I think all the 'colour' strips of HiRISE we've seen will use all three - the BG, R and nIR

Doug

So does our favorite PI step down from NH duties?

Doug

Yes

DOug

Something of a 3 year report.... I would add +/- 10% to the last three months as there have been big holes in the stats...some days just showing 0 - which and of course you don't know how much it's missed of the days either side of a 0 day - so I've been taking the number of 0 days - call it X... and then all the stats have been...

Reported Stat * 1 + ( (X*1.5) / 30 ) = best guestimate stat.

Doug

Unfortunately - the host has screwed up the stats for a few months - so they are increasingly guestimates - what I can say is that as of today...

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I'm trying to do best guestimate figures based on the average for any week in a month that seems to be intact - but that's not very often sadly.

Doug

Helen had a good idea - once some DEMS are published, we could explore them with a moto-X simulator of some sort

Doug

I liked Titan and Voyage...but not so fond of the others..bit too obscure for me

Doug

Why move them up the list? Even if HiRISE were known to be about to expire ( and we know that actually, the media is overhyping this enormously and in actual fact, HiRISE is not about to expire ) - why reprioritise targets? The most important targets are the most important targets if HiRISE is fine, unwell or broken.

Personally - if (and we know this is not the case ) there were 'X' shots left in the HiRISE lifespan - I would give one shot each to B2 and MPL (the supposed B2 target and the previous MPL target ) and then move on to geologically interesting targets instead of duck-shoots for targets of unknown locations.

The point is moot anyway - MPL couldn't be imaged until the southern Summer and we're not there yet - hence the large numbers of northern polar imaging targets

Doug

General activity isn't down - Jan and Feb activity is slightly higher than Nov and Dec activity.

Spirit has been doing 9/10ths of nothing over the past couple of months, Opportunity is in a 'cruise' phase after the excitement of the first Victoria arrival - things seem fairly normal here to be honest.

What do you mean?

Doug

I've never tried to put it out with a CO2 extinguisher - but I did demonstrate the (at a first level) unintuitive concept of CO2 puting out a burning splint but making burning Magnesium burn brighter to some younger students at school using a tank of the stuff a bell jar and an asbestos mat

Doug

Actually the Sector 6 news is a new, very suprising but welcome development over and above what was discussed with JPL.

Doug

I can't find it now - but the annotated colour Victoria image shows the next ' crater pan ' position as being about 2 - 3 O'clock on the crater dial


Doug

Magnesium will happily burn in a CO2 atmosphere ( as anyone who's tried to put out Magnesium with a CO2 extinguisher will tell you )

Doug

Courtesy of JB....

1082B

Well - rings are thin - very thin - so it would only take a minor orbital inclination from equatorial to avoid them - comparatively little Delta V - and nothing that couldn't be squeezed from flybys if necessary.

Doug

Fine under Firefox for me.

Doug

It's been around for a while - I rememebr clickworking my way through a LOT of crater identification a few years ago.

Doug

cough navcam ahem.

Cool DD though

You would expect space daily to do better than put a picture of THEMIS the INSTRUMENT (in space aboard Mars Odyssey since '01).... On a page about THEMIS the MISSION ( 5 spacecraft launching this month to study Solar interaction with the earth )

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/THEMIS_L...Feb_15_999.html

Enough to map every Phoenix landing site target just about in full and any other interesting polar targets before it heads into the dark for the Northern winter.

Doug

Well - the mass of the airbags would rule out every iota of instrumentation, communications hardware...everything.

It doesn't even begin to make sense.

Better to invest the time, money, volume in making the primary landing system reliable. Hell - if your airbags would work for a phoenix like lander - why take the thrusters and hydrazine at all? If your backup is going to be perfectly reliable when called upon - then why have the primary?

Better is the enemy of good enough.

Doug

Routemap threads are for routemap discussions. OT posts moved.

Because they had better drive-direction visibilty that way and could be sure of zero hazards over a longer drive that way? Because they wanted to get some navcam terrain model wedges to augment the ones they will get closer to the rim and build a better model of this area? Because they wanted to test some long distance autonomous driving far from the rim? Loads of reasons why they'd do it. How close to the edge of a jagged cliff do you walk.....blind fold

Doug

as discussed here
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3885

Look before you post.


Thread closed.