It does look like the whole thing is rippling a little in the breeze http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/collections/oppsol335R.gif

HOWEVER - remember - even over that short period the sunlight angle will have changed ( look at the shadow ) so it may be partly due to the sun moving a little - and partly due to wind

Doug

I did think that myself - but the movement isnt really enough to see seperation in the colour. I did check the whole image, and there wasnt anything else moving that I could see.

Doug

I wonder just how long MGS can last It's achievments are astonishing - but 10 years in space isnt that far away and would be a quite astonishing achievment.

Mars has a total surface area of around 145M sq km - and a sq km at MOC res is something like 160,000 pixels at 8 bits - call it 1.28 Mbits per sq Km.

TECHNICALLY - full 1.5m/pixel resolution of the whole planet could be imaged - allowing 30% re-imaging - with just under 250 Gbits.

At an average of 60kbps, with 8hrs per day transmission - 144 days

Oh - how badly I understand spacecraft Thats a stupid figure.

Doug

I dont mean the foil, or the glare from the camera I mean the big piece sticking up from the heatshield - looks a bit like an old cable or something

Doug

Possible evidence for wind at Meridiani?



Thats all the filters, just run one after the other.

I'd like them to get a little closer to this piece - simply so we could get a self portrait looking at the foil - parts of which look quite flat

Doug

As I see it - it all starts at 1800 GMT

1800 -- "Twelve Wheels on Mars" with storyteller Syd Lieberman

1900 -- "One Year on Mars" news briefing

2000 -- "Mars Stories We've Never Told" with the rover team

2100 -- "Two for Two," a 20-minute program about the rovers

Well - we'll all have new computers by then anyway

Doug

One assumes they mean vostok crater ?

Doug

Lots of MI images of the heatshield today

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B8P2939M2M1.JPG

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B8P2939M2M1.JPG

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B8P2939M2M1.JPG

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B8P2939M2M1.JPG

I dont think anyone would have. I mean - even if they outlived their design life by the same ratio that Pathfinder did - then that's still roughly 270 sols.

350+ is just ...just..STUPID

Doug

By orbiting thru a cloud of it ?

Doug

Are you making a really bad hint for new Huygens, Cassini, Titan and Saturn emoticons

Doug

I love it when PTGui says the control points are "too good to be true"

Six frames of L7 imagery

Doug

Actually - I kid not - that's the route I sort of had in my head - towards one of the small fram/eagle sized craters, then on to that 'ghost' crater at the beginning of the etched terrain and thru it to Viccy

Doug

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!



Now sod off and eat Turkey

Doug

Just listen. There's quite a lot of effort gone into making sure that it does nothing but get every bit of huygens data - it's the last of the critical manouvers - the previous two being SOI and the Per.Raiding manouver. - so there's lots of code gone to make sure it doesnt safe itself at any point.

Doug

'Buyer Collects'



Actually - didnt the RSA sell one of its lunakhod rovers for a few thousand $'s - with the 'Buyer Collects' proviso?

Doug

I wonder what one of those springs would fetch on Ebay

Doug

This sort of direction



Due south basically

Doug

I assume this will be part of a 3 x 2 mosaic or something like that within the next 24 hrs or so.

I'm very much AFK from tomorrow thru to probably Dec 31st - so unless the rest of that mosaic comes down tonight - then it'll have to wait

Doug

Hands up if you've gone to the top of your stairs and taken the heatshielf from the MPF Hotwheels pack and dropped it to see if it always lands the same way

Warning. Castor Sugar+Drinking Chocolat experimentation may follow

Doug

Happy birthday to me...



Happy birthday, to me...



Happy birthday dear meeeeeee...



Happy birthday to me



(Went to the a local zoo that is big on Primates - they're great to sit and watch. Somehow, nice though lizards and giraffes and elephants and rhinos are - they dont play to the camera like these guys - that was the best pic I took today )

I got what I wanted A book on Donald Campbell, Jeremy Clarksons new book, a panorama of the heatshield - AND - we went to see the monkeys. Doesnt take much to make this 26 year old happy ;P Just $850M of rover and a couple of monkeys.

Doug