Currently it's Mid Southern Hemisphere Summer - the sun is 85.5 degrees above the horizon at noon for Spirit.

100 sols from now - that figure will be 74 degrees and it will be Early Autumn
200 sols from now - 56 degrees, Mid Autumn
300 sols from now - 50 degrees, Early Winter
400 sols from now - 60 degrees, Mid Winter
500 sols from now - 81 degrees - Early Spring.

Basically it's the 150 to 450 sol's in the future period that will be the worst of it

That's all using the mars24 applet - our resident Purveyor of Whr's might be able to do a better job

Doug

Off topic posts from after 30 October moved to new thread:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4837

Alan

To bring this topic back to life and answer the orig question....

With my new Dell 2407WFP HC

It's soooooo nice.

Doug

We had months and months of planning when it came to the drive to McCool hill last winter - but we didn't make it because of what Mars threw at us. And yes - the plan may have been to move on 6 months later...6 months ago - BUT - that was before a near 3 month hiatus because of the global dust storm.

Spirit can not traverse steep slopes anymore. There isn't anywhere with a lot of gentle slope all in the same direction - apart from McCool hill, and we know what happened last time we tried to get there.

The reason it had a productive winter in its first year was because it never had less than 300 Whrs - enough for all the housekeeping plus driving and science. Second time around, it dropped to less than 250 and only had 5 wheel drive - enough for housekeeping and...that's about it. Even if they HAD made it to McCool hill, they wouldn't have been able to climb it in any way - it's unlikely they would have had enough power to even trundle around the gentle slopes at the bottom of the hill.

There are some small hillocks to the south - including the odd interesting one....but if you set out for them NOW - with the potential for Tyrone like sand traps on route - you would run a very large risk of getting stuck out on flat terrain somewhere south of Home Plate and dying because of a lack of slope. 10-20m/sol is all you can expect - and even when 'sprinting' one can typically expect one sol in two or three to be a driving sol.

From a scientific persepctive - yes - the terrain to the South looks interesting, but I would have though the prudent option from the bigger-picture persepctive is to stay comparatively local this winter, and, if we have a healthy vehicle next spring, set out south at that point. Realistically - we've barely started exploring home plate itself. There's many months of science to be done here before electing to move off.

Doug

I'm off to Silverstone race circuit on Sunday - looking forward to 23 degrees with a breeze....just perfect.

Beautiful work Bjorn!

Just for fun I used it as a bump map in Photoshop - I figure if it produces something that looks slightly realistic, it must be a good DEM.

Doug

The UK spent most of the summer 6ft under water - it's been an odd year.

Doug

Not how..... why?

Doug

What you need is to deinterlace.

For this image:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/N00090982.jpg

Filter > Video > De-Interlace > Even Fields and Interpolation.

Not perfect, but it does the job.

Doug

I love the occasional 'Q'n'A - the best of....' moment. Just the very mention of 'dinosaur guts' brought a smile to my face

Doug

Don't down on the PR - just be realistic on a proposed budget. Great lessons to learn, but one of those lessons is realistic budgeting


Doug

I didn't say Blimey, but I did say something when seing images like this for the first time:

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/s...full-A093R1.jpg

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/press/s...-rim-A074R1.jpg



Doug

No - Hermes was the only proposal, but it was canned.

Doug

We've had cleaning events right where we are now, just before the dust storm. There's not much point in trying to out-guess Mars when it comes to cleaning events. Having confidence in one particular slope or orientation to provide cleaning just is not wise. Nor is the presumption that between now and winter, we can make it half a km south over uncertain terrain. It would be far more sensible to continue exploring home plate for now, and use any one of the local north facing slopes that are part of, or are around Home Plate - perhaps even the Pitchers mound

Doug

APOD : "Victoria Crater is the largest crater that either Martian rover has come across during their explorations."

Err....Gusev?

Doug

Ahhhhhhh - 16 deg C,clouds, occasional showers...very British. Loving it

Doug

Beagle 2's budget is rumoured to have been something like 3 to 5 times that much, and even at that price, significantly lower than it should have been.

Doug

It couldn't look more like Beagle 2 (physically, or programmatically) if it tried.

You need to put a 0 on the end of that $20M to make it work.

Doug

It's just on the NNE rim of Gusev - I've looked for MOC / HiRISE / CTX imagery but no luck.

Doug

The plan was always the far side of Duck Bay. I've never seen anything to suggest that the choice of the best place to enter the crater has changed just because there has been a delay.

Doug

It's not a particularly effective lens cover - it's not a good seal.

Doug

There's been a hiatus in raw's because of solar conjunction.

Doug

Got a desktop PC that's been sat on the floor for > a month? Go and look at it's PSU exhaust fan. FILTHY.

Doug

My TV screen is vertical...and the dust doesn't fall of. Nor will it fall off if I shake it. Same would probably be true of the rovers.

The answers are RTG's when you can use them - and potentially electrostatic methods when you can't - which have no moving parts at all

Doug

And at 6 mbar? That's the crucial point. You can mix all sorts of things with water to change the boiling point and freezing point - H2O2 is one of the more unpleasent ways of doing it - particularly on the UV soaked surface of Mars.

Doug

Horn tooting MORE than justified - it's a brilliant way of showing what's going on. Those dim-suns (sounds like a tasty dish) combined with the dim-skies previously done - they're just face-slappingly good at getting across how much the situation sucks.

Doug