Simple test for the ISIL once there's a suitable buried testbed rover.... a pull test with a force meter to establish if the sort of force required to shift our stubborn girl is anywhere near the IDD's abilities.

Stony Meteorite gets my vote - certainly unusual in a Bounce Rock / Heatshield Rock / Doesn't look like it belongs here sort of way.

I hope ESOC can muscle their way in to get a few VMC images in there during cruise.

They're in there - use the analyst's notebook to find them. They're not in an easily consumable format, however.

That's not Kasos - that's old data getting downlinked. That image was taken Mid-March.

I would use the RAT as the 'blunt trauma' IDD instrument - I THINK that should keep the others REASONABLY safe.

GIven the max static torque of the wrist and turrent, I'm not sure significant compacting would be possible anywhere you might want it to. You could line up the joints in such a way as to pass it down to the elbow and shoulder in some specific orientations I guess.

MSL's MI can pull focus

Paolo mentioned that driving motion and IDD motion at the same time is impossible - so driving over the IDD wouldn't be possible.

As for Stu's picture, it is my long held opinion there is no situation that can not be resolved with a significant quantity of explosive, or a significant number of ewoks.

For those pondering IDD shoving/pulling etc.

http://www.esmats.eu/esmatspapers/pastpape.../fleischner.pdf

Page 5 includes torque values for each actuator. The wrist/turret are much much weaker - but the Elbow can manage 20 Nm force, it can handle 40 Nm static, the Shoulder's two motors about 45 Nm.

That would suggest, to me, that if you could brace the IDD into the ground, you could apply, say, 30 Nm at the shoulder without getting near the static limit of the elbow. You would have only about 60 N of force at the IDD attachment point though - as each part of the arm is about half a meter long.

The rover, at 185kg, has a total force from gravity of about 697N. So the arm would only ever be able to take about a tenth of the weight of the rover.

How that might be turned from a 'lifting' force into a 'pushing' force, and what impact that might have, is beyond my feeble engineering mind. I get the feeling the ISIL will be phoning in for extra IDD actuators if they go down this road - seems like an efficient way of burning them out.

I THINK - the current location is in here - http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...CP2415L2M1.HTML from 1367

Already mentioned was perhaps pushing rocks toward the low traction wheels to help them. Sand ladders would be mighty usefull right now.

Obviously none of us can drive this thing - but what have we not thought of yet.

- Soil analysis - how does this lot compare to previous 'got stuck' moments like Tartarus and Purgatory.
- Drive strategies - what might the MER guys not have thought of.
- Every ounce of imagery of this spot - I think this site will be in images taken from the top of home plate (I found the back of that 'skull' from a pan taken up there)
- Specific things that the rover could try that are not crazy (or maybe some that are)

Get creative, and we might get out!

Now I wish I'd made building a 1/4 scale mobility model my Winter '08-09 project rather than my project for NEXT winter.

I often wondered if Beagle 2 would end up leashed to a deployed PLUTO, and drag itself across the surface whilst trying to winch it in

Right...these are guestimate figures - I don't really know if I have the IDD geometry accurate, and if I'm refering to the angles correctly.

I start with the Shoulder at -24deg (i.e. 'up' from straight out), and an Az of 0
Elbow is at -25deg (again, 'up' from straight out)

That puts the turret at roughly where I do all the motion from. I'm afraid at that point I'm lost - I don't think my axis are accurate for the motion after that - but a combination of turret and wrist should be able to replicate it.

I'm less confident about this next JPG or two - it's the most 'leftward' and 'rightward' arm motion, with the MI looking back under the IDD down the side of the rover, it might show obstructions around the middle wheels - if they're really big I'll put money on these breaching keep-out rules, even if they don't break IDD hard-stops.

He's being the worst kind of pessimist...a pessimist who also thinks everyone else is pessimistic.

I'm just animating things with 3DS Max - it's an artistic tool rather than anything else. I do have a reference of joint angles and where zero deg is - so I should be able to pull some actual numbers out that will make sense to you. I'll try and make figures for each key-point in the sequence.

I can try and estimate the joint angles - (and re-render the motion slower as well) tonight. 600 whrs and no where to drive for a few days - you might get a bit bored

Now I'm wondering if we could see down the left side of the WEB. That's for tomorrow night. In many respects, the self portrait seq I fudged is basically half-way-to-magnet-MI - then wrist-and-turret-o-rama

I moved the MI self portrait stuff here : http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5996
With her arm being more arthritic that Spirit's - I didn't think it very polite to leave it in an Opportunity thread .

Here it is - 40 deg FOV. I took a sequence of 20 images, but only needed 14 frames to make the attached mosaic.

A rather bad movie of the arm seq I came up with in quicktime - which probably breaks every known IDD keep-safe rule - and the image dropped in to show the FOV, very roughly. In quicktime, you should be able to drag across the second half of the movie to see what I'm attempting to do.

In that case - I'll re-work it with 40 degrees.

I took the 31 x 31mm FOV at 63mm figure I found (thank you google) - basic trig tells me, roughly, 28 degrees. Thinking back - I may have gone a bit too wide. I'll make sure I'm doing 28 degrees, and DSN to 256x256.
I'll go and double-check and re-do it tonight with the fewest number of frames possible.

I'll also see if I can put in a camera with a focus AT 63mm to see if I can emulate the DOF with that, and see if it changes across the model much - but to be honest, just blurring in Photoshop is about as realistic as it's going to get anyway

Doug

Pancam lens dustcovers - what pancam was looking out thru cruise - I think.

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/spa...mer2_021003.jpg

As Paolo said - we've seen the MI be used to observe the Mini-TES mirror

I very very roughly ballparked the fuzzyness from those.