May 10th...Pah - I'll have seen it on Imax screens three times by then

Doug

As an attempt at an iota of organisation- Helvick and I will hopefully bump into one another in the morning but shall we all try and meet up at 1300-1330 somewhere near the ticket desk before the afternoon session starts?

Doug

Congratulations - the UMSF APOD tally gets another boost

Beautiful image, very evocative.

Doug

Gliding isn't easy on Mars ( as anyone who's flown X-Plane will tell you ) - but I have flown RC gliders off terrain not that different to the Bays and Capes of Victoria. You have to fly SO fast through the thin Martian atmosphere to get the lift to stay up - but your motor (gravity) is so weak. It's an interesting engineering challenge though. Planes on Mars might look a lot like the U2 Spy plane.

Doug

I agree 100%. But they observed a strong gust kicking up dust. That is what I was making reference to.

Those fans are just un-frickin-believable. Brilliant.

Doug

We're just not in the right topography for a cleaning event I think. Maybe down the far side of Home plate or up near pitchers mound we might get something.

Doug

I'm a big Cubesat fan - particularly as an educational exercise - but 3 of the 7 on this flight seem to be commercial projects.

However - it's all good stuff
http://cubesat.atl.calpoly.edu/pages/missi...lite-status.php

Up and working it seems
http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/CubeSat.htm


Doug

Do you see me saying that it isn't deposition or it has to be cleaning? Nope. I'm just trying to visualise what the MI's seem to be showing.

Just for a bit of fun - I botched a little animation of the timeline for a cleaning hypothesis using grey ground, a grey-blue single berry, and salmoney dust.

Dust falls onto ground and onto berries. Makes everything look a little brighter. Then - along comes the wind, but the ground is sheltered by the berries - so only the top of the berries get cleared off - thus you see a whole lot more berry (dark) and less soil + berry ( light )

A similar sort of process also happened to an extent up at the year old tracks they observed on the way out of Endurance. For eons the berries sat on the surface, the wind blowing over the top...grains of soil underneath not really feeling the wind. Then, along comes a wheel - pushes the berries into the ground, and thus the soil within the track is re-exposed. the wind then works away at the soil and you end up with the pushed-in-berries being re-exposed at the bottom of the wheel tracks.

All just speculation of course..just a bit of fun

Somehow I can't imagine features getting names after British cities...just not quite romantic enough

Milton Keynes
Bradford
Sutton Colefield
Slough
or even Leicester

Cool eh

For those of you with the Cult 3D Plugin

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im.../mer_final.html
or, larger on screen
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...inal_large.html

Doug

Yes - but darker than what? Darker than very bright rock, sure - but the same 'darker' than the dark streaks against the surrounding terrain?

There are convincing arguments on both sides....full stop.

Doug

Regulars will know that I don't side on these (frankly a bit silly) 'With us or against us' arguments. I'm just commenting on what I see

And I've visited the Alhambra, it's utterly breathtaking.

Doug

Dust devils form on sun-facing slopes, then migrate with prevailing winds picking up and redistributing the lighter fines, revealing cleaned, darker soil underneath. It's well documented process - and one that we've seen upclose and personal within Gusev crater many times.

As for Victoria, darkness and the wheel tracks....

• Dark soil with Berrys on top
• Dust falls out the sky as it does everywhere, lands on top of the berries and the darker soil underneath.
• Wind comes along, blows dust off the top of the berries, but doesnt 'touch' the soil underneath because the berries cause a wind shadow.
• Thus you have darker berries visible from above with a lighter soil underneath
• Wheel comes along, pushes berries into the soil - and now you see the dark soil again but with a lighter dust coating on top, thus appearing a little lighter.

The tracks here are VERY reminiscent of Eagle craters airbag imprints.

Doug

They are a fairly regular event, an albedo observation of the surrounding terrain usually used to tie in with an observation by an orbiter.

Doug

I hope someone asks what the projected remaining on-orbit lifespan of the spacecraft was before it went awol - that tells us the true value of the loss really.

(And guess who got in with the first question - a great one about orientation...nice one ESL - I hope you can manage a trademark timeline of events to break it all down )

Damn - I missed the last 5 minutes.

Doug

The one we call Ithaca? About 15k ESE of Vic?

Doug

Iridiums also start and finish very quickly...this sounds like it was just some sat that was not listed on the H.A. database - perhaps a recent deployment or upper stage.

Doug

Ahh right - I thought you were talking about something new

Doug

http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/newimg/V144...&stretch=S2

What's the scientific rational ( not saying there isn't one, you just didn't tell us )

http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r22_s04/im...2/R2200522.html
Ahh..the dark patch?

Doug

I assume all the recent caves are on the shopping list. Ditto the new craters as identified from MOC imagery, and indeed the crater-wall streaks, as well as the MSL candidates to date.

Obviously, any potential moon observations ( Phil...which sides of which moons do you want to see the most? ) are always a bonus, as well as the whacky stuff ( other spacecraft obs, limb obs etc )

I'm not a geologist, I wouldn't presume to pick somewhere apart from the rest of the Beagle 2 Ellipse, and all potential MPL targets

Doug

Yup - time of death was 5 April 1998 12:39 AM PST

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/4_6_98_face_release/

If I'm honest, I see more RH 'fodder' in the HiRISE image than I did in the MOC image, I think he's going to love it.

55 megaBYTES.



That's about 4 days of downlink. An average pass is 50-100 MegaBITS

10 runs of a 2 pointing L456 mosaic at 12:1 would be 40 Mbits (5 Megabytes) - that's not too bad. It would be a sequence of complete imaging excess and glutony...I love it

DOug