Wow - time warp thread. Who would have thought I'd end up at the technical director for that animation :0

Fairly pleased with the end result. And yeah - it has sounds-in-space syndrome, but that part wasn't my doing

So does driveability analysis based on HiRISE DTM's and other data.

Yup - a couple of possible traverse routes from Bell/Anderson.

Quite clearly I meant an advantage over the other sites.

No site had that.

Clearly not an advantage, or it would have risen above the other sites on scientific merit.

Without.




The conclusion of the 5th landing site meeting was this - ALL the sites were scientifically interesting and all met the engineering requirements. There was no scientific consensus that puts one above the other. So - did aesthetics play into it? They were certainly mentioned at the landing site meeting - and all other things being equal, I don't know why they shouldn't. If you have four safe, interesting landing sites that the science community can't choose between, then why not go to the most spectacular one?

One good side-effect of Gale - it's a very very low landing site. This could offer lots of spare time margin for EDL.

A longer animation involving more data from HRSC/CTX/HiRISE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvXHu-U02UE

Totally different. A central peak that exposes 5km of layered rock, for starters. A delta in the landing ellipse.

Ryan et.al. have by far the best analysis and study of the place.

http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/201...aper-published/

MAHLI will generate an single extended DOF image and a height map, on the back-electronics for the camera, before transmitting those to the ground. It need a focusing mechanism, but it doesn't need a month to download it

A change in stance from 'it's good enough' to 'just how good is it?' - and with Spirit, TIRS/DIMES doing its thing, we probably benefited from that.

Exactly why? Don't know.

A quick google finds this:

https://imageserv5.team-logic.com/mediaLibr...Exploration.pdf

Mentions Dec 2003 as the final test.

"Full system inflation testing was completed
successfully in December 2003. Desired pressure
profiles were achieved and deployment occurred
with no damage to the airbag assembly."

Rule 1.3 people - you're tip-toeing along the edge of it perilously.

Just to give you one analogy - engineering model MER airbags were still being tested AFTER the launch of Spirit and Opportunity.

Then you can figure it out for yourself. I'm sure you know how.

Why not figure it out, add them, then share it with the rest of the forum - rather than asking someone who already spends HUGE amounts of time giving you amazing resources for nothing, to do even more work.

Eyes on the Solar System has predicted trajectory (but not pointing) for this - and looking at the geometry, I think it's the limb of Saturn, The 'darkness' you have, is the night side of Saturn. C/A was well after that and the dark side of Saturn was no longer in the FOV.

For security reasons - the exact how/when/where of rover movements from JPL to KSC are not made public

A few pics from the final Curiosity Cam Ustream chat event - http://flic.kr/s/aHsjuZ6Pqa

This end up for the rocket, and this end up for Mars...and opposite

Ones I can name off the top of my head in rough chronological order...

Eagle
Fram
Endurance
Vostok (highly erroded)
James Caird
Viking
Voyager
Erebus
Beagle
Victoria
Concepcion
Santa Maria

And the recent swath of early manned spaceflight ones.

RTG. Laser. Power tools.

Only option "Whatever the hell it wants to be called"

Or George.

The two are very clearly totally different spacecraft. One is a small airbag lander for a netlander style mission in the 150-200kg range that would last two years on the surface. The other is a Phoenix sized pulse-throttled-hydrazine engined EDL test soft lander in the 600kg range that will last one week on the surface.

Like I said - the 600kg test lander actually kills off an EDL test for a vehicle of this size.

And that's not really a document about Mars-Next (infact, that phrase doesn't appear in the entire 100 pages of it) - it's the technology roadmap for robotic exploration of the entire agency. Yes, it talks about a presumed networked lander - it simply cites 2011 funding for 4 different technological requirements - Aerogel, UHF/Xband comms, an orbiter re-entry breakup analysis tool and small lander airbags.. total funding is 3.6M Euros. It cites other tech research projects that would stretch into 2014 as a precursor to any possible network lander projects. It doesn't attest as to the likelihood of such a mission happening.

They're actually etched into the metal components of the rover in some cases. They're not going anywhere.

I'd be carefull calling it 'Curie' though. Marie Curie is the flight-spare of the '97 Sojourner rover.

I spoke to the ATLO lead ( Peter Illsley ) just outside SAF today 'You get to say goodbye soon!' 'No, I get to go to Florida'

Much of the team will travel east with the hardware.