the mast is ABOUT... 15cm across. It's quite fat as it's also the periscope for Mini TES

We put it up on bricks, it shouldn't have burnt the ground.



Did someone smash a window when we played football afterwards

Doug

I'd best not - I'd end up banning myself

Doug

Yes.

You can see 2m wide dunes even in one of the 50cm (2x2 binned) images that I sub-sampled for my blog entry on MRO.

Doug

The Anti's couldn't stop Pioneer, Voyager, Viking, Cassini, Galileo or NH....they won't stop MSL either.

Doug

Doesn't the stupid idiot realise you can't spend money in space and that every single penny of the NASA budget is spent ON THE GROUND.

Doug

The NASA argument doesn't stand up. They have four times as much money and do four times as many projects.

Consider Mars Odyssey. Daily image releases. Aqua and Terra....gigabytes of raw data every single day. I could go on citing examples, but it is not needed.

I don't know anyone who thinks that ESA does a good enough job of explaining itself to the public and publicising it's achievments and ongoing activities. It started with Giotto and it's been crap ever since. To not have a single image from VEX in more than three months is not even funny - it's pathetic. Utterly utterly pathetic.

Doug

Interesting things got a bit thin on the ground today - so you'll have to make do with a Whale and OSETI....I hope some of you find it interesting, and if nothing else, it's a bit of a laugh.

Doug

No - unfrotunately the press room here at the conference is just for the conference - but it has net access and so I can watch NASA TV

There is an MRO conference on the Monday as well (was last time I looked at the schedule) - but I was told that friday would be interesting. Why would my blog entry include meridiani sized dunes and rover sized rocks? I can't add any more than that. No guarentees (everything was still waiting to be downlinked) - but I would consider this the must-see press con. of the year for a Mars enthusiast.

Doug

We don't have the first big MER pan of Victoria on the ground yet.....what else is taking great pictures?

Hint - I may end up moving this thread.

I will be in the press room here in Valencia online watching NASA TV - I wouldn't miss it for anything.

Doug

Ustrax - when was the last image from VEX? When did we have an insight into what the scientists are doing. When did I see the results of my tax money? I understand the right of PI's to enjoy their data for a period of 6 months....but that DOES NOT give them the right to fundamentally shun their responsibility to keep the public informed and educated about what they are doing. There is no excuse. ESA is, again, falling its paying public.

Doug

I would recommend watching these...

October 6, Friday
11 a.m. - NASA's Mars Rover News Briefing - HQ (Public and Media Channels)

October 16, Monday
1 p.m. - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter News Conference - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

Doing an MRO entry for the blog now

Doug

No - I remember the curving turn from about Sol 14ish on Spirit - from the point where the egress drive stopped, driving up to Adirondack there was a curving drive.

Doug

Second one is sent in to Jen ( first half of the heads of agencies plenary ) but she's going to wait for that first one to settle before putting up the second.

Tonight - I hope to write up the rest of that first session, plus what I went to this afternoon ( Mars Comms stuff + ESA Delta DOR ranging )

But first...FOOOOOOD - I'm bloody starving - didn't have time to stop all day

Doug

You want to spend less than half the time they spent at Endurance, to explore twice, three, four time the exposure of outcrop?? That woudl be selling the place short wouldn't it?

Seriously guys - 'Big Crater' may be a nice pipe dream, and it may be somewhere worth aiming for if we were totally and utterly finished with Victoria....but to cut short investigation of the most extensive and amazing opportunity yet for a goal which realistically we can not expect to reach would be silly imho.

Doug

This thread is getting overly heated ( as it was obvious it would )

I'm not going to close the thread - but I will if it continues like this. I've had complaints of insults from both 'sides' (despite only seing some a few days ago and deleted threads at that time)

Might I suggest that Sedna and Laurele BOTH step away from this discussion - if you continue to post in ways that draw complaints - I will not hesitate to suspend both of your accounts.

Doug

No - if targetted well - HiRISE can get the whole Opportunity traverse + Victoria in one swathe - 6km width, 18km length (with 20k x 60k pixels).

However....

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/lofiver....php/t1010.html

Basically - with perfect pixels... http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...hirise_oppy.jpg

I'd expect to see something not that good - but between that and the CPROTO res image I did as well.

