MGS vs MODY and MEX
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/19/

MGS to MODY was 90km (but I'm sure closer passes occur) - and MGS to MEX was 250

Oh BOY would I love to see HiRISE pull that off.

Doug

I'm not playing down COROT...it's great - but saying that the discovery of X Jupiter mass planets is a surpise is about as surprising as the MER APXS finding a strong Fe signal on Mars. It's a great sign that everything's workign great, but going on what they hinted at at Europlanet - I was expecting a new type of discovery, not just a new discovery of a planet. 'On Course' - 'Performing Well' - those are appropriate phrases here. It'd be a surprise if it HADN'T detected planets like this.

Doug

"COROT surprises a year after launch"

That's not surprising - that's what we expected.

DOug

It's simple. The Enceladus plumes are indeed, a very interesting feature. Titan is an interesting world. It's not even a contest in my eyes. Sadly, my cheque book isn't big enough.

Doug

I wouldn't. There is no certainty that ExoMars will fly. Offer relay with available assets, sure, but don't spend many hundreds of millions of dollars to support a mission that might not fly, and if it doesn't, may well not work. There's being an international partner...and there's going out on a limb.

MSR may be expensive, but MSO and two AFL's don't come cheap either. There will be the '11 orbiter, MRO, MODY and MEX ( with decreasing likelyhood of still being active from left to right ) for ExoMars relay.

Doug

'Doug's Inbox'

Doug

This is indeed, exactly what they are planning. This is the best slope for now - they plan to move again later on.

Doug

Yeah - the maths of this makes the likelihood of a particle of that size, traveling fast enough to do that damage very very small.

Doug

I've got to do some stuff with my crap low res MER model ( as seen on MMB ) in 3ds max. It's not Inverse-Kinematic, but I can move stuff about appropriately and try and drive it over something, see what happens.

Doug

That bit refers to what I can only describe as the differential between the two sides which keeps the deck comparatively flat over lumpy terrain. It doesn't really count here as the two sides are going down a similar slope so the deck will be on the same slope.

Doug

The distances involved between wheels are detailed here - http://hobbiton.thisside.net/rovermanual/

Doug

As I see it - it'll be a nice 'pause' till Phoenix has fninshed it's Primary mission

Doug

Well - there is more to come from driving a little further I would have thought - they're not 'over' the edge yet, nor are the front wheels near the bottom.

It may be that they're simply declaring a new site to pause for a sol or two, survey, and plan the next drive. 13.7 degrees will be a big help for now - it'll pop us back away from the <240 zone for a few sols.

I was trying to think of interesting names. Pardo Ridge is a feature on Elephant Island, where the bulk of Shackleton's Endurance expedition had to hold out while Shackleton and a few others sailed for South Georgia in the James Caird to seek rescue.

Captin Louis Pardo was the captain of the Yelcho - the vessel Shackleton used in his fourth attempt to get back to Elephant Island.

Yeah - I've been reading Worsley's diary again. WH3 isn't really a ridge, but Pardo Pan has a ring about it!

Doug

Yup -I have a THEMIS image of the day item on my dashboard using webclip on OSX.

You have a point about the sustainability. Perhaps it's because the initial 'wow' isn't actually at the science or the image per se - but the capability inferred by the images - the demonstrated ability of the instrument. Once that 'wow - 30cm' or 'wow - 5000 pixels across' has died down - it's hard to find much to be excited about if you're not trained to know what you're looking at.

There are odd-balls to that pattern, you can always get a 'wow - a lander seen from orbit' or 'wow - the Earth!' moment. But generally, I don't think any ammount of outreach effort could maintain a laymans interest in instruments like HiRISE, CTX, THEMIS etc.

What I think I WOULD return to day after day is daily MARCI maps in the way I regularly check into the MODIS rapid response page to see how the UK's looking most days. The MARCI weather reports are a great treat in that regard - nice to see that instrument getting 'out' a little more.

A comparative analysis between MER, Cassini, SOHO, MRO and other missions website stats would be an interesting statistic. I may try and pull together forum-view stats for UMSF to see if the 'traffic' to each section varies in an obvious event-by-event way.

Doug

If the DEM's make it out - I'll do HD animations of them as flyarounds. I'd love to - but that data isn't on the HiRISE PDS 'to do ' list unfortunately.

Doug

But surely a meteorite fragment that small would cool in the 'flight' phase?

Doug

Someone could figure out the solar elevation at X O'clock, at the time of a sundial image, and establish rover tilt through that. Otherwise, the only other tilt measurement is from the database which Mike pulls out for MMB.

Doug

You don't need a banzai computer to use the IAS viewer (at least, I don't think you do) - just a wider pipe

Doug

No one can. That's the problem. Until someone comes out with a 20,000 x 120,000 pixel projector. Before the advent of the viewer, I tried to download and view these things in full res - and I got a little insight into just how hard it must be to process these things - let alone have an informative web-page for each one.

They do show interesting snippets with a few of them, and we've had four rounds of science output ( http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/sim/ ) which include not only what you're talking about but scientific discourse as well. Missions can't maintain high profiles for ever - it's impossible. Spirit and Opportunity are not high profile at the moment. The effort ( i.e. money ) involved in maintaining an ammount of outreach material like that simply isn't available. I wish it were - but it isn't.

There is so much data that it's going to take decades for it to be appreciated. Wihtout broadband, I'd say it's impossible to appreciate it at all - it's just a symptom of the instrument. The only way to enjoy it is via the IAS Viewer which makes every image brilliantly accesable for anyone with a reasonably good connection. Truthfully, I don't think they can do any more than that. Without that, you're only ever going to get 1% of the picture - metaphorically and literally - and to use it, you've got to have broadband - or extreme patience.

Doug

We've discussed that about - ooo -18,000 times? The rover can't drive in any way that would be conducive to dust removal -it's not a sports car. Rockey terrain might cause some jarring that might shuffle some around - but there's no record in 1300 odd sols of operations whereby driving in any way has cleared dust. You need good strong winds.

Doug

And bonus points if it involves anything on Youtube.

Bloody hell!

Looks like a line of rock - we've seen lots of little peak's running along the edges of the pave like rock.

Doug

From there
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/re...23P1302L0M1.JPG
to there
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/re...23P1314L0M1.JPG

I make it 6.1ish degrees of tilt.

(52 of 1024 pixels covering 120 degrees)

Of note - we're going down backwards. I presume this is because it's more controlled to decend with the broken wheel trailing, and the PCMA will not shadow across the whole array

Doug

In this field - they're one and the same - STFC is where the funding for such a thing would come from ( Science and Technology Funding Council - although I remember it as Swindon Town Football Club, as the offices are in Swindon) I would have thought. There might be other pathways from other sources, but I can't see them being sufficiently large for a project like this.

Doug