Long before UMSF, there was a Beagle 2 Yahoo group I formed - just as a clearing house for info about a mission that was to be controlled just a few miles from where I lived at the time.

Frankly - MER was barely on my radar. When we never heard from Beagle...I was so disappointed - gutted beyond words. I'd even popped a good luck Christmas card under the door of Mission Control the night of landing.

To now know that it made it all the way to the ground is just astonishing. I was skeptical it had made it that far - especially with the absence of a parachute in MOC imagery ( turns out a MOC image in '04 was right over that spot...but the downlink got corrupted )

Without Beagle - there would have been no UMSF, and I wouldn't have ended up where I am today.

Wherever you are, Prof Pillinger..... thank you. You can be damned proud of what Britain did back in 2003.

I wouldn't. Images will show up when they show up. There's really very little point in try to guess when it'll happen.

It was very much the case for Vesta approach. Dawn doesn't operate an image policy like MER, MSL and Cassini.

Discussion already started here : http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7962

I think the somewhat tongue in cheek pronunciation comment was regarding the inclusion or exclusion of the prefix 'dwarf'

Nothing to do with institutional inertia.

Instruments of this complexity require lengthy lead times, and have significant and complex requirements of the vehicle.

And for the past month or so - without the use of flash memory.

Extraordinary.

That was the exact point I was making.

That's what I got from it as well....the definition of 'reach Mars' is somewhat limited in scope. The article says " the big burn to slow down and hit the Martian bull's-eye—as in the Hohmann scenario—is done away with" ... well, direct landings have no such burn, so there's no benefit there whatsoever.

Moreover "Although launch and cruise costs remain the same...." and "A straight shot with abrupt braking at Mars takes about six months whereas a trip relying on ballistic capture would take an additional several months" are at odds with one another.

MAVEN launched on the cheapest LV available - an Atlas V 401 which had more than enough performance to deliver MAVEN and the fuel for a 'traditional' MOI. Saving a few hundreds lbs of MOI fuel would have saved nothing in launch costs, and added costs for extended cruise operations. The same was basically true of MGS, MRO, MEX and Odyssey. Assuming a transition to a cheaper Falcon 9 for similarly sized missions in the future...it has even more performance to spare than the Atlas V 401.

Really not sure how applicable this is to anything but a very specific kind of mission...and one we've not actually needed yet.

There are at least two HiRISE images that cover the MPF lander - and one even got it in color ( and so is thus actually 3 images! )

The backshell and parachute as well as the landers are visible from both Viking missions, now 37 years old.

Your suggestion that the piece we see is the only piece tall enough to get dust blown off it....

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA02652.jpg

The piece of airbag to the -Y side of the -X petal is SIGNIFICANTLY larger and taller than the piece by the +Y petal.

The reason that one piece stands out in HiRISE is because of the metallic foil tangled up in that piece of airbag.

I believe a similar piece is tangled up off the end of the +X petal - but one would need to be observing at a different time of day to get a glint off that ( and due to orbital mechanics, that's unlikely ).

What I find odd in this is that you can not really see any evidence of the +x and -x petals and airbags. ( The rover was deployed from the +y petal, the ASI boom deployed on the +X petal. If you can't see the ASI boom or rover ramps - you're looking at the -X petal.)

But it certainly is not 'exactly the same orbital plane as us'

The Earth's orbital inclination is zero. Changing inclination to 0.76 degrees would require a delta V of about 0.4km/sec

Even if there were one scheduled on the PSA - I'm afraid I wouldn't trust it. It'll show up when it shows up. If I saw anything on the PSA before the middle of next year - I would be pleasantly surprised.

Yes.

They have not. Honestly - I'm not expecting anything from OSIRIS apart from perhaps one Philae-on-the-ground image between now and the first PSA release in >6 months time.

Me to. But given the time I had to make it - that was never gonna happen.

It happens. Sometimes there are pipeline burps and old images appear. Not every image that appears in Exploratorium is 'new'

Only way to be sure is to check the site ID ( in that image it's 0000... currently Opportunity is at CJL1 )

Or take the file name and run it thru something like this : http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/html/filenames_ltst.htm

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportunity/pancam/2004-01-25/1P128287268EFF0000P2303L2M1.JPG

That's an image from Sol 1. Landing day. It's airbag scrape marks in the dirt.

Look at the date on the URL. 2004-01-25
2004.

It's a single frame from this Mosaic
http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press/opp...stcard_part.jpg

'Reliable as heck'

3800+ Sols into a 90 sol mission despite the harsh temperature cycles and radiation environment on Mars?

I would call that the epitome of 'Reliable as heck'

AOS

24, 25, 45 and 34 are all waiting for Hayabusa 2

From what I can see in the extended details - they're all ready to listen at 8.426 Ghz (X-Band) with I think 16kbps downlink and and 34 & 45 ready to uplink at 15.6 bps.

(15 is currently getting data from GeoTail, 43 Rosetta and 35 MRO and Mars Odyssey - updates are every 5 seconds)

DSN Now should have AOS later.... 4 antennas are ready and waiting for it

http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html