I think given the fairly poor funding level of ESA, it would be more appropriate for ESA to focus on something it can realistically achieve that isnt being done elsewhere - and a netlander style mission is long overdue.

Doug

Wrapped up a nice couple of days in London with a visit to London Zoo yesterday - and up to Elstree to see the filming of an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (due to be aired first Sat in June ) - a superb outake moment - one guys phone a friends rang twice then went to answerphone

Doug

Oh - Williams performed perfectly Snapped 90% closed which was exactly what I wanted to prove (she wont close 100% unless what triggers it struggles around like a fly, so they dont try and eat things like rain or leaves)

If they do it next year, I'll have another go - now I know the routine I think I could tailor my first talk much better

Off to see Omid Djalili at the Soho Theatre now

Doug
(Using a very nice Powerbook at the Apple Store, Regents Street, and yearning after the 30 inch display on the machine next to me - it is a sight to behold )

Well - it was a good morning, but I didnt go thru to the afternoon round. A very VERY talented guy went thru, with a brilliant researcher into ape-language as a reserve.

Well worth trying out just for the experience - on to April 23rd and my talk at the British Astronomical Assoc

Doug

It scales with the square of the number of images. a little 2 x 2 can probably be done, stitched, uploaded and lovely in 15 minutes

But - a 6 x 3 might take about an hour, and that one was a couple of hours in all

Doug

Went a bit nuts with the colour so that we can see what I think is 200 sol old tracks leading away from West-Spur infront of us around to the right



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...s_443_ridge.jpg (633kb)

Doug

My GOD do you have any idea how long I've been trying to do that for

Thanks chaps

Doug

Yes - but you cant copy and paste into a dos box - you have to type the filename (and 99% of the time get it a bit wrong

doug

I've thought about it a lot, but the things I really like to see ( landers etc ) they say they already try to image at every opportunity (pun not intended)

Short of asking for a MOC image of the acre of mars that my other half bought me for our anniversary ( yes yes, not worth the paper they're printed on, but I still wanted one - it's on the SW slope of Olympus mons ) I'm stuck for suggestions really.

Monitoring of steep crater walls for landslides it good

Victoria crater is another obvious submission, but technically it'll be classified under a landing site fairly soon so they'll be imaging it anyway.

Massive kudos to MSSS though - they're getting about 20-40 a month done, thats a couple a day in some cases. Hopefully HiRise's program will be similar - in which case i'll be the first to submit the Pathfinder landing site as I want to spot Sojourner

Doug

It appears the venue has internet access - if I get thru the first round ( with the help of Williams the Venus Flytrap - or Dionae Muscipula to its friends ) - then I'll try and pop online and post the good news in this thread If I get thru the second round to the final - I'll be too stunned to comment.

Doug

Actually - yes - that's all that's needed. It's just annoying having to copy the filename into a batch file, save it, getting up a dos window, then running the batch file. A simple thing like MMB would be perfect.


Doug

Your intrepid host (that's me) is off to london tonight - so that tomorrow I can take part in Fame Lab

My first 3 minute talk is going to be about my Venus Fly Trap (it's called Williams) - and if they put me thru to the afternoon - then I'm talking about the Lion-King panorama from Opportunity for 5 minutes.

So - wish me luck - whatever happens I think I'll have a blast.

Doug

sound painfull

Doug

Bingo - the wheels have dug right in there

Doug

It was L256 - and I use img2png, photoshop and PTGui

Doug

This one has brought my laptop to its knees. I know it's not perfect, but I'm going to shift it over to my big-rig and have another go next week. Not sure what I should define as the centre point of the full 360 degrees to be honest Almost impossible to get it looking 'normal' - but there we go...



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...s_ten_val_1.jpg (604kb)

72 images - full res would be around 16200 pixels across - I went for just under 1/3rd of that for now

I believe Spirit's current location ( Sol 453ish ) is on the joint of the 2nd and 3rd top frames from the right - about 3/4s the way down the top frame.

Enjoy

Doug

Oh hell yes - MRO will be fantastic - but remember, that 4Mbits/sec is only for some of the time - it will vary betwen 280 and 4400 kbps depending on the mars-earth distance - and that peak rate is for only a few months around closest approach.

I found a PDF or PPT some time ago that showed bitrate over time for 35 and 70m dsn dishes, but sods law dictates I can no longer find it

Doug

Is there any way someone could re-deploy raw-id via a webpage. It would be MUCH easier to just copy and paste into a text entrybox on a webpage and click submit - and have it come up with the results.

I have SQL and PHP hosting on this server if someone wants to give it a go.

Doug

If you're using Firefox - open all the L's or all the R's of this lot in tabs, and then flick thru them..

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit_n449.html

Looks VERY much like the navcam movies that Oppy was taking when trying to climb from Wopmay to Burns Cliff - stuck in the dirt spinning wheels and digging into the ground a little

I dont think it's a trenching op - as they wouldnt do a navcam movie for that -it'd be FHAZ.

It's certainly been a quiet and confusing few days in MER world hasnt it

Doug

search the forum for rawid.exe


Doug

For those like me who love the technical aspects of all this - I've been digging around a bit, and currently (or recently) - spacecraft are using the following DTE bitrates

MEX - 104857.6 bps
Genesis - 16590 bps and 47400 bps
MGS - 42666.7 bps and 8000 bps
MER Cruise - 2212 bps and 7110 bps (via MGA)
MODY - 124425 bps and 39816 bps

In the case of two values - it is likely that the smaller value is using a 35m DSN dish, and the larger a 70m DSN dish.

For info on MER UHF passes in the future - check out some ENORMOUS stats - http://mgsw3.jpl.nasa.gov/seq/relay/srpr/0...S00.apgen.notes

April 1st was D.o.Y 91 - so these are April 20th and beyond -

I believe 32 degrees elevation is the limit at which they'll do a 256kbps pass instead of a 128 kbps pass - but these stats confirmed what I thought - that the average sol will include 100 - 300 mbits of relay data - with as much as 158 mbits in a single pass and up to 4 passes per sol - but short passes are ignored as the downtime of operations to get the small ammount of data back doesn justify the interuption to MER and MODY ops.

Doug

What, like via Olympus Mons or something

There are no other routes to take - I'm sure it's simply a combination of three things

battery charging - Oppy is on less power than Spirit now - about 30% less - so from time to time it makes sense to get a fully charged battery

data downlink - after heavy imaging at Vostok and the Vik/Voy twins, there was a lot of stuff in flash that still needed sending down - if they plan big drives in the future you needs lots of flash space for the autonav data

Mini-Tes - they may be taking a few sols out just to troubleshoot Mini-tes, see if they can find what's wrong with it and patch it up.

Doug

Oh yes - we've seen the dimming pre sunset in the past - there was a pancam sequence soon after the cleaning even which showed it beautifully

Looks like there was a major attack on sun imaging during the last few minutes of daylight recently - something that the increased power budget lets us do.



Not seen an image with the sun actually on the horizon yet

Doug

And that doesnt take into account the usage for trenching, turning in place and slippage etc.

Doug