If you're cunning, you can actually find much of the data for the next 90 sols already

It would appear that it's mainly engineering camera data that isnt in yet - I've already put together an Opportunity mosaic from sol 114





Doug

I may well be in touch one they release the new one to get both

Doug

Unlikely to break that 140m record - but 100m is doable, easily.

They may want to hop from feature to feature though - there's a lot of them out here

Impossible to tell how far they've gone from the Heatshield though. There's end of drive L7/R1 direction of drive mosaics - and lots of navcam, but not quite enough navcam to show us where the heatshield is yet

I think they turned in place at the end of the drive - something thye often do to optimize the UHF pases ( i.e. limit line of sight blockage by PMA, HGA, LGA etc )

Doug

There's evidence that it's more an electrostatic issue - and that blowing compressed martian air at lenses will just sand-blast them quite effectively

Doug

I thikn what we're seing is a combination of crap JPG'ing and stretching by JPL, mild noise on CCD's ( which is calibrated out during the proper PDS process ), mild features from the optics ( in Navcam due to it's wide F.O.V. and very rare on Pancam )

Most of these things can be hacked out during PDS processing, but some are just there to stay - and those will be the dust related issues. Lets face it - sure, they kepe Pancam tilted away from dust as much as possible, but the state the solar array is in shows just how much cack is in the air.

Doug

I sent JPL a Birthday card last week - with a big 1 badge I hope it found its way to the right place.

Doug

The noise is probably a symptom of the CCD. Take a picture with your own digital camera and you'll see the same thing. A CCD just counts photons and there's bound to be a gausian distribution of them even from a flat colour.

I doubt it's due to dust per-se - but dust on an actual lens is a possibility ( RHAZ on Oppy ) but it remains the same at all times

Doug

Actually - with that foil on the 'big piece' - it probably, from orbit - reflect the ground around it, and not really appear too imposing itself - so most of what we see from orbit is the black ejecta, and the cumulative effect of all the chared heatshield remnants around and about. Form above, the big piece isnt really, all that big

Doug

Several - check the heatshield thread

The imact crater is much the same colour as the surroundings - but it has thrown a lot of dark debris around. Combining that ejecta in a SE direction, with what would be dark debris ( you wouldnt get the specular reflections at a 2pm local orbit from above ) I guess it sort of makes sense

Doug

perhaps we're seing mainly shadow?

Doug

Wow - amazing that it can detect these at all

Nope - the nearest point along the bounce-route is actually where the empty lander sits - probably about 50,60 metres away

Doug

There's lots of options I guess.....

One, two, or no MSL's in the '09 Opportunity

MER copies flown instead of or complimentary to MSL in '09

One or more MER copies flown in the '11 timeframe

Scrap the whole lot and launch an MSL derivative based on the bruce-crane that uses steel girders to drop a rover onto the surface in '13

Doug

Here it is on Oppy by the way - much clearer -



Doug

By all means - there's a lot of stuff moving around here

http://mer.rlproject.com/hs_wind.gif

Doug

Yup - havnt a clue where it is - but a search for stuff in the last 60 days should find it

Doug

No - that little rectangle is part of the solar array

Doug

You know that strange line between two terrain types that appeared in the Enc. image I put together a week or so ago - is that going to be visible more closely this time around?

Doug

Yup - Sojourner was essentially a brilliant technological achievment and quietly, a scientific folly. It trundled around taking APXS measurements of the dust on top of rocks

BUT - it was cool, it flight proved the 6 wheel rocker-bogey system, it demostrated that roving on mars IS possible, and it showed that a RAT was needed Pathfinder was an interesting misson technologically as well. It demonstrated the brave EDL system - showed mars can be done for a lot less than Viking - and showed that space can be 'cool' in this Internet generation.

Something i'd quite like to do is a full re-creation of Sojourners drives around the landing site using the 3d model of the landing site and a rendered sojourner.

Doug

How would such a paradigm shift occur? Currently PI's get paid to deliver instrumentation for mission - where would they get the money to PAY to fly instruments?

Doug

I thikn the altitude at tharsis would preclude a landing using MER EDL there - but certainly places like Vallis Marineris, Isydis Planatia etc

Doug

A little sparkling thing...

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...00P1901R0M1.JPG ( and it's L image pair as well ) - thats a navcam image from Sol 50 - and in sol 61 there's still something there..

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...59P2214L5M1.JPG

Any ideas? heatshield spring (geometry would suggest otherwise) - iron meteroite (I've heard they're quite common on mars ) - bit of foil from something?

Doug

Maybe someone will propose a single MER for the next mars scout ( ermm 2011 I think ) based on MRO data

Doug

Well - if the question is why not send more MER's - the answer is money

Doug

Bruce- there's a chap over at the HZ suggesting that they can recover data from the VLBI measurements on channel A.

Now - I'm adament that the only data they can construct is doppler data - and they've not actually mentioned extracting telemetric data from channel a recordings on the ground from greenbank/parkes - and that whilst possibly feasable, they've not actually mentioned it as yet.

The confusion being that they say 'recovering data' for the Dopler experiement, where as it's actually generating new data to do the same thing.

Is that how you read the situation - and perhaps you could put this one to bed w.r..t getting anything out of the signal recieved on earth if you know the right person to ask?

Cheers

Doug