Topics like this are a bad idea

Lots of people will argue about when the actual 'arrival' is. Lots of people will get into heated debates about what does and doesn't constitute the day on which we actually 'arrive' etc etc.

Moreover, it doesn't actually achieve anything. We simply end up with a few dozen people who all guessed wrong.

The near-rim-far-rim 'beacon' thread with Victoria crater and other 'when' / 'where' threads are some of the ugliest at UMSF.

For those reasons, this thread is closed.

It's in the hall of the Education and Comms offices at JPL.

I gigapanned it a few months ago - it didn't stitch as well as Dan Goods' stitch that's on the photojournal, but you might be able to bring out more numbers.

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/68749/

You're going to need to do a lot of research yourself - it would take weeks of back-and-forth on a forum to cover what you're going to have to figure out. Fortunately, every single piece of information you're after is already on the web if you care to look for it. To get you started, try these places

Start here : http://pds.nasa.gov/

here : http://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/

And some great tutorials from Emily here : http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/im.../tutorials.html

Great documentary, thoroughly enjoyed it. The only thing I found odd was that in an hour long program, we never actually saw the image from the surface...just the 3D estimated rendering inspires BY the image from the surface.

Slightly semantic, but ISIS3 is also available for OSX. Indeed, that's the only platform I've ever used it on, and if you follow the instructions available on the ISIS3 website, it's actually not too hard to use. It is time, and hard drive, consuming, however.

It's just slugs of metal so that their #1 requirement ( be a mass of X kg ) can be set rapidly, easily, and if necessary, changed with ease before launch.

Sometimes the easiest way to do a turn-for-comm is a simple arcing turn at the end of a drive.

The horizon drop-off might be analogous though - Mars being a smaller ball etc etc.

And all spacecraft have a consumable that they all need that is very limited. Cash.

I'm squelching a discussion on this forum between two guys who are dangerously and embarrassingly uninformed regarding the costs and complexities of building a spacecraft. Furthermore - it has near zero relevance to this thread. What I HAVE done is give you suggestions of how you might participate or contribute to space or space analogous projects.

There is nothing stopping you opening up a forum, yahoo group, whatever... to continue that discussion. Indeed, I would encourage you to do so.

I repeat - you are catastrophically underestimating the costs, complexity and challenges involved.

The very very smallest and simplest spacecraft you can possibly put together is a 1U cubesat - which is a $50-100,000 investment. Moreover, getting it off the ground is about the same. And that has no payload, no ground stations, no actual 'use'.

A literal build-to-print 3U cubesat is $250k. ( google 'Cubesat Kit' for an actual price list ) Plus - the international nature of UMSF renders ITAR a significant hurdle that would almost certainly bring things to a halt if money were no object.

DSN time? It's tens of thousands of dollars..PER HOUR. An Ion engine? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Pulsed laser communications? You're now talking about a large and powerfull 3-axis stabilised spacecraft with significant power ( 10's of millions ) and multiple large apature ground stations ( 10's of millions )

If you want to have some sort of involvement in an actual spacecraft or spacecraft analogous project.... then these are actual options

Contribute to the Planetary Society Lightsail project ( https://planetary.org/join/donate/K09ls1w )
Find a local university that's conducting a CubeSat project, and offer your talents, time and expertise.
Get involved in a high-altitude balloon flight. I don't thing there's a country in the western world where some radio-hams or soldering-iron wielding tech heads are not building them and launching them monthly.
Heck - my latest solo project is a small R/C plane with an autopilot and I'm having great fun.

We're not building a spacecraft here. I'm serious.

Syrinx, algorimancer.... I'm telling you as a UMSF regular...and now as an Admin.... you're talking fiction, stop it.

Definitely not. JPL will be open for business as usual.

Were the 20 cameras flown on MER

(answer, no)

Are the 12 Engineering cameras on MSL

(answer, no)

I'll ask again - what sort of enclosure and for what purpose.

The most expensive part has never been the launch. Build a spacecraft, testing it, the ground systems required to use it - that's the expensive part with spacecraft, typically.

It doesn't matter where the money actually comes from -it still costs money. The NM program has more cancelled projects than completed ones. Balloons are not a great platform at Mars due to the very low atmospheric density.

