The good stuff Phoenix is after is 10's of CM's deep....not only should the exhause be easy to identify and filter out - but it's not going to make it that far underground.

Doug

They're going a funny way about it....and why would you pick an entry point after seing less than 1/4 of the rim, especially when we've been told they plan to cover something like 120 degrees of crater rim.

Doug

Imagine landing 4k south of Eagle right into Purgatory....that Primary mission would have SUCKED

Doug

They've changed it - and still got it wrong.

No - MER had no means to avoid hazards. The decent imaging motion estimation system ( dimes ) was there to calculate the speed of the spacecraft across the terrain so as to calculate which TIRS (Transverse Impulse Rockets) to fire when firing the RAD motors to tilt the vehicle over and cancel out as much of the wind-induced speed across the terrain.

It was not there to identify hazards and thus avoid them

Doug

Beagle 2 was designed to detach from the airbags entirely and then drop to the ground. I was refering to the concept of landing Phoenix with MER/MPF style airbags and then trying to use its arm to reach over them.

Doug

Brilliant idea and a great way of seing lots of bits of HiRISE images at full res at the same time

The 'nogood' button doesn't work yet though.

Doug

If you're evolving power, instruments, movility and cutting mass - you're not reusing anymore

Doug

Not sure if that will be the 40 or 60 minute version - but both have a bit of Doug in them.

Doug

This is how is SHOULD be credited...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061017.html

Doug

10,000 metres - I think that means it neads a new roadworthiness test..a. Martian MOT - I'll have to sort that out, I know a friendly mechanic.

For a vehicle that's spent a LOT of time stationary if you consider Purgatory and Olympia, and with a requirement of 600m...10k is frankly a biblical achievment.

Doug

and - nice to see it on such a well known website - BUT....
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0702...ars_clouds.html

Not giving proper credit AT ALL. Not my place to correct them, but I hope the people who actually made that image get in touch wite Space.com and get them to correct that. Even if it were a NASA released image - the credit would be NASA/JPL or NASA/JPL/Cornell

Not good work there by Ker Than.

Doug

Furthermore - can you imagine having to use a large robotic arm over all that airbag material? It'd be a nightmare. Compare MPF's science payload in kg's - and compare it to that of Phoenix..... the question answers itself.

Doug

Technically the MPL landing design was chosen in the '60s as it was very similar to VIking - the major changes being a switch to pulse motors instead of throttled ones and direct entry instead of entering from Orbit.

Doug

It's really not that hard a problem....take the Viking landing - and simply take the terminal decent speed and change it to zero. We're talking more than 30 years later. Phoenix could, technically, enter a hover a few metres above the surface ( not that there would be any point ). MSL is a big challenge, no doubt, but no more so than the orig. challenge of the Pathfinder landing.

The MER engineers are on record - to do airbags bigger than MER just doesn't add up. The ammount of mass you have to dedicate to the landing system is utterly enormous with airbags. To scale from a 180kg rover to a 700kg rover - the airbags and the structure to encase the lander would be many tonnes. Then - if they work with that much weight, you've got yards and yards of airbag material to try and get over to egress onto the surface. Airbags at that scale just don't make sense - period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UKwFfXmUY

Rob explains it best

Doug

MSL is a retrorocket landing.

Doug

The next Mars Scout is going to be an orbtier anyway - two are shortlisted of which one will fly. Future multple airbag landers are, I would think, quite likely, something in the Mars Netlander idea.

The Skycrane manouver ( the hardware is a decent stage...the 'eek' moment is a procedure called skycrane) - is not something they've picked for fun - it's something they've picked because it's the best way they can think of getting the payload onto the ground. If it doesn't work with MSL, I wouldn't be suprised to see them try again with a different vehicle a couple of years later.

Doug

Yes - but obviously, the law stops me sharing it over the web

Doug

On short notice - I've decided to head down to the Sat PM session of Astro fest
http://www.astronomynow.com/astrofest/

Anyone else planning on visiting?

Doug

One of my school reports from when I was about 7 said "Douglas's talents on the football pitch might be better suited toward commentating"



Doug

Your El Dorado images made it in

Doug

Take 2

Yes - that's Io's shadow on Jupter on the 10th -

Well - when i actually get a Mac (this summer) then I'll speak with confidence...

Actually - it does kind of make sense

Doug

Was just about to post a link to it - excellent piece John - Suprised to see that Dave doesn't actually have a variety of orbits visualized above his head in some sort of orbital mechanics halo But then - if you put your OSX dock on the right side...there's just wierd...

Doug

Shocking and frankly disgusting results from an excellent paper looking at school children here in the UK...

"When asked to list space exploration organisations 77% listed NASA. Six of those surveyed listed ESA (o0.5%). The
data bring starkly to light, despite the Huygens landing on Titan and Mars Express, the lack of awareness of the existence of ESA among
a new generation of European school children."


of the 200 kids asked to name an organisation that does Space Research - 6 said ESA, 5 said Area 51 and around 170 said NASA.

69/200 said Mars is hot.

This is why I moan about ESA outreach.

Doug