RPIF? Regional Planetary Image Facility. NASA used to archive all it's planetary data in multiple RPIF's around the US and the rest of the World ( 8 outside the US, 10 in the US) - now they're maintained more than
UCL? University College London...just next to Euston Station.

As soon as I discovered that the UK had an RPIF I got in touch - Peter Grindrod is the guy at UCL. He was great - 'Come on down' - so I did.

I could not believe it. Pictures tell the story best..

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/RPIF/

That's a tiny tiny subset of what this place has got. Magellan mosaics by the hundred. Early Viking mosaics..the same. Lunar Orbiter images - thousands of them. Hycon (I think) images, stacked in filing cabinets like toilet-rolls on a supermarket shelf. Opened a cupboard of Viking orbiter images - dozens of rolls of negatives...and there were 4 cupboards full. I took a full 23 CD set of the Galileo SSI data set away with me to be returned whenever I get the chance. I hardly touched the place... journals by the thousand - it's just extraordinary. Peter couldn't have been more helpfull - even gave me an LPSC '07 bag to take the CD's away in... If you like data, if you like being amazed..find out if there's an RPIF near you...and GO.

You might end up with your desk loooking like this

I'm now having a hack at the Earth 2 1 flyby imagery which Emily flagged up as interesting. It's not easy though - bad fringing between filters (they went R, IR, G, IR, V - so there's quite a lot of movement between filters) - and I'm only doing one set every hour of the sequence otherwise I'll be here till Juno launches doing it.

Some of the data, however, lacks..er.. 'integrity'. The Earth 1 flyby data is good. The Earth 2 flyby data is dreadfull. Dropouts for almost all the closest data - slowly getting better towards the end of the imaging sequence. A few 'choice' chunks

Indeed - to quote Pete Theisinger from the Jan '04 days "All our truths are temporary" - something like that.

A drive to a little crater is just that...a drive to a little crater. When they get there they might go "right - Duck Bay.." or "Oo - whats this" or "Let's go East more".

There is a bigger picture plan in place obviously - but as to day to day decisions, don't bother predicting beyond what the tracking database says, it's a waste of time

Doug

What would you leave behind instead? Lunar samples? Supplies? Astronauts?

The ambiguity is in the fact that a scientist is saying one thing and an engineer the other

PERHAPS...the answer is that we're ALL right. It's fast winds all right, clearing the lighter dust, and depositing heavier dark sand as well. Consider El-Dorado....where was the dust there....none to be found...just dark sand. You need stronger winds to carry that stuff. But stronger winds will get rid of dust as well.

Just a thought.

Doug

Magnetic field, if any, might have an effect.

What you're saying is that if the planets orbital mechanics were such that it would have full-circle-polar region, then the planet would have a full circle polar region

Doug

FWTools does that perfectly with the JP2's if you can't wait for HiViwe Phil.

I wasn't able to attend sadly, but I was at the Sky at Night's 50th Anniv party on Tuesday where Chris, Sir Patrick and Jane Fletcher (Series Producer) got their short listing certificates and awards - all were clearly touched, particularly Sir Patrick as Sir A.C.C is a friend of his.

Doug

If it makes it home without any - it'll be Apollo 13.... It would be Apollo 11 if it actually has some samples

Just a bit of fun

Whereas personally, I hate zoomify. It's slow, painfull, useless if you want to look at a large area at full res. I would rather they focused on getting the full size images out so I can look at as much or little of it as I want to. The JP2's are a product of the workflow - the Zoomify stuff involves further work over and above that.

You have to remember that HiView - the online app for viewing the images at full res in a slightly zoomify way - is a work in progress and will essentially provide what you're talking about when it's finished.

Just to fill up this thread appropriately - from the newly released Hayabusa data

Bingo. If it took 22 months driving along the dunes to cover 6km - it's going to be 40-50-60 months to get anywhere near it - and we KNOW that drive motors fail on these things. Fancy dune-surfing with only 5 wheel drive? You're going nowhere if that happens in the typical Meridiani dune field - especially when you have to cross all the dunes instead of riding between them. The software doesn't let the rover fly - it simply lets it know when it's getting stuck. And it would get stuck....a LOT...and it also makes driving quite slow.