Plus - deploying from the descent stage after seperation...you're eating into the fuel margin, adding potential re-contact problems and adding command and control capabilities to the descent stage that it doesn't have.

Moreover - with instruments like MCS collecting so much data, I'm not sure there's significant scientific benefit from a single atmospheric sounding over a site that's just had an atmospheric profile taken during EDL.

I think you're under the impression that adding something like this to the descent stage is comparatively trivial. It isn't.

Technically, it might be possible.

What are you going to take off the rover to pay for this, in terms of mass, time, money, power etc etc.

That's the trade in question.

Covers over R and F Hazcam's will deploy before the end of Sol 0, but that's about it ( not going to command a mast deployment until the state of the vehicle is known )

Sol 1 - more rover checkout

Sol 2 - Mast deploy, first panorama

Sol 3 - Targeted remote science, first HGA use.

Should be good to drive by Sol 4. All that will be required for that first drive is to steer front and rear wheels straight - they are turned 'in' slightly to be stowed under the descent stage.

Actually - the way TCM's are done with an MPF/MER/MSL spinner cruise stage is to not turn. You fire all four thrusters in one cluster in a pulse at some point during the rotation to adjust in that plane ( many tens of times. it's shown once in the animation) or, fire the after or fwd facing of each cluster constantly to adjust in the other 'axis'.

I wondered how on earth they did TCM's on spinning spacecraft until I met a guy from the Nav team who explained the whole process. It's very clever ( but very hard to explain with words )

At the end of cruise - they chuck the cruise stage - then use the thrusters on the descent stage ( that stick out the back of the backshell ) to despin from the 2rpm cruise spin rate and turn to entry attitude.

It's also accurate. The team responsible for the design, implimentation and testing of the MSL EDL system have a 3/3 record over the past 14 years.

Just like Pathfinder. Just like Spirit. Just like Opportunity. Just like Viking.

I heard the MSL landing system described differently yesterday - and very well.

It's like MER...but instead of RAD solid rocket motors, it's liquid motors that can be throttled. It's a far more sensible way of putting something on the surface.

As you're convinced it's going to fail - I'd be interested to know what you think they need to do to succeed in landing an 850kg+ rover on the surface. Moreover, without falling foul of the appeal-to-authority logical fallacy - what it is that makes you think you (number of Mars landings engineered...0) know better than them ( number of Mars landings engineers - 3. PHX and MPL were LoMart, not JPL )

If you can't point at something and say 'THAT bit there, will fail'- and explain why - then you're just arm waving.

Further - yes - it might fail. That doesn't mean your pessimism without justification is in any way 'right'. If you think there's a reason why it will fail, and you understand that reason - then bring it forward.

Pad ready quicker? Less conflicts on the range? Closer to Hawthorne? I can think of lots of reasons.

MSL spins during cruise- so the mass has to be ballanced.

However, for its guided entry, the centre of mass and centre of pressure need to be offset. Hence, just before hitting the atmosphere, two slabs of ballast are thrown overboard (CBM - Cruise balance mass - I'm guessing here, 2 x 75kg...HiRISE, crater? Hopefully!) )

But - before you deploy the parachute, you want to straighten up and fly right ( SUFR...no, really, they made it an acronym ) - and 6 x 25kg ballasts are thrown overboard (the bang..bang..bang..bang..bang..bang sfx)

Lots of info here : http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/41708

If there were an excess of time and money ( something MSL doesn't have, sadly ) one could imagine a situation where those CBM's were infact DS2 like probes of some sort. Not this time, sadly.

"Can we have it exploring an outcrop?"
"Like, say, Burns cliff or Payson?"
"Yeah - just like that"
"You got it"



The artists used slabs of burns cliff as paint-brushes to create that outcrop - it worked really well. People have gone "That's familiar" but didn't know why - I knew this crowd would get it. Wonder if anyone will notice the area with a data drop out in one of the color channels of the image used.

A bad enough hit could kill any spacecraft, especially in the inner solar system.

Meanwhile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BudlaGh1A0o

New project animation. There's more to come, but that's what was ready for yesterdays press day