Hello, this is the MER Flight Director Report for May 21st, I'm Scott Doudrick. It is Sol 136 for Spirit and Sol 116 for Opportunity. Both vehicles continue to be healthy and to operate nominally

On Spirit we completed a trench on Sol 135 and are currently planning to do IDD work on that trench. In the meantime we're going a large number of Pancam panoramas and Mini Tes imaging

For Opportunity we have reach Pan Point 2 and have begun imaging there. They're actualyl quite spectacular images. We've pulled up to within a metre of the edge of the cliff and you can see where portions of the cliff have started to fall into the crater.

That is the flight directors report for May 21st. Thankyou

Oh crap - I should never have started doing this

Doug

That's very cute - I have Pathfinder blueprints on my wall ( ebay ) and I made a Card Delta II rocket a while back -



And of course, there's the rest of the pathfinder toy stuff - which is always a bit of fun I think the scale might be a bit off though





Piccies...

I have the Hotwheel Pathfinder model - and bored one lunchtime, I thought it needed some work. The heatshield is white plastic - but I knew that was wrong - so I went in to the kitchen and...





Doug

This forum is a bit restricted. You can all reply to posts - but only moderators can add posts. If anyone is willing to perhaps do some of the transcriptions from the quicktime movies - I'll up you to mod. status so you can do that. It doesnt take too long, 5 mins maybe.

And no smarmy comments about wanting to RAT Jessica Collisson's ejecta blanket.

Doug

Added - ObsessedWithWorlds has very kindly offered to bring this lot up to speed - I think it'll make a usefull resource - especially if/when I get round to writing a book on this lot - I intend to have a sol by sol diary for each rover!

Doug

Hi this is Jeff Fabretto, flight director for Mer A and this is the Flight Director report for May 24th 2004. This weekend we had some interesting things happen on both Spirit and Opportunity.

Spirit had, unfortunately, a fault this weekend where the flight software reboot, but we managed throughout the weekend findout what the cause of that problem was, we reconfigured the spacecraft, and it's up and it's opperational and it's healthy now. When we last left it it was at a trench - we'd dug this wonderfull trench infront of us - and tonight we're going to go into that trench and do some readings inside the trench.

Opportunity is at the edge of the crater, it's working its way around, and it had driven this last couple of metres toward the edge of the cliff and fortunately was smart enough to stop right at the edge of the cliff so we're a good 3 metres away from it - we're exactly where we want to be - we're going to sit there at the edge of this cliff for the next few days - and take a look at the whole panoramic view we have at the edge of this cliff.

That ends the flight director report for May 24th

Sol 134, about 1100 local

Doug

Good afternoon, this is Joel Krajewski and this is May 25th for the Flight Directors update for MER.

On Spirit, we have closed the anomaly that happened over the weekend if you recall from yesterdays report that there was a software hiccup over the weekend and we've traced that to what is called the Erase Condition : two different parts of the code racing to their conclusion one getting a little ahead of the other. It's a situation that is perfectly safe and we've closed that out and we can image again, we're good to go. So we did some imaging work today Tomorrow we expect to complete the instrument work on the trench infront of us - some spectrometer work, and then the day after that we expect to back up to continue our drive onto the hills.

For Opportunity it is sol 119 and we are at the edge of the crater as we have been for several days completing our multi day survey of the crater rim both with the panoramic camera and with the Mini TES Spectrometer. We expect to complete that today and start our next moves tomorrow.

So that's the flight director update for May 25th

Dont forget to listen to the director updates - they've usually full of info

I'll add a new forum and transcribe them

Doug

Doug

That is VERY cool

Damnit - where's the colour

Doug

Just realised that this was taken at 0854 today, and it's now 1541. 6 hrs 50 mins - from Mars, to an anaglyph on my forum

Doug

Black and white always stitched so much easier than colour

Again - bloody terrible colours - so I've edited this image to hell and back

Either, topography, or the etching left behind by dust devils

Doug

Doug

Same as ye -olde MPL really

Not enough of at least one of the following

Money
Time


Doug

Thats a Mars Odyssey Themis image - not an MGS image

Nick knows the process by which that occurs - it's a well understood process that doesnt involve a lake.

Doug

Yup - bad compression I'd say. The Pancam gets looked after, with little covers for the each lens at the end of any observations, so I doubt it'd be getting too dusty.

Navcam and Hazcams might get dirty, but pancam should stay good

Doug

Terrible TERRIBLE colours - but some interesting details visible - and that was from a hundred metres of more (10%) further away.

Hopefully some similar mosaics will be done soon in something other than just L7/R1 stereo

Doug

Anyone know of a Photoshop plugin that can pull them in? If not, I might give GIMP a go just for batch processing once the PDS starts getting MER data in August

Doug

um - two big rocks?

Doug