Nor are they ever likely to be. ITAR regulations have heavily limited the amount of technical information that can be shared about modern spacecraft.

It doesn't help fix the problem.

Why note it here. This is not the Cassini website tech support forum. Tell the Cassini web team.

As I said before, if you're having technical issues - email them in. FWIW - The raw page is as fast as it was before for me. The thumbs are a bit distorted in a slight 4:3 sized window, but that doesn't matter.

Doug

FWIW - speed wise - it's as good for me now as it was before. Several minutes is certainly not right.

How about emailing the Cassini web team to report your problems?

I like it. The stuff I regularly look at is still easy to find, and the stuff I didn't know about is now there as well. The old site was a navigational mess.

Who said it can't? The science team have said they're still working the data.

I made it A proper final version will be released once the Radar team have finished reprocessing, handed that to the USGS, who then make a new DEM, so I can re-render a better finished product.

You might all enjoy this one as well

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qRq0sUP0KbY&...re=channel_page

Don't hate me if I got stuff wrong

I think it's consistent. They saw vapour, they saw films, but they didn't see liquid - I think is the main story.

Doug

It could be
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/TRA_000873_1780
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001414_1780
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_001612_1780
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004289_1780
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_005423_1780
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_006847_1780
or perhaps even
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009141_1780

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5073 is similar.

I got to see one of the test articles at the UCL RPIF today (thanks Pete!)

Smaller than I was expecting - but far less damaged than I was expecting.

Two of the test-electroncis modules were there as well - one a battery pack, one an electronics pack - all set hard in an Epoxy.

Not the best Photos, maybe Ted got some better.

I don't think it will be in freefall ( the animation shows the engines firing up before separation from the backshell ) - but perhaps with a low throttle setting on the engines to fall away from the backshell.

Really? Got the numbers for that?

You would have to render a pair of them uniquely for the angle between the two observations for each one. And then it would be a judgement call on how to co-register the two renders to be similar to the coregistration of the HiRISE image. It really wouldn't be worth it.

If we can have the FLA from which they were made, there's enough 'knowledge' out there to bash out a load of these, I'm sure. There are only 20 or so 360 pancam pans to be done anyway. I'll happily put together a Flash-pan page to host them all.

Yeah - that one's a bit more semantics. Although being the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, and this being a transient astronomical event - it's cloudy. So the correct headline would be "Unusually bright moon to be obscured by cloud"

Doug

No. Just no.

My genius is lost on you lot. I'm going to find a primary school.

Or a spec of dust on the window. That's not a shadow - if it is, it's HUGE - seriously - they could hardly resolve the LEM from Orbit - and we're expected to believe we can see the CSM's shadow from orbit?

Doug

Pedanticism

No explanation required.

We've discussed those figures some time ago when talking about discovery missions.

You're not thinking about it properly though - Mars is somewhat unique in that it's almost always locked up with one dish or another. The comms pass will be a 7 hour downlink from MRO and MODY (some of the antennae can and do listen to multiple missions at once) A tiny chunk of that downlink will be MER's - piggybacked on a much much longer session for MODY or MRO. I don't think you can take the generic formula and apply it to MER in that simple a fashion, or indeed any Mars mission. Yes - the DSN costs for MER are not negligible. BUT - they're simply chipping in with a DSN cost that's already there anyway for other Mars missions. The total cost to the Mars Program for DSN costs if you dropped MER would not, I would have thought, drop much, if at all. There's still going to be near continuous downlink from MRO and MODY (and occasionally MEX - although New Norcia and Madrid handle that mostly now). You can't suggest they bill MER for repointing at Mars for each daily downlink when there's a dish already pointing at Mars, and already locked up on the spacecraft that going to do the relay.

Something like Cassini - yeah - take that formula and the schedules and you can find out. The Mars program is more complex than that. How the bill is split up between the missions, we don't know. MER will be paying a lot LOT less than if it were on its own at Mars (which is what your maths infers)

Just got back from the first Bloodhound SSC Supporters Club meeting. I met Andy Green, Richard Noble, and Ron Ayres - as well as a few members of the Bloodhound design team - an amazing challenge. Andy's been hunting for a place to run it. "What could we use to find one" he asked us. Someone said Google Earth. I said "Astronaut Photographs" as I'd been looking at the Bolivia site from images taken from ISS...and guess what - so had Andy .

Landsat vegetation map - multiplied by smoothness from SRTM = no trees and flat = possible site. Then they had to eliminate them based on accessibility, politics, and Andy's been surveying some in America, South Africa, Turkey - and Australia is over the christmas break.

Great presentation about the hybrid rocket as well - using a V12 racing engine just as a fuel pump. They actually changed their plans following the Nitrous Oxide accident at Scaled Composites.

Fascinating stuff - and like spaceflight - they're really pushing on the potential for Engineering/Science/Technology/Maths education. Really really exciting stuff


Doug

You can be banned by any admin for breaking the forum rules. Being a realist isn't a crime. ANY mission in extended ops is at risk at any time. $400m over the, I think, 5 years that Doug Mc. described at the press conference, however, shouldn't lead to mission termination's. I believe Ed Weiler has gone on record saying MER wouldn't be a victim however. I can't find it - but I do remember it. MSL may change things, but I doubt it. DSN time is negligible given that downlink is almost exclusively on the back of MRO/MODY downlink anyway, and the DSN almost always has one asset mars pointed. It could be mega-cheap if they rode on the back of MRO given it's high downlink speed would mean even at MRO's lowest downlink rate, and a really good MER pass, it would take less than 4 minutes. ( 150mbits at 0.7mbps). Not sure how MER pays for relay and downlink - perhaps as a percentage of total downlink multiplied by DSN cost for the relaying spacecraft.