Time to go to Valencia

Doug

It's much like the Gusev Crater Wall imaging from back in the Bonneville->Cahokia days

Doug

HiRISE is a bit funny remember - it's 10 x 2000ish pixel across CCD's - so this could well be a crop from just one of those CCD's.

The max spec I've seen is the full 20,000 pixels across and over 63,000 pixels long - that would be 6km wide and 19km long - and 1.26 Gigapixels. How often they will use the absolute full capacity for imaging I don't know. The middle two CCD's ( the central 4000 pixels ) are imaged not only in red, but also nIR filter and a G/B filter.

Doug

Want to be scared silly - Victoria would not fit in that image footprint. If centered right on it - you would just about get from the inside of the east rim to the inside of the west rim from side to side- and little more than the dunefield and part of the slope top to bottom.

Doug

Didn't you know, Photoshop has a special GUI for hollywood with two buttons. 'Zoom beyond all actual resolution' and 'Magically enhance'

Doug

I had not seen that Soyuz video before - the time between flash and noise is not as much as I would expect...they were remarkably close!

Doug

Where MRO 'gets in the way' is on the way UP to mars - uplinking commands to the vehicle. However - Opportunity is not only on a different frequency to MRO ( unlike Spirit ) but the downlink, via UHF and Mars Odyssey, should be relatively unaffected.

There may be more images later, the pipline is unreliable from time to time - but otherwise it's usually 22 hrs between exploratorium 'updates', which last about 2 or 3 hours.

Doug

I culled the items because on the whole, they were a little disapointing. I'm going to be doing new ones in time for Christmas.

Doug

More seriously and without the need for the now seriously overflowing swear box....

Arriving at Victoria was like a reflection of the launch, cruise and EDL phase of the mission.

Launches are always risky - things can go wrong and you don't get off the pad at all....and that was true at Endurance. It was exciting, but there was always a risk that we wouldn't even start the journey to the south.

Cruise - navigation, navigation, navigation. How much we enjoyed the routemaps produced here - they kept us sane, and out of trouble for more than a year. Occasionally, as with a realy cruise to mars, there were moments of terror. Purgatory being the most obvious - but there were others. A hundred MI images the same, all missing the target and out of focus...would the arm work once more or would Opportunity be forever attempting to hail a cab.

And now landing...we're coming up on atmospheric interface. We know the next step is dangerous. It might go wrong and we end up with nothing. But - the engineers can simulate things on the ground to give it out best shot. Victoria is now very very big in the window - and the door ever appears open. We just have to walk in, and hope we can make sense of what it offers us.

However - the analogy breaks down when you consider this. Every step of the way from Eagle, to Endurance, Erebus and beyond - we have actually BEEN there. The eyes of the rover have become our own eyes. Wheeltracks have been our footprints. We've lived, breathed, gasped, chewed nails and prayed our way through the best and the worst that Meridiani has had to offer, and while we can't sit there and guide the rover - in our minds we've weaved through the ripples and stepped over crests and craters to get to where we our now - this crater - this cathedral to geology. It's flying butresses of outcropped rock, the slopes offering a stairway to the interior.

I don't know if we'll make it into and out of Victoria crater. I think we will, but who knows what suprises Meridiani will spring upon us in the future. To paraphrase someone we all know - it has, in the very literal sense, been the adventure of a lifetime. But not just for the scientists and engineers - also for the followers, the enthusiasts, purveyors of pans, assemblers of anaglyphs, makers of maps, and those who make a science out of speculation.

We sit at the top of the bay, with the historic waves of Meridiani metaphorically lapping at our feet, and our well worn wheels, and I can only think of two things.

Thankyou for giving us the images, taking us on this journey, sharing this adventure.

And may the slip be slim, the arm stalls be sparse, the dust be gone, the rat bite sharp, and god speed little one, through the cold, the wind and the slopes - alone though you are - we are all with you, always.

Victoria in one word or sentence - impossible. There are not the words to use, or one phrase to describe all that has been done to get that rover to where it is now. I'm not a religious person - but when I see images like these I fell the need to thank someone that I am alive to see this and to share it with others.

Doug