ISS will be more accurate. The Shuttle is the one that's adjusting its orbit all the time to do the rendezvous - ISS will not have changed it's orbit much. BUT - for insurance - be out early

Doug

You want to see the reaction when I'm out the front of our house waiting for an Iridium flare.

Two drunkish louts walk past "what you looking at".
I check my watch - about 35s to go "Wait 35 seconds and you'll see!"
"Where?"
I point at about 50 degrees Elev - SSW. "Right there"
And BANG on time - a -8 iridium flare.

"WOAH - that's FREAKY! It's like a UFO or something - oh - where did it go?"

They probably went to the pub and told the other drinkers about the wierd guy practicing witchcraft.



Doug

I was hoping to see Orbiter + ET on Friday night - but cloud and mist ruled it out.

I did see the Orbiter last night though - a minute after midnight- very bright- certainly Mag -2

I know just how Alan feels - I had £5000 to do a complete IT overhaul at work - nightmare!



Doug

It's slap bang in the middle of the Burns Cliff panorama - I think that says everything really. Cliff.


Doug

Doesn't stop you doing a nodding-spacecraft manouver to try and grab one with a push broom (i.e. MOC WA for MER etc) - I wonder if CTX could have a go this time around...spacecraft geometry is probably the limiting factor.

Doug

What they've done is put the " " around the wrong word...it should be Mars rover "finds" puddles.



Doug

He (3488) did. For some reason he wanted to delete all his posts and leave.

Doug

Yeah - very bad forum conduct that - makes people look like nutters who've replied to nothing - I've PM'd 3488 and asked him to stop doing it.

Cheers

Doug

"on a Martian crater floor"

A complete fabrication!! - it's on a massively steep slope. They claim that the features are both very very flat, but also without features to identify topography. That's self contradictory. We're seen these features all over the place - we've driven over them, it's an accumulation of dust.

I wonder why it's going in the IEEE journal - an engineering journal - instead of, say, Science or Nature? Perhaps because they would laugh at it.

Doug

Actually - yeah - it wasn't too bad. The theatre was a similar size to the B'ham one - and the middle bank of seats was probably half full and a few stragglers on each 'flank' of seats.

Doug

Ahh - were you the chap I met in the Imax foyer between the two showings?

Doug

If we had a microphone at Victoria - I think you would hear a V8 rumble.

Doug

That's the flaw in this debate. What is intrigue, what is interesting etc. The less we know about something (up to a point) , the more intriguing it becomes. The Columbia Hills were a point of intrigue when we landed, then they became interesting after we arrived.

Ceres is certainly full of intrigue right now - with the tiny HST images just saying "look - I could be all sorts of things - come see". Does that intrigue defy the realty of what may be an uniteresting world - or can any world not yet explored be considered uninteresting.

It's an interesting issue...intruigingly.

Doug

I can't think of a single body in the solar system that I'd find boring.

Doug

I thought this was rather cool - the two Gusev images in the new HiRISE website - and the old girl moved for us

Doug

Just to make your job harder

If you drag the app to the dock in OSX - it's the cat-on-mars picture when loaded, but typically is programming type logo when not running.

command-W to close tabs would be cool

Doug

er.

wow.




insert expletives here >


Doug

I was at the RIAT at Fairford in '93 when the Mig 29's crashed Sounds like a common thing

AND - when we flew back from Malaga in October '05 - the Antonov 225 was parked on the stand at East Midlands Airport - taxied straight past it

Doug

Ahh - suddenly it all becomes clear(er) - cheers Mike

Doug

Here's one for you Mike - I get bayer filters - and I get the normal way of doing filtered obs. How do you set up a CCD to do single shot colour but ALSO do filtered obs as well? Is it like a hybrid bayer filter that has an R, a B but only one G with what would be the 'other' G as a clear for use with filters? (That's a complete and utter guess)

Doug

This skycrane/decent stage debate is ending. Now. We've had it before. We're going in circles. Stop. Now. This is a thread for questions about MSL's EDL - not the semantics of naming.

Multiple posts deleted.

Doug

I would hope that the optics would be orientated so that they would be well out of the way of any rocket exhaust at fly-away.

Doug

Yeah - that what I said.



Cough ahem oops well spotted.


Doug

There's a few questions that I think I can do a bit of an answer about for now:

Lots of the same question - full scale test of the whole thing. That's not even possible on Earth - that's what makes landing on Mars so hard - you can't practice. You can try and do a chute deployment on Earth using low wind speed at 1000 mbar - similar dynamic pressure to deploying on Mars - but it's not exactly the same. There was a RFP for a large rig to simulate the decent stage from which they would hang a mobility model to test software and the physical process ot touchdown - including slopes. You can test fire engines - you can simulate sloshing or other harmonic issues with pressurised water - but there's no way to simulate the whole thing...you just test systems as best you can - the simulate the system of systems virtually. VKG, MPF, MPL, MER, PHX - none had a full up system test of everything - because you just can't do it here.

MARDI movie will be downlinked.....after landing. Product downlink priorities for data to be taken in three years time - that's a bit premature isn't it I'm sure it will be something of a priority from a EPO perspective - but it'll be a big data product so it may take some time.

EDL comms will be to MRO and - if it's still around - Odyssey as well I would have thought - the same as Phoenix.

And here's the great thing about UHF, MRO and MSL ( and I'm hoping a DESCANO report on this - and the Phoenix one - will happen )

MER2Ody is 128k - or 256k if it's a good pass - typically 10-15 minutes - 50 to 150 Mbits in a pass.

MSL2MRO can be up to 2048k - shorter on average than MER passes with Odyssey - but still potentially up to 1000 Mbits or more in a pass.

Doug