Ahh - see, there's an 'Ellison' Crater on the moon. (really - it's just around the far side - google for it )

Doug

My point was - you dont want to go up to it when that mylar might flap around and hit the PMA. Worse -touch it with the IDD and it falls over. It could happen. Quite how a 40kg off piece of heatsheild has ended up on it's end is anyones guess - and it looks quite precarious to me. Especially when there' a nice big bit sat flat on the ground that can do no harm to anyone

Thanks for the Birthday wishes chaps

Doug

(PS - How about 'Dougs Ditch' ? )

Yes it is.

You have $100,000 for the year

Do you spend it on two rover engineers, or a single rover engineer and a press guy.



Doug

Hmm - those ones done without any TLC just dont work for me at all. I dont get much perception if any with that.


..some time passes...


THAT'S better




Doug

typically one.

They do the uplink at about 9, 10am LMST for each rover - then the downlinks are via UHF at 4pm, and 4am the following day. Thats averages. They get UHF passes at some other times - but it's usually those ones.

They COULD scheduled another uplink time, but it'd be hard to fit it in with a downlink as well to show the difference.

Doug

'technically' - I've got what I asked for for my Birthday - a colour mosaic of the heatshield - but I was expecting more YOU'VE GOT 6 HRS ROVER DRIVERS. I TURN 26 ON THE 23RD.



Doug

No - I think that rock lived there -it's got a slight upwind highlight to the soil around it which is a slow forming feature I'd imagine.

there are other bits and peices ejected out from around there- but I dont think that's one.

And HELL yeah - I want to see what B2 looks like

Doug

I think it might be two springs over by B - so that's four - and possilbly one just to the left of impact crater A

Doug

It'd make a LOT of sense to approach that rock - it's a nice size for IDD work.

Park there - and IDD the rock whilst Pancaming the heatshield

Doug

When I was refering to C and D - I meant the two parts of that central lump which pancam has resolved into being one lump. I'm shifting the naming of D to be whatever piece of heatsheilf is behind C - and keeping it upright.

That piece way out at E really is a bit of heatsheilf. Colour images show that -



Apart from, you know, LOADS of bits of heatshielf - we can see three springs that pushed the heatsheild away from the backshell as well. There's three more out there somewhere

BIG picture





In there is a tiny pic of one of those brackets that held the springs pre launch

Doug

There you go ladies

I've labelled the big bits so we can sing from the same song sheet. I'd suspect that they'd like to look at A for the science of the imapct, and almost certainly E because it'll be a nice piece of heatsheild detached from the danger zone near C and D

I think C/D will be avoided like the plague - too much chance for danger - but when we get the R navcam frame for the middle of that mosaic - I think we'll see that B is 5 - 10m further away than C/D. If they're happy to look at B -then I think we'll see A - B - then possibly E - or just leave after B. But - like the Parachute and backshell - C/D has too much potential to hurt the rover - it's got to be 2m tall

For scale - from A to E is about 38 metres - and Eagle Crater was about the size of the gap between B and E
Doug

Wow - lots of chunks

I think somebody flushed the toilet on Opportunity - we're getting a LOT of pancam imagery from Sol 114. Imagery that was taken in MAY!!!

I guess being out of the crater really opens up the UHF passes for a full horizon to horizon pass every time - 15 minutes of 256kbits (190Mbits+ ) - instead of just the top 120 degrees or so when you're in a crater

Doug

Another sol of images - a tiny short bump forward - but the rock remains

Doug

It's an interesting challenge. 5W and 5KG - but, compared to missions of today - an almost limitless data budget - what would YOU do I think some sort of multispectral global imager would be fairly doable - Pushbroom on multiple channels - nIR, G, B, nUV type stuff - or other particular spectral windows that would tell us something interesting - at the km-scale res. HiRISE heritage CCD's to save cash.

Doug

It was a thought - and I'm sure Geoffrey will have thoughts on this - but to me, the way the dust has been 'grouped' around features bolted onto the instrument deck - would suggest wind involvement

Doug

It shouldnt be that hard to essentially 'match' titan's orbit with Cassini - and then it's a tiny ammount of delta V to drop into orbit around Titan

Doug

It might have been conditions specific to being inside the crater that caused the cleaning?

i..e we have a small carpark at work that's surrounded by 6ft walls on all sides but about 10 feet of gap. In slight winds, at the right angle - it can get one hell of a whip up of leaves going on in there - bin bags circling up to 100ft or more

Doug

http://acquisition.jpl.nasa.gov/rfp/mtodesignstudies/

The JPL Aquisition site is fantastic

Doug

I challenge you to pulling that off in Orbiter www.orbitersim.com

Doug

Good point Alex - when I read his post i thought he meant a failed mission - and not a cancellation. MTO is a go, and a necessity for future landers

Doug

Interestingly - these two pictures show the very slight differences between the rovers construction :0 No blue insulation foam on Opportunity's pyro device on the left there - different styles of laying out wires to the arrays, and a large bunch of wires bundles to the insulated wire along the top on Spirit, but not on opportunity

These two are certainly not identical twins

Doug

Opportunity's now done the same thing - as I expected, about 2 weeks after Spirit did it - to make it similar exposure times on the surface


And - well - it looks obvious to me how things have happened - a dust devil or similar feature has crossed over opportunity - and taken dust with it. In areas of turbulance around the pancam hold-down bracket where wind speed would have dropped - the dust was dropped also, like silt on the apex of a river bend?














Doug

Well - MGS is currently 8 years 1 month old and working just about fine, less the MOLA trigger - Odyssey currently 3 years 8 months old and working fine minus the MARIE instrument.

Come Mid 2008 - MGS would be 11 years 7 months old, Odyssey 7 years 4 months old

So - when Phoenix is on-form, Odyssey will be younger than MGS is now And - to be honnest - I'm almost 100% sure that Odyssey will be FINE then, and MGS - well - it's a bit 50/50 - no reason why not in priciple, but batteries may be dead by then, Gyros, hydrazine etc etc - so I wouldnt put money on it - but it's Odyssey that's relayed the HUGE percentage of MER data - MGS hasnt relayed MER data for months - and I'd imagine that Phoenix will have similar bandwidth requirements as a single MER - so Odyssey alone could manage it - and assuming MRO arrives OK- there'll be plenty of assets available - and there's always DTE

Doug

The DS2 probes were designed to re-enter totally unguided from any tumble / orientation

I loved those little guys - they were superb. Such a pity they didnt work.

I think EDL tones are almost a requirement for a Mars Scout mission arnt they? They're not a new thing - MPF had them in 97

Doug