Might be that Oppy stayed up to do an AM Odyssey pass to double the downlink.

Doug

It's from HiRISE stereo imaging - hopefully Randy Kirk will release a DEM so that I can do some HD res renderings of both sites

(oh - and I think it was rendered using Terragen, the clouds and lensflare seem to be a bit of a giveaway)

Doug

Can't deny the logic.

I hope they can do Jupiter instead. NH is pulling a blinder with the flyby and the way their getting involved with the public - it's an inspiration, and a gold mark standard.

Doug

I disagree. It was designed to ask the most fundamental questions they could answer - in an expected 4 minute period. How hard is it. What angle is it at. How rough is the surface, what's the speed of sound - and - if on a liquid - how deep is it, what's its refractive index, what are the waves like etc etc.

I cant imagine getting more information, in that ammount of time, with that much volume, power, data, with technology from about 1990. To say their options were limited would be an understatement.

Now - had we known that it would be a couple of hours, not 4 minutes...THEN....THEN perhaps there were options available. But at launch - that probe was expecting Cassini to vanish over the Horizon 4 minutes after the estimated touch down time.

Lets put this in a bit of context. Our very very first landing on the place - never visited before - absolutely no idea what we were going to land on, working with 1980's technology. I think criticism of the payload is, at best, hindsight gone mad. What it's done is say "this is what it's like...to come and look at it properly you should probably do this". It was a recce, and a recce was all it could ever have been. It's told us what we needed to know to decide how to go about looking at the place properly.

Doug

They are rapidly approaching the first scheduled PSA release of VEX data - but we've seen it all before with Smart 1 so I'm not holding my breath.

Doug

MOST.

Not all.

Doug

The new anims of Victoria crater made from HiRISE DEMS makes Sans-Peril look very interesting - especially when you don't have the really steep, large outcrops each side to hide the sun, and MODY.

Doug

The JPL page is wrong - we're on the E side at the moment.

Doug

I had a press pass on the night. I'm interested

Doug

There's also the issue of how much of that 3 x 9 x 2 m area is actually filled with arrays. Technically a 54m^2 area, but what's the packing density of the arrays going to be like - how much will be taken up with hinges etc... 8% is probably a fairly good guess, making it 50m^2 - and that's where the 500W comes from

What I want to know is what the downlink will be like

Doug

The scan platforms have been switched off for many years, and there would not be the power to operate enough systems to make this a feasable exercise.

Doug

Credit where credit is due - the Envisat team have 'done a MODIS' here and are putting their imagery online in near realtime. Not sure when they started doing it - but it's band up to date.

http://miravi.eo.esa.int/en/

I managed to see imagery of the UK from yesterday, and I think by the end of today, the AM UK stuff should be online. The resolution doesn't QUITE match MODIS (it's close) but the reprojection of the data is much better than that from MODIS, much better at the off-nadir edges of the images. Excellent stuff.

Doug

Again...TEEEeeechnnically - one could take one of those global composites, reproject it as a texture in realtime and render out a globe-like sphere. But that's way beyond my talents (one offs, yeah, automated every few hours...pah)

Alternatively, who's got a few hundred million to launch Triana?

Doug

Thought I would see just how hard it is to merge all the GEO MET IR imagery into one strip.....and the answer...with photoshop..is 'suprisingly hard'

Well - there's Meteosat, the European geostationary effort - but that's just one side of said globe. The latest version of Meteosat is the second generation vehicle ( MSG ) which is producing good imagery at high res, every 6 hours. Of course that means basically one full colour image over 0 degrees per day ( the 0600 and 1800 images are, of course, half dark )

Proper website is www.eumetsat.de ( might have seen signposts for Eumetsat on the way into Darmstadt on the Bus - just opposite ESOC )

I'd recommend here - http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk - (free reg required for good stuff) for regular full res MSG imagery as well as from other, not quite so high-res or full colour etc sats. (i.e. GOESE, GOESW, IODC, MTSAT). TECHNICALLY...one could take these multiple geostationary views, and fudge some sort of global view from them.

Also - Aqua and Terra each with my favorite polar orbiting instrument MODIS, do technically cover the entire glove at about 500m/pixel, in colour, at about 1200 and 1400 LOCAL time every day - but I don't believe they produce a daily global product, just the swathes in near real time and a lot of near realtime subset that are reprojected - http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

I guess it depends on what you mean by global.

Doug

Emily pointed out that the Isidis image for Osiris cross-calib just caught the end of the ellipse so I have added it to 'the mix', presented here at 30m/pixel.

Doug

7 months old..I'd say time for a Tattoo - 2"x2" - forehead - I've got a PNG if the artist needs reference material.

Doug

Reflections off the IDD itself perhaps?

Doug

30 degrees is about the best they can manage, and I would think all the slopes on the SE quadrant of the crater are less than that - and indeed some of the bays we've already seen, Duck/Bottomless etc are there or there abouts.

Doug

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=home

Bottom left

Doug

They are already releasing stuff very rapidly - but as FITS images - they plan to get something better going eventually as I understand it.

Doug

I've only ever ordered their stuff from the astronomy now / spaceflightnow website store, so I've not dealt with SCF directly. Sounds like a nightmare though Worth checking ebay / amazon etc for what you're after.

Doug

Wrong way around - we have two anims of the Spirit EDL Sequence, but not of Opportunities.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/vid...s_Animation.mpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/vid...S_Animation.avi

Doug

New update....

"The launch window is now March 19th to 22nd (California time). During extended ground testing in late February, one of our second stage thrust vector control boards indicated a problem. Although our analysis showed substantial margin for flight, we decided nonetheless to increase the robustness of certain of the components and run a delta qualification.

The upgraded boards will be installed this week. If all goes well, Falcon 1 will do a static fire next week and then launch in the week of the 19th.

--Elon--"
http://www.spacex.com/updates.php#demoflig...launch_update_6