Yeah - there's another one the same called Bridget that was here in Leicester a few weeks ago. I was in Cambridge launching a balloon at the time, but basically it's a joystick-it rover.

Doug

CAPTCHA now working with the GD library - I'll run a rebuild of thumbnails now as well.

Doug

Well - Galileo did it during an Earth flyby, and I think a Surveyor spacecraft managed it from the Moon.

Doug

The only motor needed to move from where it was to where it is - is the one that's had the trouble.

If you look at the image sequence, not only did is succesfully drive the arm out, they also then moved it a tiny bit back, and then out again.

Doug

I hope you all enjoyed the movies at full res courtesy of Emily on TPS's Blog

I'm open to requests etc. My favorite thing to play with is lighting, this is a particularly nice shot, although it does bring out the trouble with the CCD's.

Ahh - our PHP compile doesn't include the GD libraries required to do things like generate the thumbnails, produce the CAPTCHA graphic etc. Hopefully the server-admins will do that today. I'll then do a complete thumbnail rebuild to bring things up to speed

Update

There may be some downtime in over the next 24 hrs to get this sorted.

DO IT - I dare you.

We've got an issue on the new server with registrations - the security CAPTCHA image isn't being generated. If you're trying to register, and can't - drop me an email ( djellison@mac.com ) and I'll do it the manual way. We're working the problem, hopefully we'll figure it out soon.

Doug

Lou popped in. No pressure then

Emily's doing a great job!

That was the funniest tele-conf ever A complete nutter got on the line....twice

Doug

Of course, it'll be November till ESA decides if they want to pay for it.

Helen and I talked about this on the way home. Our considered opinion is that they'll announce they've found a watch they've been looking for for ages. You know - it's always in the last place you look!!

Dog

I've tidied this thread up a little - MIP, please be more careful before jumping to a conclusion so contrary to the collective wisdom, and then stating quite so forcefully.

The killer point is that if stereo imagery describes the feature as a depression, then the label is irrelevant - illumination is from the lower right. As another post ( which made no sense during clear up, so was culled ) - you must be carefull assuming that MRO is heading south, and the East is to the right. This could be an ascending observation where the geometry would be inverted.

Doug

Oh - I agree with that point, we don't know if the parachute deployed. However, if it did, it's going to be very big, very bright and very obvious indeed. You would find it easily with HiRISE. There wont be an 'is that the parachute' sort of moment - it'll be 'that IS the parachute'. I was saying, in response to 'unless the parachute landed on top of it' that there's no way the parachute would be a not-obvious object.

If the situation arises when we've got the full ellipse in HiRISE and there's no Parachute and backshell, then the failure mode has to be backed up to between cruise stage sep, and chute deployment. i.e. the entry process.

Doug

Remember, the MPL lander dropped away from the backshell and chute before landing. It would have to be a quite exceptional coincidence for either, the parachute to land right on top of the lander, or, the landing process to work fine until the lander was due to separate and then fail. Also, the parachute should be much much brighter than that. Even pathfinders 10+ year old parachute is whiter than white to HiRISE
Doug

Stu and I got into full on ESA ranting mode in the pub

All credit really has to go to Stu for pulling together an excellent astronomy society - friendly, interested etc. Without a proper audience, I would essentially be a mad person in front of an empty room going 'Look, MARS'.

It's parachute would.

Certainly not me - I was expecting it to take all weekend

Doug

That will be one of the steps taken by my server management guys who did a swathe of server security steps after the server was in our hands, I would imagine.

Doug

Page process times show on the bottom of the admin section. On the old server, anything from 0.25 to 1.5s or more was common. Now it's in the 0.02s area. The performance restriction now is actually ping times to and from Europe for me If you're US, and especially west coast US - you're going to have a very fast server

Doug

Yup - if you can post, you're on the new site. The old one now has a closed message.

Well - the transfer is done. Currently, the DNS hasn't refreshed to my ISP yet - so I'm viewing via a proxy that uses a path that has got the new pointing right. I can't reliably test the site in full until I can navigate 'naively' but I think everything should just about be working.

Doug

Ahh - didn't spot the Xray ref - can't imagine it being exoplanetary if it's that.

Doug

Finally - I found an image of the Phoenix SSI with, I presume, two spare MER CCD's inside

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/2156.pdf

It's sprouted a big lump on top of the white cylinder MPF and MPL design, due, I presume, to the use of two CCDs instead of one.

Doug

This one's a few decades old. A really really REALLY badly done coat of blue paint is the developers idea of improving a building that should have been demolished years ago.