Cassini is why I took the old mer.rlproject.com URL and turned it into UMSF. And we all know how the story goes from there

No - the Hematite ridge really is a brighter tone of rock - it's clearly visible in HiRISE and CTX as well as from the surface.

I had a little bit of freedom targetting the left-most image of the upper tier, so I managed to stretch it out beyond our normal 30 degree overlap to try and get all of Mt Sharp in. I think it actually gets the entire horizon without getting cut off anywhere

Here's the field as calculated by Astrometry.net
( http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1693971#annotated )

Percussive drilling was pretty much off the table before the current drill issues arose - so that's not really a consideration. Rotary only drilling was planned when the problem with the feed first arose (and that was my 7th training shift on ECam - Sol 1536

I've not seen specifics of the drill testing they've been doing with the test-bed - but I've heard good things about their results. The fact that we're now 7.5 months after the drill anomaly occurred and only just beginning to see work arounds being discussed for use on Mars should give you some idea of how much care, diligence and attention is being paid to this. Depending on your value of 'risky' - I wouldn't say they were planning anything that puts the vehicle or other functional instruments at 'risk'.

(see this old press release - https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/news/curiosity-ro...-hiatus&s=2 )

Mainly Paolo uses Meshlab on his iPad because it's about 100x faster than the 15 year old rover planner workstations

You mean the images with a SeqID of TRAV00NNN in them? They could sort of be used as an analogue for drive distance - but the step between them can vary

Yes, it does

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Watchlist

Last tactical shift is this Friday but I think the last drive will be Wednesday to allow us time to recover if something goes wrong with that drive, before conjunction starts.. First tactical shift afterwards is Monday Aug 7th, planning Sol 1780

I believe we’re expecting a BIG dump from MRO on the Friday before we start planning again.

I think you’re describing Wikipedia. The reference section of a Wiki page is a superb resource.

I.e.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Lakes

There's a few more frames down - it should now be a complete 360 with no trimmed horizon anywhere

Trying an upper tier again in Sol 1739 plan......fingers crossed I get all the things this time.

Yeahhhh....my bad on cutting that tiny piece off Mt Sharp with the upper tier. Couldn't convince myself I could still get all of VRR if I nudged it any more left. Fingers crossed I can try again on Monday.

Europa? No way it'll survive that far from the Sun and that sort of radiation dose. It really is Adiona, or Ceres. That's honestly all the options.

No - it latched into place, it can't go back.

That's called doing an Upper Tier.....we try to convince the science team to let us (ECAM) do it quite often....but realistically we only get to do it when they need it for targeting other imaging. Fear not.... first stop on the VRR imaging campaign is coming up in a few more drives and we'll be doing one then.

(Edit... as if by MAGIC... https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...88M_&s=1726 )

A fix is underway. Pipeline issues.

Once you've gone Maki - you can't go back.

So it's exceptionally rare to manually set exposure times for Navcam/Hazcam. In 29 sols of MSL ECAM planning I've delivered 224 sequences that have taken a total of 1369 images...and I've never done it.

What happens is that it starts with an average seeded exposure time - and if there's not enough photons on it ( or too many ) it alters the exposure time and tries again. It's rare for it to take more than one or two iterations to get it right. Then, every image taken after that, until the rover goes for a nap, starts with the previous exposure time as its seed. Typically - that means it takes one or two goes to get the first frame, and the rest run off without having to refine it - especially with sequences like this that are pointing the same. There's also the fact we've got 12 bits of depth - so even a poorly exposed image (due to rover parts / glinting / sun in frame etc ) can typically be stretched into usefulness.

Sadly - when the raw JPGs are stretched, and from EDRs not RADs, then it's hard to see what's going on in this particular instance - but there's definitely something going on.

May your retirement be long, happy, and well georeferenced

So - propeller based drones can work on Mars ( and one is proposed to accompany the 2020 rover ) . https://mars.nasa.gov/news/helicopter-could...for-mars-rovers

Winged drones have been proposed ( see the ARES scout proposal ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_Region...onmental_Survey

The balloons of the kind used for EDL are far far too heavy to be used for lift. Even bespoke balloons are pretty marginal on performance, but they are possible. http://www.gaerospace.com/wp-content/uploa...ars-Aerobot.pdf

The MER imagery doesn't have any sort of target tag in its filename. It does, however, have a Sequence ID ( just like MSL )

What Mike's doing with Midnight Planets is cross referencing those Seq IDs for MER with the Pancam database that has target names often in the sequence description.

No such database currently exists for MSL.

These images are from my first solo shift as ECam Uplink lead on Opportunity. Sequences p1961, p1962 and p1963 were lovingly hand crafted.....I even dropped the center 3 frames a few degrees from the usual drive direction 5x1 pointing to get a little more valley in there.

I can't even begin to put into words how it feels to go from founding this place 13 years ago, to working at JPL 7 years ago, to starting ECAM on MSL last year, and now on Opportunity this weeks.

It's one hell of a journey, in many many ways

There are many old spacecraft with great reaction wheels still working fine. But there must have been some batch - some particular hardware version rev that has hit Kepler and Dawn.

So the Phobos caching thing......I see the attraction - but that costs a LOT of delta-V above just entering LMO, especially if you're not launching from an equatorial site..... and rendezvous with Phobos is probably trickier than just an LMO rendezvous . Just park all your samples in a sun sync polar orbit and picking them all up even with crew would be easier than having to rendezvous with and land on Phobos to collect them

(Just pitched Phobos cache as an idea to a JPL mission designer and traj analyst)