It's fairly clear - there's no 'reading into' requried. It make far more sense to schedule downlink via MRO.

It frees up MODY (as it's downlink is much lower than MRO)
It''s an accounting error in terms of MRO downlink
It's going to be on the ground faster with MRO
Thus it opens up a bit of extra sequence planning time.

DOWNSIDE - the passes are earlier in the afternoon, so less time for rover activities before stopping for the day. (But part of me wonders why they can't just start earlier - the generated power during the day will still be the same - maybe it's a heater requirement thing starting too early)

Comparing http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/odyssey_telecom.pdf and http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/MRO_092106.pdf

MODY is between 28,440 b/s and 110,600 b/s for 70-m passes, and between 3,950 b/s and 110,600 b/s for 34-m passes.

MRO starts at 500kbps on 34-m passes at the furthest distance from Earth - and goes up to 2.6Mbps on 34 and 6Mbps on 70-m at closest approach.

FWIW - current actual members = 2142. So 2850+ registrations have been spam, culled, trolled etc.

Evidence for this please? What are these lower 'rez' SAR modes?

All the Cornell Astro domain seems down.

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/05222...a619eee9e66d294



Someone who knows more about the different modes with Cassini's radar may be able to give you more information, but by gut feeling is that SAR mode radar at Saturn itself wouldn't return anything as the range to and density of material on the way to a Saturnian core are both too high. The short answer - the reason they've not mapped Saturns core with the RADAR is because I don't think they can. If they could - I'm sure they would have tried.

What mode of Radar, and for what purpose. What question are you trying to answer with such an observation?

Via Radiometer mode, I'm sure it already has been point at Saturn itself a great deal.

I didn't expect a drive yesterday - I assumed the planned one was for today (Sat) or tomorrow (Sun) before IDD on Monday.

He wasn't saying you were being like that - but that it is very easy for such a discussion to go that way.

Exagerated rendering : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3MxCvjQDzk and once processed by vimeo http://vimeo.com/7479346

Also uploading to http://www.dougellison.com/dougstuff/kaguy...render_1080.mov - About 10 meg.

They already can proceed, as I stated. You're looking to solve a problem that doesn't yet exist. What's the least possible impact to all programs? Delay one or two missions by a year or two. Or delay MSL half a decade? It's a no brainer.

Your 2001 / Phoenix history is wrong. 2001 was flat out cancelled. Not delayed. Cancelled. Drawing an analogy from that to how a half decade delay might 'help' the Mars program is misleading and dishonest.

The repercussions of further delay would make any current problems WORSE, not better. It would involve spending MORE money. It would involve delaying an entire program and risk killing international cooperation in that program. It is not the best course of action in this case.

Furthermore - why should other mission in the Mars program suffer more than other missions full stop? Why should Maven, for example, suffer because of MSL. Spread the pain across as many programs as possible so the impact is a small as possible.

MSL is too close to being ready, and too important (not to mention the issues I mentioned and others mentioned, relay, follow on costs, RTG decay, risk of loss of relay capacity) to delay another 5 years. It would be catastrophically damaging.

MSL needs to go, ASAP. Then we need to sit back and figure out why it cost so much more than forecast.

There's Google Earth/Moon/Mars

I had to look it up as well And S_Walker - the answer is about 2hrs, 40 minutes. The post following yours qualifies I think.

Just rendering a near-side 300 frame animation of dawn to dusk with very exaggerated terrain

And how do you propose to save money by delaying MSL?

I see no evidence that the '01 lander was cancelled to fund MRO and MER. Indeed, when the '01 lander was cancelled, MRO and MER were not even formal proposals. It was cancelled for engineering reasons, not budgetary reasons. The launch of the '01 lander wasn't delayed 6 years to save money for other missions. The '01 lander was CANCELLED. Full stop. And by the time it was reborn as Phoenix the cost had jumped massively. The total 2001 budget for MODY and 2001 Lander at the time of the 2001 lander cancellation was $283M.

