My $900m is, I think, slightly high. Scott mentioned something like $890 or there abouts in his awesome Mars 3.0 talk at Gnomedex

Forgive my ignorance - but if it ever gets 'out' of China - will this represent a better base map than, for example, the Clementine stuff on map-a-planet?

Doug

What would their Martian third birthday's be?

No - you're not waiting patiently...you're posting on a thread, and your post may say 'patiently' - but what it means is PICTURES NOW PICTURES NOW PICTURES NOW. If you were actually being patient - we wouldn't know about it.


Fortunately - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...20&start=20

I've been lucky enough to meet a couple of times, and I will concede, as a complete space nut I did have a "OMFGSTEVE" moment first time around.

It all looks dreadfull. I shall have to make sure I avoid JPL.

Given his extensive outreach work here in the UK ( and I know how much work that is ) - and given that some moron from Leicester just swallowed every last grain of his Martian meteorite Stu really really deserved the full JPL experience, so thanks to Veronica and the MER guys who made him feel welcome.

Just for the benefit of the rest of us, Stu, would you classify MSL as...


******* huge
**** me that's large
****** hell that's bigger than I thought
Holy **** you're going to launch that thing
or
Hmm - kinda small.

Best way I know to get the science story is two lectures Steve's done.

One particularly good science one is here
http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynatu...reslecture.html - in depth on the science half.

The other one, to bring it a bit more up to date, is here
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vOv4LnAt01E

Things certainly have a hint of being a little darker on the arrays.

No.

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/geo/vl1_v...vl_0002/browse/


http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/geo/vl1_v...vl_0001/browse/

SS showed crops of one on at the Endeavour end at DPS

Why do people ask that question here, or indeed, ask when such images will be release here? We don't know. We don't have the pictures to hand to release them.

Not released yet sadly. But it would be a great time for it, I agree.

Mine's very easy. Copy the Bristol one. I don't have the bog-standard kit lens anymore - I replaced it with a 17-70mm Sigma lens.

You know how people suggest off-site backups. You've never thought of, you know, for something really important... I mean, it is VERY off site, it would be a good place to store passwords

Doug

It doesn't change - it just goes AWOL for 5 years

Scarecrow is the name of that mobility test vehicle - as it has no brain (like the scarecrow in wizard of oz)

Marie Curie is already the name of a Rover. Sadly, it's the Sojourner spare that was taken off the '01 lander design for PHX.

Doug

And a feather duster

Now now children

Nuclear power and a laser beam?

"Sir"

or

"Whatever it wants to be called"

Doug

A smouldering pile of metalic rubble on the Martian surface doesn't do much science.

The weight/price was the problem. Not enough of either. Spend twice as much, on both, and you might buy a real chance of success.

A darkish grey - the scan of the whole bag has it about right, if a bit bright. It would be very hard to suggest there's any colour in it with the naked eye.

BARGAIN

Still not tempted to eat it. I'll leave it to Stu to explain the background to that particular story though.

Stu, despite his better judgement, has leant me his fragments of the Martian Zagami Meteorite...

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/zagami.html

I've promised to not eat it, or use it to fertilise geraniums...and I've tried to photograph it as well.

Scanning at 2400dpi was quite good (an excellent way of documenting 'thin' things) and using my Sigma 17-70mm lens..backwards...gave good macro

I can almost convince myself of some olivine grains in there if I stretch the imagery a little.

At something like $3200/gramme, this stuff is valuable. It's a tiny tiny hundredths of gram I'd say - but still about 140x more valuable than gold.

I think it's 80 lines a second - pushbroom style. 5m/pixel, 20km wide = 4000 pixels width.

4000 pixels, 10 bits per pixel, 80 lines per second - 3.2 mbits/sec

Doug