That's Astronomy. Not Unmannedspaceflight.

Imagery that ties into unmannedspaceflight from ground based or orbital assets is fair game. Just general observations I don't think should be.

Images of extra-solar planets, nebulae, novae etc etc - can't really be considered on topic for UMSF. Just because UMSF is a good venue for the discussion of , err, UMSF, that doesn't mean it should be a good venue for the discussion of anything space science related.

OK - If Phoenix is like a clock...

Solar Panels are at 2.30 and 8.30
The arm is mounted at about 1.30
MARDI looks to be at about 7 - sort of behind where the elbow of the arm was when folded flat.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/14819.gif
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/14845.jpg

I would GUESS - the area marked green...possibly getting a corner of one bit of the exposed stuff - but with MARDI being pointing slight away from straight down, I'm not confident.

I would remind people of rule 1.9
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=boardrules

Exactly. Let's send MSL and find out

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200809191

You can listen via NPR, or via one of the web feeds that are listed on the site, but make sure you do listen if you can.

There's plenty of PDF's on the meeting website that talk about Gale and explain a possible history of it - most of which I don't understand ( my favoritism is purely down to aesthetics ) - but from what I do understand it's not a central peak in the way one thinks of a normal central peak ( being formed at impact ) - but has been built up since.

Damn you HRSC - two observations of it, and neither have colour....anyhooo

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mex/mex-m...27_0000_nd4.jpg

GO GALE. BEAT HOLDEN.

Doug

WOW - more funky flight hardware!!

I hope when it's all shipped to KSC, it's still in pieces. Watching that final ATLO stuff via KSC webcams was fantastic... Phoenix didn't really have much of that. Of course, what I hope more, is that it all comes together well, and on time

It's in situ in this pan
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_32522.jpg

I love this camera.

Maybe it was intended as a sky ob, but the arm was in the way?

Looks like a little bolt on the arm to me.

Where? Because they don't. They do stir the material once inside - but it doesn't vibrate like TEGA does.

And according to the Phoenix website - this cell is now full and delivery complete.

That's good news - seeing some of the devastation out there just breaks my heart. I can't even begin to imagine what I would think or do if our house just washed away.

There's a picture of a guy who's had a yacht land on his car. I think an dead Alligator might beat that.

You didn't try CPR on it did you?

To be fair - I can sort of see facebooks point.

'The Chris Moyles Show' is far from inanimate - but you don't become a friend of a pretend person - you can become a fan of it. That would seem a more appropriate methodology of affiliation for people wanting to show their support of, and get news about spacecraft.

Just my 2p's worth.

Doug

I'll never be able to change the forum skin, because your GENIUS avatar, and lovely drop-shadowed thumbnails are just too damn good!

Doug

Start with Orbiter ( www.orbitersim.com ) and its addons ( www.orbithangar.com )

You don't need to use bold to try and shout your point across - and as someone has already described - the WCL does not have vibrators like TEGA.

NH doesn't need it. They know roughly what they're going to see, and they need to schedule each and every tiny second of that flyby to get the data they need by hand.

Using Mars 24 as a base..
For PHX - Dan's page is 5s ahead. The PHX Webpage is 2mins 30s behind.
For MERA - Dans page is 9 mins 6s behind. The MER flash icon is approx 8 minutes behind and MMB is just 2s behind.

Doug

The someone was me It makes a great replacement for web-clip chunks of different websites I've taken to try and keep on top of things. Mars 24 is all-powerful BUT a resource hog ( seriously - the Mac version gets the fans on my MBP racing!! ).

Only problem is it's online only. If we can nail the local-time issues, package it up for offline use, I know a whole bunch of people who would find it useful

Maybe a server is bust, maybe a script broke, maybe there was a downlink issue. What I know for sure is that you should chill out

Wrong. When Huygens was launched the expected duration of relay from the surface was FOUR...repeat FOUR minutes. A mirror would have been extra mass. Double resolution wasn't possible with CCD's sensitive enough to do the job when the camera was designed - and would have halved quartered the number of images that could have been sent given the bandwidth available.

Sorry - you just do not understand the complexities of the engineering involved to make such bold, swiping criticism of

Incidentally - the camera on Huygens was an American instrument. Nothing to do with the NAC on Rosetta (so how or why you decided to make that connection I do not know) - and the reason the RAC has LED's on PHX is because that is what it needs to do its job.

I would very strongly urge you to not make further comment - as to be blunt - you don't know what you're talking about.

Landing on Titan is indeed comparatively easy. However - if you put an MER on Titan it would die, very very quickly. You've got a significant atmosphere which is far colder than Mars to deal with, thus need a much better insulated vehicle and a LOT of power for heaters etc. You also need a different power source, an RTG almost certainly. You could use some elements of the MER - but not the design per se. At that point, you're building something that looks more like MSL than MER. But a Titan rover wouldn't end up looking like MSL either I'd expect.

There isn't the money to do it. I'd love to see rovers everywhere. However - we've done one preliminary survey of Titan - we need a better survey, full panoramic imagery of a possible rover landing site, before we can contemplate sending a Rover up there.

The long answer is that ballooning is arguably a better, faster, cheaper way of getting around Titan.

Feasible? Yes. Sensible? Maybe? Financially possible right now? No.

Sound more dangerous, unpredictable and dynamic than it needs to be. A sub-surface drill is a far better idea.