Before cancellation - figures suggest the '01 lander had cost $100M.

Phoenix was supposed to be a $325M cost capped scout. Then $386M. Then $420M.

Add the $100M already spent - and Phoenix was a $520M mission. Take half the orig '01 budget, $142M, and - according to your supposition that it was delayed to get things in order and rectify budget problems - it ended up costing nearly 4x more than that. So on what basis do you think delaying MSL will make it any cheaper or free up any money?

It will inevitably cost more. The logical path at this point is to get it off the ground at the earliest safe opportunity, because once it's off the ground, you're spending money on flight operations, not ATLO, and they are a lot cheaper. Also - I do not see evidence that Juno, Maven and Grail are suffering greatly because of MSL. Indeed - it has been stated that:



Furthermore - heritage from the MSL design is required for missions already planned in the 2016+ time frame. Delaying MSL until that time frame would push those missions off into mid 2020's and beyond. It has been conceded that the Mars Program can not continue like it is. Hence the NASA/ESA partnership for future missions. But to get to that place, MSL needs to go first so that a clean interface (MSL derived descent stage to payload) can be presented for international cooperation.

MSL is massively, massively expensive and massively massively over budget. It should have been considered a flagship class mission from day 1. It needs a full independent review conducted by outsiders from industry and other NASA centres to establish how and why it's budget was so wrong at the beginning, after it's launched.

It's going to cost $XM to finish it from now. It's going to cost $XM + some quite large yet probably unknown amount that will, inevitably, suffer it's own budget creep to delay. Delaying it 5 years would:

• Not save money. It would cost more.
• Not positively impact other missions, as more money would, in total, be spent.
• Negatively impact, massively, the 2016+ Mars program
• Put at risk the NASA/ESA partnership for Mars exploration in that time frame.
• Reduce the likelihood of MODY, MRO and MEX being available for relay.

Before continuing, I would urge you to review the forum rules, especially regarding politics which technically, your first post breaks. But this IS an interesting discussion, so I'll let that go - but the admin team is keeping a close eye on this thread. As I've now posted in it - I'll leave moderation and administration of this thread entirely in EGD and A0's hands to avoid accusations of administrative bullying or bias.

Might just be me - but it looks like they stopped mid-drive for imaging, then carried on?

Finally figured out self shadowing terrain that I've been struggling with for a while... a couple of what I THINK are realistic renders, plus one with UBER-EXAGER-TERRAIN and a final one that's exagerated, but only to look a bit more realistic. It seems I have to turn up above and beyond what I'd expect the numbers to require for realistic terrain - perhaps because of the comparatively low level of detail in the terrain models.

And because the resolution isn't that good - a bit of foreshortening to get a look at Eddington for Stu

I would ask people to refer back to the rules at this point - this discussion isn't really in the jurisdiction of UMSF, and is in danger of falling foul of several rules.

I'd consider that a positive result - good work

Looks much like the fresh impacts we've seen with HiRISE - could very well be just what you say.

I'm assuming it's the same image Phil used.

I've not been there - but I have been to Arran, Mull, Iona, Staffa, Islay & Jura. I was only a kid, but I can still remember just how starkly beautiful they are.

I'm waiting for the Inner and Outer Hebrides to get a look in - the Scottish islands. Mull, Iona, Staffa, Coll, Tiree, Islay, Jura, Skye, etc etc.

I think Scott's looking at it a bit more closely. If we've discovered that RHAZ DOES move - then there's perhaps implications for generated terrain meshes.

Yeah - it's UV bright (R1) , but IR dark (R2) - it matches the sky very well actually. I hope we don't sail past it.

No he didn't. He said the PI seemed to have a smile on his face that suggested he might be happier with the results than he was letting on. Having watched it - I went back and looked at him, and he just looked kind of smug to be honest.

Scott's going to have a look at it.