Let's just say the DTM was quite low res, and leave it at that

The server was explicitly over specified when we got it - it could handle 10x the traffic and none of you would notice. Indeed we had one hack-attack about a year or so ago that emulated hundreds of thousand of visits per hour, and nobody noticed a performance hit for 24 hrs.

Plus, adding mirrors is an exceptionally complex and expensive thing to do for database driven forums.

Every now and again we'll get massive temporary spikes in traffic, but we only know by looking at stats, nit wondering why the site is tuning slow.

You're basically oversimplifying the variety and combination of how driving is done. Most drives are combinations of multiple types of drive.

I can't remember the last time we had to stand down for a few days because of full flash, can you?

And remember, applying autonav means we can drive quite a LOT further per day, taking MONTHS off the arrival date.

And lest we forget, blind drives can have their own problems. coughpurgatoryahem etc etc.

To be honest, I just don't think that's true. There is not just cause for such concern, and because of that we've made it abundantly clear that things will change very very little, and because of that, people have not expressed much concern at all. Infact most people have used very very positive words indeed.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=34....354.38,,0,16.61

That sort of place Dan?

Yup - it works now

I get the loading screen, then it crashes out



DroidX on 2.2

It's not Earth-Mars distance that defines MER downlink budgets. It's the quality of the UHF pass to MRO/MODY which changes from Sol to Sol (a good pass, 150Mbits. a bad pass, <50 )

The reason to downlink those recent ones was to establish, on the ground, if RHAZ would have enough things to look out to start being used for AutoNav again rather than the Maxwell-Shuffle with Navcam.

coughahemphyllosilicatescoughahem

What?

Get there ASAP is the charge. Getting to phyllosilicates before MSL is a great motivator

I'd been wondering if they would try an XXM with it

2008 TC3 was about 4m across iirc - that might be a point of reference.

I thought Gizmodo were better than this

Good old Amatuer DSN guys. There's a ham radio group in Germany with a dish that would rival the smaller dishes of the DSN itself.

Looks like it - the tunable laser and sample handing components are big, cylindrical and identifiable in the images and the cad rendering. I'd say the sample inlet is on the 'bottom' in those photos. Note the handling frame the instrument's mounted on - it's got a means to pivot the instrument over.

Take the wheels off, flip the chassis over, take the bottom off, and install from, essentially, underneath.

Not that I know of... You'll be able to try it for yourself by the end of the month though

It'll seep out in about 3 weeks

I just let the news seep out by osmosis - I've been there since May

Oh - we still leave the sawdust on the floor here - but then all the good ideas written on the back of beer-mats get pinned up next door for everyone to enjoy

We must have been talking about this for 8 or 9 months, but I'm very very glad we're finally able to make it official. Thanks to all the admins and mods for being the sage sounding board they always are. Ever since I discovered I would be working at JPL - I wanted to hand the forum over to a safe pair of hands, and there are none safer than Emily's.

The combination of www.AmateurSpaceImages.com and UMSF coming under the TPS banner is just a match made in digital heaven. Thanks to Jen, Lou, Bill and most of all Emily for making it happen.

The Saturday before DPS in Cambridge 2005 - I met Steve Squyres for the first time, that awesome first interview MP3. The following day, I met Emily for the first time and suggested she would make an awesome admin for UMSF.

Today at DPS in 2010 - 5 years later - UMSF becomes a part of a very special society, and the opportunity to turn this bar-room brawl into a searchable usable resource finally comes to fruition.

And how did I end the day? Passing Steve in the corridor at DPS ( on the only night he's there ) and was able to share the good news with him.

I should hope so - with Randy Kirk et.al's data and Steve Wall's scientific guidance - I made it It was my first assignment on lab.

Despite Dan reminding you all in this very thread - already there have been several posts culled that clearly breach rule 1.3

Is there any reason we should expect them to? Have YOU asked them?

It would be incredibly distorted being so close to the edge.

It would make far more sense to use the orbital imagery to produce the best DEM possible, THEN use surface data to verify the accuracy of that DEM and thus hopefully the reliability of the technique.