I've got an abstract submitted to give another talk similar to last time.

Doug

Loughborough....fairly damn close to Leicester

Fortunately, you wont here the roof come of my house with the cheers of succesfull EDL, as I'll be in Selsey

Doug

If it's the map projected imagery, it's normally 25cm/pixel.

Doug

Oh F*** we're on the front page of the Phoenix website

My thoughts here

Doug

So do I - I don't like my rocks very much.

I'll do some massive rendered version for desktops of every size later tonight Thanks to the Phoenix team for providing the goodies, and Lewis for providing the book, I'm looking forward to that!

And jury members...the cheque's are in the post

Doug

I thought that was the case (with the landing at night) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything

Doug

I am genuinely beginning to get a physical reaction to the tension of the whole thing. Phoenix is making me physically nervous already. Quite what I'll be like on Sunday I don't know.

Doug

I think Odyssey needs to be in knuckle-down-and-do-nothing-else bent-pipe relay mode

Doug

5mph they keep saying - 2.5ish m/sec

2.5 m/sec to a standstill in, say, .25 seconds - 1G.

Atmospheric entry and the chute-deployment snap will be much higher than that, 6, 7, 8, 9 G sort of figures.

Doug

Ben - your check out photos are SO much better than the stuff the usual KSC PAO photographers come up with. Stunning images.

Doug

Yes. But between finding out that HiRISE was going to be imaging, and finding out it was going to be imaging after 'chute deployment, I assumed HiRISE would be fireball hunting as well.

Doug

When I read about HiRISE trying to get it - I thought "That might be cool - an entry plasma trail". Then when I was putting together an entry timeline for reference on sunday night, I realized 'hold on - that's when the chute is out...I must have this wrong'

I don't.

Cool

Doug

It's also the sound my me click the PTGui icon. Rapidly.

doug

Well that was interesting. No idea of a cause for that 1hr of downtime yet. Server management team are on the case.

"It was related to a small power issue we had, everything should be fine now."

YOU'VE got power issues. Clearly you've never parked on home plate for 8 months.

On the way back up, the database got a kicking which cause some session control issues. I repaired the database ( by hitting a button marked 'repair' ) and it's back up and running fine now.

What's amazing is how quickly the current visitors number rocketed back up after downtime. Having had look at Google Analytics - yesterday was UMSF's busiest day this year - and I can see a pre-phoenix trend. We needed this server

Doug

Phoenix will send data via UHF that will get received by MRO, Mars Odyssey and Mars Express. Mars Odyssey will be relaying the data back live, in real time, to JPL. The other two will be replaying it back later to make sure they've got all of it

The Green Bank ( http://www.gb.nrao.edu/ ) radio observatory will listen for Phoenix in real time - but the signal will not be strong enough to get data - just strong enough to identify the signal and track the doppler shift.

Doug

I've been trying to figure this out for myself. I decided that Phoenix has a better chance than Lewis Hamilton has of not winning the Monaco Grand Prix.

67% is the figure I've come up with. 2/3rds - which, by chance, is the ratio of powered decent landings on Mars.

Doug

Two.

One is 'peanut'. You have to eat good luck peanuts

Eat two, and you're set.

Doug

I'll be going down the shelled salted variety.

Doug

Agreed. I will start a thread closer to the time.

An EDL thread
and then a new First comms pass thread as well.

Doug

It advanced them from not having any mission, to having a mission that will do a LOT of science. It wouldn't do '10x' the science, as you claim, if it could move, because within 5 months or so, it's going to be dead. It's going to take most of it's life to fully understand and investigate what we land on. If it could move, it wouldn't have time to do the same to a second site and the data tells us that a second site would be the same as the first. Maybe we'll get a polygon edge within the work volume - that would be a nice bonus. But for what Phoenix is being sent to do, it's purpose, it's prime goal... mobility is not in any way justified, required or 'missing'. By Sol 90 after the full characterization of the landing site, the sun will begin to set. From that point on, it's going to be camping out on ever decreasing power, on an atmospheric and surface monitoring program. Phoenix isn't going to last 1500 Sols. This is a short lived tightly focused mission for which mobility is not required.

Would it be nice to have a rover. YES. Would there be a benefit to Phoenix to be mobile? No - because it wouldn't even be on Mars - it would be on PPT's getting turned down at the scout selection phase. A lack of mobility made Phoenix possible. Lamenting that fact is moot.


Indeed, refering back to your quote ' how much does that argument advance things?' - debating mobility for Phoenix advances nothing whatsoever. There isn't a debate to be had. It's not mobile. Argument finished. I struggle to see what your point is beyond that.

Doug

It would, indeed, be of value. But that's not Phoenix's job. It's got a very specific very unique job to do and one that mobility is not required for.

As I have said - would a rover been nice in the polar plains? Yes. Does Phoenix need mobility to do its job? No. Would Phoenix even have the time to use Mobility to great effect? At the time of selection, they had a full 90 day digging schedule with one massive trench. The analysis that suggests it is soil then concrete-like-ice will change that perhaps, but Phoenix wouldn't have had time to do the science it's sent for AND be mobile. Let me repeat this so people don't missinterpret me here. Mobility is good. Mobility is great. Mobility is sexy and very very usefull if you're trundling around doing geology on rocks somewhere like Meridiani or Gusev , and indeed a long lived rover up near the pole would be very cool. But - would mobility make Phoenix 10x more scientifically productive?

If Phoenix were mobile, it would not be 4 days from Mars. It would be on PPT's on hard drives on Earth as it wouldn't have gone under the scout budget, and MARVEL would be 4 days out from MOI.

The argument is moot anyway. Phoenix is Phoenix. It's got a job to do, it's going to do it. A fossilized martian 5 cm outside the arm range doesn't change the fact that for the job that Phoenix is going to do, mobility is not required.

The question ' Wouldn't it be nice if Phoenix could move ' is essentially ' Wouldn't it be nice if Phoenix never got selected '. Because that what mobility would have meant to Phoenix during the scout process.

Doug

You shouldn't, I certainly don't. Not a forum problem I'm afraid. Are you visiting www. not just .umsf ? There isn't a 'make people forget logins' button that has been pressed.

Doug

It's not going to happen with Phoenix, remember that. 5 seconds after landing, the prop is depressurized. And if you want mobility on Mars, rockets are a very inaccurate, dangerous, complex and heavy way to do it.

And I'm still going to maintain - Phoenix has a full 90 sols planned investigating where it lands. There is no evidence to suggest there is science to be gained by moving horizontally. I am somewhat concerned that a few people here don't know what Phoenix is about at all.

Doug

No. We had it for a while, but it was essentially, crap and rather unreliable and rather expensive. I'd suggest #space on irc.freenode. I wont have the time to monitor a chat room as well as everything else - someone else can do it

Doug