It's the Nav cam that used for visual odometry / feature tracking etc during flight - not the color RTE camera.

I'm not sure why non 'forward' motion is of note? The Nav cam is pointed straight down. ALL motion is 'at an angle to the camera axis.'

It basically works like a giant optical mouse.

I can't see how or why it would care which direction it's travelling.

And post drive imaging in Phil-O-Vision

Sol 3206 Mastcam Drive Direction

This late in the mission - when budgets for refactoring the website to receive them - pretty unlikely. But I'll try and ask around.

For those wondering - rough (but not JPGd) post drive imaging mosaics get posted here - https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/mosaics/ - automagically by a downlink script that generates them after downlink. If you see multiple mosaics for a given sol, that's subsequent downlink passes sending more data to fill in more blanks. That's what I used to make that phil-o-vision from 2 posts ago

I tried taking one of the auto-generated Navcam mosaics - turning it into philovision and then an HDR stretch to even out some of the lighting for the Sol 3204 mosaic - came out pretty well.

Arhghg - unfortunately I can't seem to log in any more. The username and password I used for a lot of Yutu 2 data hasn't changed but it's now asking for a verification code and whatever I type is just rejects it.

Anyone had any luck getting in?

Update
Having google translate turned on was upsetting it - turning that off temporarily let me log in - but it would appear the data is available only for a limited group of people - they seem to call it a 'Protection Period' release.

Access requires further registration including a long 'ID Number' and other details.

The rocket isn't the expensive part. For this mission it's less than 5% of the budget.

If you look at HiRISE images of newly landed chutes…they all do some version of that over the first couple of months…fold up or roll around a bit and then settle down.

Risk...... potentially damage a $2.5B spacecraft

Reward..... an instagram post.

It's not a hard decision to make.

A few billion years of prevailing wind erosion will do that.

I have it installed on mine. What's not working?

You got a source for that? It appears to already be fully deployed when the video starts. I believe it deployed before parachute deployment as an aero trim flap

https://twitter.com/TheElegant055/status/13...0970885/photo/1

https://twitter.com/CoreGraphite/status/1287020151288868865

The second HiRISE image is here : https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_069731_2055

The strategic path goes the other side of Rafael Navarro Mountain

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA23412.jpg

One higher power landing engine with small attitude control motors rather than a distribution of many smaller thrusters over the footprint of the lander.

I give up.

OK - not to belabor this point. HiRISE has a resolution of between 25 and 30cm/pixel. That's not something we need to debate here. That's just a fact.

https://www.uahirise.org/specs/
https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/DOCU...ISE_EDR_SIS.PDF

You are measuring an image that has already been blown up. HiRISE is between 30 and 25 cm per pixel. That’s what it does.

Where do you get that number from?

HiRISE has a max of 25cm/px

You are talking about push frame images from a spinning spacecraft travelling at 19km/sec just 1,038km from the surface that will have moved nearly 600km in a single rotation.

It's nothing BUT distortion related issues.

The images will be here when they're here.

Some of the gurus of Junocam work will figure out some nice reprojections I'm sure.

On the road again...... https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25951/n_r00...tolm1/?site=msl

https://mars.nasa.gov/system/resources/deep...804_AUTOLM1.PNG

Actually - there are. When there are big science papers released, press releases go out, press conferences happen at the major science conferences. It's true for Curiosity, for Voyager, for Juno etc etc.

More than that would be to saturate the mouthpiece of the agency. With things like the raw image feed, the mission updates, the GIS map, the post drive imaging pipeline page I think Curiosity shares more than almost any other mission. It's simply not reasonable to expect a mission that launched >9 years ago to be banging out big press releases and press conferences on a frequent basis.


They're not forgotten. This is not a decision made by the project nor is this a resource constraint. The PI of the instrument gets to decided what images get taken - this is his choice. You would have to ask him why he makes that choice.


We did our best to document that transition in a paper at IEEE this year.

At altitude you may see fewer high contrast high frequency details for the downward facing navcam to lock on to. Moreover - at higher altitude, your spatial resolution is lower and thus so is the resolution with which you can measure horizontal motion.

The LIDAR is good to ~40m ( https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14032 ) and they may want to leave plenty of margin for that.

That said - yeah - I hope they pump the altitude up as well

7m per https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2016/pdf/1322.pdf