I got quite busy and thought "meh - Nasa will do a better job in a week or so anyway "



Doug

Woo - and indeed yay

Doug

We've probabyl all spent FAR too long refreshing folders at the Exploratorium - but I've now figured out the 'rules' of the place

1) If there are new PAN and NAV images - chances are the rover has not moved.
2) If there are new FHAZ images but no RHAZ images - chances are there's IDD activity only.
3) If there are new FHAZ and RHAZ images - chances are they've driven the rover
4) A set of L7 and R1 images at the end of the day in Pancam usually means a drive the following sol.
5) New NAV images tend to mean nothing - but a large number of smsall NAV images suggest a navigated drive using image feature recognition.

Anyone else spotted any other trends?

Doug

Quite agree - this makes me drop any hint of respect I had for the guy. Asking NASA to turn a $1B+ probe into his man-servent isnt even laughable. It's tragic. It's not even plausable, and certainly not the best way of getting his instruments to mars. I hope there's a swathe of JPL guys just laughing at the idea. Any chance the guy had of getting a Beagle clone to mars just went out the windows.

Pillinger had the perfect opportunity here in the UK post Beagle 2 to do something with the enormous ammount of good will towards the project even though it failed. He's just blown it. There are ways and means for him to have sorted funds to perhaps build a couple of augmented B2's (larger = more room for robustness) and a dedicated orbiter for a couple of hundred million quid, and done the job properly. Alternatively, take GAP and offer it up as an instrument to fly on Phoenix, MSL and any further lander project.

The one thing you dont say is "Right - nasa - we'll build another one. You take it to mars and then feed it samples" - not only is that just down right stupid - but you just shot yourself in the foot regarding the whole argument that you never needed wheels in the first place!

For what it's worth - the corner cutting and lack of testing for Beagle 2 was never something any of the team wanted. It was just something that had to happen on the fiscal and chronologic constraints they (Self) imposed by trying to do the thing in the first place. Lest we forget ( and two MER's makes it very VERY easy to do so ) - going to mars remains bloody hard, Nasa having 4 spacecraft fail at the '99 opportunity. I'm STILL glad that Pilliinger tried to do Beagle 2 even knowing what I do now - because there's STILL amazing interest and support for the project here in the UK. But he's running, if not run out of time in terms of doing something sensible about it. I was weeks away from getting a question asked in Parliment about this by my MP - then he suddenly died. Chances of our new Lib-Dem MP caring one iota about space is nil.

But you're right - the guys lost it if he things Nasa arnt going to have a very good laugh at the idea of MSL playing butler. The whole concept is simply laughable. I hope that the opportunity arrises for me to tackle him about the issue personally in the near future. I just want to make sure that somehow he's not been miss-reported.

Doug

Full post-mortem by the B2 chaps

http://www.src.le.ac.uk/projects/beagle2/report/

Doug

Yeah - mid afternoon UK time that'd be.

My email was down as well.

I'd complain to the hosting company but I rarely get to speak to anyone who fullfills all of the following

Grasp of english language
Not working from a script
Knows what downtime is
Knows what a web server is
Knows what day it is

Doug

Could anyone who notices the site being down at any time let me know times and stuff - I think you can reply to this post - it'd be much appreciated ammo at the hosting company when I complain that they're not meeting their %'ge uptime.

Doug

Ahh - but hills go like this


________/AAAAAA\__/AAAAA\_______/AAAA\_________________



Craters go like this


---------A______________A--------------------



Might be able to interpolate back to where Bonneville SHOULD be - and infer that a feature there abouts is bonneville - but we wont be going "Ooo - look - there's bonneville" - it'll be "oh - so THAT'S bonneville. Hmm - looked like a bit of noise to me"

Doug

You know something - I think Bonneville's so far away ( 2.5km ) that we probably wont be able to see it very clearly at all.

Doug

Talking of this - anyone know which file type are colorifically and radiance sorted - but NOT geometrically adjusted.

The geometric adjustment allows you to stitch images directly in photoshop - but I'd rather have the full square frame, not the slightly warped frame.

Doug

Ahhh - this is the factor that makes the difference in that side my side I did

Doug

To be honest - I dont see the need for the radiance scaling either. Then again - I dont understand the relevance now we have the fully geometric and radiance calibrated files.

The only problem I've had is that, as you said, the PNG's are so dark, that you cant really see them at first till a big tweak. So you cant browse around What would be MIGHT usefull is tiny, stretched PNG thumbnail type file to go with each IMG turned to PNG?

LIke, 256x256 maybe - something of that size. It'd make things HUGELY easier when browsing for an image set.

But - as it is - the tool is UBER usefull Many thanks for it!!

Doug

One hell of a pan to come

And I pay go one more frame to the right.

Some frames are a bit wonkey at the moment - missing panels etc - but the back of it is broken in terms of image editing. It's just the HUGE ammounts of marker-making in PTGui and then rendering out ( ohh mama - 7000 x 4000 at least )

Doug

THERE'S the UHF antenna



Doug

The bandwidth stats are there for all to see ( http://www.rlproject.com/globat/webstats/ ) and at the moment - it's nowhere NEAR my total monthly budget - but if it gets up to the 6 gig mark - then I'll just go members only and the problem's solved

To be honest - I've been thinking of moving servers - and I'm investigating the involvement of backing up the whole forum and reinstalling it elsewhere - but really - it's been FAIRLY reliable and there's quite a bit of work involved, so it's unlikely

Whats the URL for the forum you mentioned

Cheers

Doug

Nope- the exploratorium has them all now

Doug

http://www.lyle.org/mars/updates/color-1092772834.html

Some colour trackey ones

Doug

We'll have the full pan tomorrow at the press conf I'd imagine.

No - Bonneville is further left .

You can see the tracks in other images -but I've not stitched that lot yet

Maybe half an hour to get the images about right - and the same on alignign them in PTGui

Doug

It depends on the ammount of sky in the frame, the darkness of the terrain, and the way that the auto-processing treats the image because of those

If you had 100% sky - the L256 would come out grey.

Doug

Quite a lot of work in this one - I like the results though.

There's the L2,5,6, down for one more frame, going one more left along the bottom row and it has some rover tracks, but I'll wait for more frames before carrying on. There's obviously going to be a full Cornell Panorama from this waypoint.

Doug

I'll give the game away...

The pictures doesnt show the UHF antenna at all. It shows the Low Gain Antenna and the High Gain Antenna - both used for DTE comms.

The UHF antenna ( which talks to MO2k1, MGS and MEX) is a small black affair on the back right hand corner of the lander deck.

I've emailed JPL to tell them how silly they've been. Someone did mention the typo they have about Miles and Kilometres, and a few of you mentioned the crater wall etc - but it wasnt a question of typos or craters - it was Know Your Rover

Doug

Three entries. One right answer

Remind me to never trust a rover to you lot

Update - 5 entries - 3 right answers

Doug