just recurring problems with the public feed. I'll try and poke the folks responsible tomorrow.

Cameras are fine, images are coming down fine, the rover wouldn't be driving and taking new MAHLI images otherwise.

Thought I'd share (which his permission ) this lovely email I got from Steve Squyres when I let him know the news.....

I've asked TPS if I can have control of the domain back and I'll setup some static page with links to whatever archive I can wrangle and maybe the discord server if it takes off. I'm sure there's be a dead period once the current USMF hosting expires - but fingers crossed we can at least not let the URL fall into evil hands


Fun fact...that orig rlproject.com URL I bought because of a then work-in-progress racing game called 'Racing Legends' and I was hoping to setup a community for it.

The racing game was never finished and I let the URL expire a long long long time ago....BUT....weirdly.....the devs behind it also made a 3DS Max plugin for making 3D terrain models from Google Earth data which I used when I started at JPL to make the terrain models that form the background of the realtime dish visualization in the DSN status screens in the JPL dark room and the static images on the web DSN Now page.

So.....the middle screen with the dish on it...that background terrain is derived from a mesh made with a tool made by the devs who were working on a title that inspired the original URL of this place . (And because the awesome guy who manages the Spaceflight Operations Facility here at JPL likes to troll me...yes...that's a picture of me on the right as well)

50% of the MSL ECAM PUL team is UMSF veterans. There's only 4 in the team....but it's still 50%

Of which 100% now have successfully managed to miss a frame of a 12x1 upper tier

Every Thursday afternoon, the MSL Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada does a ~25min science update for the team - and I don't think there's been a week I've ever seen it without Ashwin including a least one creation from here....usually Nev or Jan.

And we have absolutely put observations into plans knowing that this place would get their hands on it...and it's incredibly rewarding to see if happen when it works out.

At the very least, a dump of all the attachments and the fairly modest sized SQL DB that drives the place are easy 'gets' which I would zip up and throw on archive.org - you're right that their waybackmachine snapshots are marginal at best.

I'm trying a few web-crawling-download tools to see how well they do....if anyone has recommendations in that area, that would be great.

It's far more than that. UMSF has asked for, and raised, donations in the past. Several key donors ( and I was one ) have each put four-figure sums of money into keeping the place alive in the past. I'm sure something could be raised if the cap was handed around. However, there is no financial structure in place to collect, manage and spend that money outside of TPS which has said it's not in a position to support the forum anymore. I can't blame them...in terms of traffic and frankly, ROI, UMSF is long past making sense. Back in the peak of '05-'09, USMF was getting 2-4,000 posts a month. Now, it's 200-300.

The real problem now is the state of the forum backend. I've only recently taken a look at it ( I've been away from UMSF moderation for over a decade ) The Invision board is about 15 years out of date, the server is so full it doesn't have the space to take a backup of itself without crashing the forum. I tried a few months back and it broke the place. How much would it cost to fix that, convert the database to something newer, find new hosting, move to that, set it up and maintain it. That could cost thousand and thousands of dollars if it's even possible at all. There's nobody here with the time to manage that entire effort either. It would be irresponsible to ask for money without knowing how much is needed and there's nobody with the time to manage it and nothing in place to properly maintain the place moving forward.

It's been a good run - 20 years is far far longer than most communities like this ever last. There's nobody to blame - it's just outlasted its own ability to be maintained. To ask for money would be dishonest...because nobody can promise how much it will take to do the work to fix the place, and there's nobody to maintain/moderate it thereafter either.

It's far better to give people a heads up and have an orderly close out than to ask for money pretending there's a clear path forward to keeping the place alive.

I'm certainly not proposing discord replace it - I just offer it up as a place where people can hang out afterwards if they have nothing else.

Dear UMSF Members,

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that UnmannedSpaceflight will go dark at the beginning of January 2025.

Some of you may have seen this note from Nick just over a year ago alluding to long term challenges The Planetary Society had shared regarding the maintenance and hosting of the forum in its current form. Since then we have taken a close look at the technical state of the server and forum hosting software and have not been able to find either a technical or financial path forward to keep the forum operating.

