http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080519.html

Doug

In my head, AstroO was SOOOOoo different!!

Brilliant way of touching the details. It's a dramatic demonstration that freefall on Earth, is about the same as falling under an enormous parachute on Mars.

Doug

Please do. We have been through this at significant length before.

The latest in a series of 'Pimp my banner' courtesy of AstroO He's VERY good at these

Doug

Even a shreded chute like those Boise MER tests would still be a fairly big target - and the backshell might, I expect, survive the impact - especially if the lander seperated before landing.

Doug

We're not getting tones, it's UHF telemetry directly, and in real time, via Mars Odyssey.

Doug

That nature can play tricks on people. When you're looking for a backshell, all the rocks look like backshells.

Doug

MOC should, however, resolve the backshell and the parachute. It did with Spirit and Opportunity. When I go MPL hunting - that's what I look for. - If you compare the 'how far it got' elements of EDL, with what you should be able to find on the surface..

DOA / entry failure : Aeroshell impacts at speed, crater, probably unidentifiable.
Failure of chute : probably same as above
Chute deploys, rest a failure : chute and backshell
Lander seperates, but then fails : chute, backshell, heatshield impact site and small probably unidentifiable impact

So in almost any failure mode, the chute and backshell should be visible. What impact the climate would have w.r.t. burying them, covering them etc I don't know, but the Pathfinder chute is clearly visible to HiRISE.

Doug

Yeah, more like 10m, not 80. That looks like what would happen if someone tried to fake a backshell and chute out of rock

http://www.msss.com/mer_mission/finding_mer/ - and I'm sure it's improved since then. I'm sure it'll be enough to say 'it's in THIS HiRISE image' giving us a realistic chance of identifying the site from local features / rock patterns etc.

Doug

Ahh - Polly Estabrook going 'IT'S THERE, IT'S THERE ROB' - and Rob 'I don't see it' That was brilliant

Doug

That'll be much MUCH easier with the triangulation we'll get via UHF

Doug

Colour
Theatre
Metre

And I'll throw tea-bags at anyone who disagrees with me

Doug

There's no reason why it is any less or more difficult to get closer to the cape. It's looking very unlikely we could put the IDD up against it, and the driving would be hard, but from what we have infront of us in terms of imagery - I don't think we can say they're not going to go, yet.

I would have thought the reason behind the 'exit site' imagery is because they had time on their hands waiting for IDD diagnosis, and given that if they go up to the cape or not, that's the way they're going out, it makes sense to get great quality imagery of that site now.

Doug

Mike Caplinger telling the MER guys that they had 2 minutes of UHF from the ground with Spirit. I knew that Spirit was safe, but the flight ops guys just didn't acknowledge it.

Doug

No, they're not. A torrent to legally available stuff - fine. A torrent to rips etc, no.

Doug

Just for those that like stats...




New server doing beautifully.

Also - the problem of getting GD to rebuild the thumbnails from the few days when it wasn't working is fixed - PHP didn't have enough memory allocated to play with. Fixed with a quick ini file setting change.

Doug

Recent imaging looks to me like they've decided to use the left hand side of the Pancam CCD to avoid the worst of the dust on the lens, to get a really good sharp observation of the exit route.

Doug

I've switched back to the non-stronghold cookie - so it would ask some people again.

Doug.

FWIW - I wouldn't want it to move any later - fine where it is though

Doug

No motion of the unhappy-motor to do that though. I would have thought you would want to bring the arm up close to the vehicle so that any jolting has the smallest torque. If it's all stretched out, the jolting would be magnified quite a lot.

Doug

I think the Phoenix teams own EDL real-time-with-height/speed is more useful to be honest.


Daniel - I say add an event into the time line that just says 'Beginning of Phoenix EDL simulation movie' or something like that, and we can all click play together


Doug

Brilliant movie.

So - come EDL time I've got to have.....

That movie ready to play
The Phoenix realtime website from Dan
UMSF
Twitter
Blog
NTV (Media channel. No offence Gay Yee Hill, but I like my EDL raw and unplugged)

Thank god I'll be able to have three monitors on the job

Doug

We covered that elsewhere - but the collective conclusion was basically, none. Chance of encountering one during EDL = very very low. Actual impact if it does = low.

Doug

I've switched to the stronghold cookie - which is more robust than the usual one and would prevent a similar hack to the one that caused a virus to be linked-to from the foum previous.

Doug