The moment the DEM's are out and about and I can get them in to 3ds max....

Doug

Don't worry - it's not going to happen here.

Doug

Trying to play devils advocate here - how does that tie in with the fact that heading south (up section) the spherules got smaller and smaller and almost dissappeared - and then reappeared in huge quantities on the Victoria annulus?

And to be fair - the MER team have not gone "here are concretions - bingo - water" - there are more slices to the evidence pie than that ( Jarosite, Vugs, Sulphates predicted by Burns, Small scale cross bedding)

If you go to a place with an extensive prediction ready to test - then surely you're going to be prone to a biased interpretation of what happened? Alternatively - what obvious tests do you have in mind?

Doug
(Not a geologist, just playing devils advocate )

Just drop the cash straight into it.

Wish I could help more with ref. material - but with the KSC website you've got all there is really.

These may help - images taken by the rovers themselves :
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...HEP1152L0M1.JPG

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...lse_color6.html ( left column, half way down)

Doug

Not that far from their second Martian Birthday either.

Doug

I'm reminded of the cliff-top scene from The Big Lebowski

Doug

Give them a week or two more - and Messenger will outstrip VEX very easily.

Doug

Yes - all Mars scout orbiters have to have the UHF relay capacity.

Doug

Can we calm down the witch hunt please. We know they're going to release it all at some point ( look at the data of the Earth flyby - stunningly published in ful ) - give them time.

Doug

It's just one of those things that gets me worked up. can see why the word blogger would get used ( there isn't really a noun for a forum participant ) - but not blog to desribe the place - it's just wrong....sick and wrong. Like small dogs being dressed up in small clothes. Just wrong.

Doug

I think we'll be having a new one.

Problem is - all of those temperatures ( less so for the array temp - but certainly for the camera temp ) are going to be contributed to, significantly I would have thought, by the thermal conductivity from the WEB or nearby electronics. If that solar array temp sensor is in the centre section, then it's basically sat on top of the majority of the electroncis. I know the WEB is insultation - but heat still gets out. Ditto the hazcam temps - the electronics of the camera itself will have a contributory effect I would have thought. There's not quite enough info to know just how much of that is rover and how much of it is Mars. Very cool graphs - but not sure how much to read into it.


Doug

http://www.planetary.org/blog
Blog

http://www.badastronomy.com
Blog

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com
Discussion Forum

The word Blog seems to be deployed for anything involving words and a the internet, and that is incorrect. A blog is something very specific and more specifically not a forum. A blog is the writings of one person (or their guest contributors) with or without comments in response. A forum is a group discussion.

Now go and submit everything Emily and Phil have ever written

Sorry - rant over.

I was thinking more the princples of comedy with pies and planks from Monty Python
http://youtube.com/watch?v=seIdHOrUNSs

On a serious note - after than NOAA accident a couple of years back - this is a bad thing to happen

Doug

Dr Parker...take a bow


Doug

Always sad to see a popular educator go Can someone familiar with UK and US culture give me an analogy - sounds like a Johnny Ball / Heinz Wolf type character - the sort of people who put science in my brain...and I still can't get it out.

Doug

I've got the saturn back-lit image at work.
A picture taken by Piers Sellers of the UK on my Macbook
And one of my composites of Earth from the Galileo E2 flypast on my PC at home.

Doug

The design is to not land upside down. MSL isn't going to land upside down for instance.

Doug

I used OpenEV on my PC for viewing full JP2's that I've downloaded in the past - but now I can't really see the point as the IAS viewer does everything.

Doug

Great to see the layering of two craters on two different planets look so similar - how do they compare in size? Looks like it could be a couple of orders of magnitude!

Doug

Good job - your forum title has been appropriately adjusted

Doug

Courtesy of one member in particular - this thread was beginning to go a bit 'fringe'. That member is getting a private message and a few posts that made no sense without his contribution have been culled also. Meanwhile - I think the thread should continue as a place to continue to pool (pun intended) other evidence that counters the tabloid sensationalism we've seen.

A good place to start - the verbose mini-TES coverage of this place - including one survey from the Endurance West pan position that mapped temperatures of Burns cliff to be about 6 deg C.

Doug

Sounds like your advocating a progam of only very safe missions, or you want to somehow ban the unexpected. From time to time you have to try something extraordinary or you don't progress anywhere.

The GPB team didn't know there would be terrible noise before they started, the Genesis team didn't know the capsule would crash, the DI team didn't know the ejecta would obscure the crater so badly, etc etc etc. I agree that where possible, misions should use tried and tested technology - but someone still has to go and try the new technology (DS1 w.r.t. Dawn especially) - and in the case of some missions - like GPB - there isn't going to be any way to test the new technology without just getting on with it and doing it. You do the studies, you look at the engineering, you get the best brains in the world onto the problem and they come out and say "This should work - let's do it" - and in that respect, GPB is perhaps no different to, say, Stardust. Something comes along that we didn't forsee for one mission but not another and suddenly ones a complete and utter failure and ones a astonishing science result.

Short of predicting the future, I'm not sure how you can avoid that. You can make sure that all those studies are done to the Nth degree, every option studies, every engineering challenge investigated, but there will be things that you can not predict or could not forsee in every mission. It's a pity that GPB is an expensive case in point - but no one went out to spend that money with the intention of producing noisy data that would be no good.

Doug

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6738585.stm

Vented bags get tested.

Pity they were not docking in a few more hours - another beautiful pass here in Leicester - mag -2 -2.5ish

Doug