For context, the Invision software itself is over a decade out of date and no upgrade path exists to either upgrade to current Invision board software, or migrate to other hosting platforms. Plans of migrating to a more inclusive URL have been on the backburner for over 10 years. Even if a path were obvious - finding new affordable hosting and migrating to run the forum independently of The Planetary Society would take a talented web developer a significant amount of time ( and thus money ) and admin team time to manage it ( which none have )

After talking with other veteran members of the admin team, we have therefore decided the better path forward is to give members 3 months notice to take copies of their attachments, discuss places they might like to hang out together in the future, and reminisce about some of the highlights of 20 years of stitching, mapping, discussion and adventure before bringing things in for a graceful landing on Jan 1, 2025.

I had no idea when spinning up a forum back in 2004 that it would last so long or that the breadth, depth and quality of creations and discourse would be anything like as incredible as it has been. For some, this place has literally been life changing. We’ve seen spacecraft, and people, come and go. Entire careers have sprouted from some of the out-of-this-world-ideation right here on these pages.

I want to once again give a huge thank you to Nick for being the de facto admin for more than a decade - without his care and attention the forum would have collapsed many years ago. Emily too deserve special mention for chaperoning this place when it became part of TPS. Jason, Ted, Dan, Glen, Stu, Bjorn, Mike and others have also been a major part of the UMSF story.

Further - I want to credit folks like Steve Squyres, Jim Bell, Alan Stern, John Spencer, Ralph Lorenz, Paolo Belluta, Mark Lemmon and others for sharing their time as part of this community or being pivotal in its origins and in doing so, inspiring others to keep the level of discourse as high as it has been for 20 amazing years.

So what’s next?

• New registrations are no longer being processed
• We will attempt to archive the forum as best we can around the beginning of December and upload it to archive.org (and will update this message with a link when it’s done )
• New attachments will be disabled at that time.
• For those that want to continue hanging out together - we’ve spun up a UMSF discord server ( https://discord.gg/hp3g3TKVRW ) - still an empty work in progress, but maybe folks might congregate there. Use the Ideas & Feedback channel there to discuss.
• A thread "Greatest Hits" has been spun up for people to share their favorite creations or discussions from the last 20 years.
• Another thread "Find me at...." has been spun up for people to share where they can be found moving forwards.

In closing - thank you all for being a part of this adventure....we’ll see you around the solar system somewhere.

Doug Ellison
Founder, UnmannedSpaceflight.com

One of my personal favorites is still.....the high speed turtle and friends by Eric back in 2008

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...mp;#entry108306
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=13308

I know friends in the JPL Media Office have regularly cited it as a "You think THAT's weird......what about all THIS" Pareidolia 101.


And - John's invite for folks to be part of the NH @ Jupiter Kodak moment planning
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5061

Folks can find me all over the place.......

I'm on Discord: doug_ellison
Instagram: djellison78
Mastodon: https://deepspace.social/@doug_ellison
Personal website https://www.dougellison.com/

The unwelcome changes to the whole swathe of mars mission websites means these are having to be posted by hand by someone on the web team. I can tell you that the scripts to automatically generate and push them out are still working fine.

That looks more like a Yutu 2 image, not a Chang'E 6 image
https://photos.smugmug.com/Change-4-Yutu-2/...Panorama-4K.jpg for example

( update- it is infact this exact location from Yutu 2 - https://dougellison.smugmug.com/Change-4-Yutu-2/i-CKR2SZW )

The creation of those mosaics hasn’t been changed. They are still being generated. The web changes are entirely external to the mission team and we have no say over them.

If people have thoughts regarding the new webpage designs and content (or lack thereof) I would encourage you to use the feedback forms / contact us pages etc etc.

Personally I find the wholesale deletion of historic mission websites like Pathfinder to be utterly inexcusable.

Also it's worth noting - the phrase " 12 full time employees " may not mean 12 people who are full time on Voyager. FTE is a unit of currency for work like this. 12 'full time employees' might be......4 people working 100% on Voyager, 8 people working 50% on Voyager, and 16 people working 25% on Voyager.

As an example - I know the power lead for both MSL and M20 also works on Voyager.