Yup - just before the 'big storm' - Spirit was up to, if I remember, 750 Whrs.

Sol 1104 - 310 Whrs
Sol 1219 - 600 Whrs
Sol 1240 - 750 Whrs
Then the storm hit....
Sol 1245 - 490 Whrs
Sol 1265 she was down to 261 whrs

Infact the mission updates recorded an increase in Tau AND an increase in Whrs at the start of what became that storm - an 8% cleaning event ( hitting that 750 figure ) - kept Spirit just ahead of the weather for a few days. Dust storms and cleaning events sort of go hand in hand at Gusev meteorologically I guess. I'm wondering now, what was the tau like during that first round of cleaning events up near Larry's Lookout.

Seasonal or not - that's a big tau jump we're seing there.

Doug

The latest FHAZ images from 1724 have me worried. Forget the driving challenges, we've got bright skies and not-very -dark shadows again. Dust storm like conditions. Maybe I'm over reacting, but it looks murky all of a sudden.

Comapre
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...13P1213L0M1.JPG
with
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...18P1213L0M1.JPG

Doug

And Navcam mosaic with the R2/R1 Pancam frames overlayed.

Yellow bricks, for a yellow brick road.

Drive dir. images end of sol 1704.

Spirit's cameras all remain in great health

Opportunity got a smattering in both Navcams and Pancam's. If you notice a lot of Pancam imaging with Opportunity is done with only one half, or 3/4s of the CCD, as one side got quite a smattering.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...nity_p1671.html is an example of the technique.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...CSP2629L4M1.JPG is a typical example of the obstruction


Doug

What makes you assume no one has considered it. I would bet the farm that it's not only been considered, but looked at carefully, the risks studied, and a call made.

Doug

On a baby scale we can see this when we see old and new rover tracks together. The new tracks have pushed the berrys into the underlying soil. This exposes the underlying soil, so you come back a year later, and the wind has blown that re-exposed soil away and the berrys look like they're growing back out of the soil again.

Doug

Still with the x / sol * y days.

see - that's genius - I may come back with more questions, but this is a great start!

Cheers

Doug

Amoungst our troops there must be someone who knows how to write Cron-jobs.

I'd like to set up the UMSF server to automate backups of the forum DB and attachments folder, but it's just a bit beyond me. It's a LAMP setup using Cpanel 11.

Anyone who has 'the knowledge' to help me out - let me know!

No pay, but you can have an UMSF subdomain to put stuff on ( like Mike has for MMB anims ) as a UMSF perk

Cheers

Doug

What format are those models available in?

Don't assume that just because we're facing one way or the other at the end of a drive, that that is the direction we drove.

Not only do drives often end with a turn-in-place to make the best of any upcomming UHF pass, but drives can often include a switch from one direction to the other mid drive. As an example, the one-sol-record of 219.89 metres included 110m of blind driving backwards, followed by 109m of autonav forwards.


Doug

Why would you imagine a northern side exit?

I've closed the Yahoo group - I didn't know it was spitting out spam. It's been nothing but a headache for the two years we've had it to be honest.

Doug

Could the same not be true of any heavy element? How would this mechanism favour Hg over anything else?

Solar conjunction doesn't start for a couple of weeks yet!

(Nov. 29-Dec. 15, 2008).

Doug

Most of your four points are covered in the various JPL tech reports that discuss the batteries.

Ever the optimist - 8/11 to get to that dotted line BRILLIANT

I'd expect a 10-day downtime for conjunction.


D

Sorry - I've closed the poll. It's not a productive way to have this debate - experience shows they don't benefit the discussion.

Looking at the JPL tech report server - they cite 3000 cycles before they reach 50% of their initial capacity.

Yeah - pyro-bolts that held the arrays together before deployment.

Which bit of it? There's solar array mounting pyros on the left, solar cells alongt he middle, and the shoulder of the IDD on the right.

No - it's an academic book.

Looks like there was a flight - not sure they've had much luck with the tracking though - contradicting numbers on an image, and on the tracker info on the right. Back to zero altitude somewhere NE of Cambridge - The wyoming predict runs about 20nm NE of the launch site for impact.

Doug