As the ECAM Team Lead.......so do I.

We try - we really do - but sometimes the 'nice to have' isn't enough when balanced with time/data volume/power constraints on a plan.

That might be the best Phil-o-sphere yet.

(I was on shift on Friday - asked to get those 6 frames for Mt Sharp and the top of the Butte to finish the view off )

The JPGing of the grey raw frames induces a lot more green hue - especially in darker areas - if you debayer the JPG.

These two images show it pretty well - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=246171

Yup - that's the Greenhaugh Pediment. Not named in honor of the Green Hue that debayering JPGd raw MastCam frames.

From our current location you can technically see the landing site....but the terrain from here to there, or vice versa, is so foreshortened that it's hard to pick out anything between VRR and the Greenheugh Pediment beyond.

I couldn’t agree more.

So - just for clarity....... whilst describing those images as 'compressed bayer' is seemingly correct....they are infact an uncompressed image on the ground that has been JPGd for posting online. With the addition of TGO to the UHF relay fleet, the amount of data being returned by MSL has increased substantially in the past year meaning that a lot of MastCam imagery that might previously been returned as debayered color imagery is now returned uncompressed. When that reaches the ground....it is greyscale before processing. Given the policy of releasing 'raw' imagery....taking that uncompressed image and then JPGing it gives us the problematic data we have now. This is not privileged information - with effort, one could ascertain this via the PDS labels.

It's certainly not an intentional effort to 'frustrate any independent effort to illustrate the mission.' That, sadly, is a frustrating side effect of the raw imagery release policy and an abundance of data volume.

It sucks.

As to how one might get that policy changed......I think that's a problem that predates launch and is at the PI level. That said - I have, and continue, to make appeals up the chain of command for a change, even if I know change is unlikely.

It's worth remembering....those terrible JPGS now.....mean in a few months you have entirely uncompressed data landing on the PDS to be enjoyed.

I will forever be grateful to you for making Midnight Planets ( and MMB before it ). They were, and remain, the best way of exploring Mars through the raw imagery. Thank you for helping us enjoy the journey.

It says a great deal about your ingenuity and talents that....more than a decade later...nobody has published a better means of riding along these adventures than this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxOrukhYBvw

Left it behind a few sols ago...but here's the scuff in 3D

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/msl-sol-255...3237faf13433899

Probably the size of the arrays for some of the other proposals that have headed out that way on solar power.... ELF, for example - https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2...15-4603_A1b.pdf

Yeah - at one point they considered try to do it by pumping mercury around a fluid loop or something

As I understand it - these balance masses are entirely unrelated to EDL. The two cruise balance masses on one side of the backshell, and entry balance masses on the opposite side are designed so the vehicle is balanced during the spin stabilized cruise, then unbalanced before entry to give it the angle of attack required for guided entry, and then rebalanced before parachute deployment. I believe these total something around 150kg ejected both before entry, then before 'chute deployment.

The rover's CoG also needs to be characterized as part of the whole stack of the vehicle. It needs to match a conservatively predicted mass and CoG so as not to throw the rest of the vehicle off. The mass properties of the RTG are well known - you can 'balance' the vehicle without it, knowing how it will change the properties. You are not literally 'balancing' the vehicle on a spin table like that - you're simply characterizing the CoG. This is where the analogy of balancing a tyre kind of falls apart..... on one of those machines you actually need to balance it right then and there.

The great thing about Titan EDL...you've got PLENTY of time under your parachute.

Quadcopters maintain level flight by adjusting the RPM of all 4 ( or in the case of Dragonfly... all 8 ) rotors.

Also - without a parachute....how do you successfully separate the heatshield?

“Furthermore, in addition to the regular forum of exchanges between ESA and NASA experts, a workshop of Mars parachute specialists will convene next month to share knowledge.”

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_an...sting_continues

Details of multiple recent test failures. But also good news on some info exchange between agencies.

Certainly at risk of being covered under ITAR/EAR...... a cursory google brings up this which repeatedly cites parachutes as controlled
https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents...340-ccl9-4/file

I think the complexity comes from the fact that neither ESA nor RSA have flown a successful very large Martian 'chute before, so I can understand the desire to 'stage' them with something small and tough, followed by something larger that doesn't have to be strong enough to handle the supersonic deployment. The LDSD deployment used that balute first as a drogue, to then pull out the main (but had two failures of the mains)

I'm at a loss as to how they got to the Drogue-1st Stage Main-Drogue 2-2nd Stage Main four chute design. I'm sure they're not doing it for fun.

The ExoMars EDM had a Disk-Gap-Band canopy of 12m.....but they're not re-using that flight proven design at all (it would make sense as a 1st Stage Main chute - instead they've developed a new 15m chute)

The final Rover EDL chute is for some reason, 35m across. That's more than 50% larger than the MSL 19.7m parachute despite being a lighter entry vehicle.

This was a concern I had about the EDM being so close to the rover mission....there simply isn't the time to take the lessons learned from EDM and then apply those to the design of the rover EDL.

This is a second, separate failure.

At our rate of progress to date - it would only take....210 years.

Gonna need a bigger RTG.

FWIW - You typically need to stand down for 2 weeks centered on conjunction.

It's the mars outreach team - if people have concerns/ideas/problems etc, we can maybe start a thread somewhere and I can then send peoples ideas direct to the team rather than people submitting into a form that probably goes nowhere.

The end of the arm is largely dark. That's the top of the ChemCam housing on the RSM - no doubt about it.

It was Sol 2423 for MSL
Images
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...00#/?slide=2423
Plan Description
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/mars-...cks-at-our-feet

"Then on the second sol ChemCam will acquire observations on 2 autonomously selected AEGIS targets, along with some Navcam dust devil and suprahorizon observations to monitor the atmosphere."

It's the second sol of a 2 sol plan that had a drive on the first sol - therefore the arm remains stowed.

That includes a ChemCam AEGIS block (Navcam images with a CCAM sequence ID are AEGIS) a dust devil movie and supra-horizon movie, and then the RSM would have stowed - which is 0az, -48 deg in rover frame. i.e. pointing forward and down.

The arm was stowed at the time it was taken.

That, and more, here
http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/topics/201..._ImageBulletin/

...and it's gone.

https://twitter.com/Shamrocketeer/status/1143312546717261824

.

Someone needs to stitch and animate the cloud movie on 2410

https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...mera=NAV_RIGHT_

It's a 3x1 mosaic, shot left to right, repeated three times without pauses.