Heading toward Big crater, across very navigation unfriendly terrrain, with the likely outcome being a stuck rover in the middle of absolutely nowhere....that would be quite irrational. Lets see how we do with Victoria ( and we're talking multiple years imho ) - if we still have mobility once we're done with VIctoria ( and it may only be limited mobility by that time ) - then the safe option is to revisit and study more closely the terrain we know to contain good science but didn't have the time to visit previously.

But all this is pure conjectue - personally, I believe our days will end at Victoria - and I don't mid that one bit.

Well - the dunes that we can see E and SE of Victoria are Purgatory-bad.

Doug

To be fair - what else is there to look at post-Victoria? Ithaca is 15k of NASTY dune fields - there's nothing for tens and tens of K's in every other direction. If they do everything that Victoria can give them (and that might take a year or two ) then Erebus, for more study of those amazing festoons - would make sense I guess!

Doug

FWTools does the same sort of thing I think...seems ok with 2 gig of ram.

Doug

Back to Erebus.

To his credit - despite never reaching the Pole with his expedition aboard the Endurance - Shackleton got every single crew member home alive

Doug

Lets wait and see what the May review finds before going speculation crazy. Rumour that Orion is too heavy and/or Ares 1 doesn't perform well enough has been circulating as long as the plans to build them. Given the nature of the VSE etc. - this thread has all the ingredients of going bad...it will be watched VERY carefully. You guys all know the rules. Stick to them.

Yup - FITS.

Maximum kudos for the update - nice to see some great data coming out of JAXA as well!

Doug

I refer you to the first Squyres Q'n'A where Steve says it was unlikely to be DD's as one of the cleaning events was at night. I imagine that's just the writer assuming what most people do

Doug

Had a hack at that same image myself

Doug

OK - So I cheated - I saw RM another two times today (And I'd happily watch it another 4 times in 2 days...just to watch those two EDL sequences, and the brief moments of Pancam imagery, as nature intended, full screen, slowly panning across.

I think Jims comment re: MSL power was worded to mean that at MER's peak power - it's producing as many Watts ( not Whrs ) as MSL's MMRTG. Something like 110 Watts is the figure. Over a normal day, I'm expecting MSL to be something like 2500 Whrs, that sort of thing.

Doug

That's his current take - not the official definative answer.

Doug

What a great day.... met Helvick on the way in, saw a nice Planetarium presentation ( with the infamous APOD / Aviation Week colourised Navcam mosaic in the middle of it! ), a quick swish around the museum bit, then in for the first Imax showing.

It was exactly what I was hoping it would be - lots of stunning shots of building them at KSC and JPL. The launch sequence was very good indeed - as well as two fantastic EDL sequences which I believe used the actual data to reconstruct the bounces. Not enough surface imagery - but then, not enough movie...twice as long would have been 100 times too short really This was followed by a short update lecture by Jim - bringing us right up to date including his current take on the dark streaks ( dust being cleared away and polishing the berries as it goes )

Then met up with the others for the second time around. The second Imax showing was almost ruined by the sound running about 1.5s ahead of the video - I felt really sorry for those that hadn't seen it in the morning - the bouncing sequences were just a little bit comical with the bounce noise happening almost a full bounce before the bounce on screen. Same again with an update by Jim afterwards - then retired to the back of the Imax theatre for a casual Q'n'A before retiring to a bar downstairs to put the world of space science to rights for an hour

Fantastic day all round - glad for those that could make it - so sorry for those that couldn't - hopefully we'll be able to do it again at some point (maybe tie in a group visit to the Science Museum's new space wing with a trip to the Imax at Waterloo).

Attached - a few pics of Jim and us lot having a chat after the second showing (me=behind camera lens )

Doug