Hell - Jon Stewart came back from holiday on 9/11 (and made appropriate humour from it ) - and infact you could get out the stars and stripes and go freedom, yadda yadda, big crater blah blah - it's one of those things you could pitch either way. 9/11 is a good day to announce good things, or a bad day to announce anything - depends what your take on it is.

However - I don't think either Atlantis nor 9/11 have affected planning. I think there probably is some pressure to get to the rim and get a full pan taken and downlinked before conjunction - so that during conjunction they can plan their next few moves - but purely because that would be a nice thing to have. I imagine they might have some press conf once that panorama is put together - and release the finished McMurdo pan and the first Vic pan at that time

Doug

The plan for HiRISE has been 'the peoples camera' - with comparatively rapid release of the images to the public - not quite MER rapid, but within a week or so. No word on what the MSSS policy will be w.r.t. MARCI and CTX imagery release policy. At the moment I'm enclinded to err on the side of pessimism and assume it will be in the Themis/Moc fashion - perhaps a daily interesting image release - and the everything in 3 month chunks, 6 months in arrears. We might get suprised though, and get CTX imagery with the HiRISE imagery - it would certainly help in terms of geological context.

I'm not sure how many obs they'll get before conjunction - but I'm guessing we'll see some new HiRISE images before conjunction - most importantly, from the altitude that the science campaign will be from, our first proper look at HiRISE doing what it's supposed to.

Doug

Top stuff Ustrax

Another perspective...

Victoria could well be the absolute highlight of several of the science teams entire careers - they've been waiting for an opportunity ( pun not intended ) like this for a decade or more. It would be impossible for anyone to be more excited by what Victoria might bring than those people - they're not going to be sat with their feet up in the SOWG meetings thinking "well.....I mean...it's only the deepest insight into the martian history we've ever seen and very probably THE panorama that the mission will be remembered for...whadda ya say...shall we hang around here 100 metres short for no good reason for a week?"

I don't think anyone wants to get there more quickly than the guys at Passadena and Ithaca. I dispair when I see people honestly suggesting that the scientists and engineers would waste a single second of the rovers time. If they are stopped for science, it is because they think it will teach us something important and give context to the science ahead. If they are stopped for engineering it is because they want to be sure we have the healthiest rover we can at any time. It is easy to get frustrated - but we only ever have snippets of information - and to start jumping to conclusions or expressing frustration at what the teams are doing is missplaced and inappropriate.

If you cant hack a fortnight at ED - god help us all when it comes to solar conjunction.

Doug

They are systematic problems - not problems with the health of the vehicle. FAR FAR better to get through this difficult period of a week or two - get an understanding of the Victoria ejecta from the exposed rock around ED - and THEN move on to Victoria. Days are getting longer, terrain is very navigable.. the very fact that Victoria is only a sol or twos drive away is the reason why I think we can quite happily spend a few weeks here. We're not sniffing at crumbs instead of eating the cake... it's like inspecting the crust of the cake so that when we slice it open we understand the whole cake - and not just the filling

Doug

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...DR0327D2512N0M1
http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...DR0327D2514N0M1
http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/navigator...DR0327D2513N0M1


It's there for all the brushings, gridings and other RAT workouts. I don't know of any pre-mission calib data being available - however one could certainly infer comparative hardness between the different rocks.

Doug

Two threads merged - we didn't need a new STS115 thread.

Doug

We gloggers all have to have a bit of input into the debate Jim had a go at it, so did Rosaly, now your turn....I'm hoping that by October, the IAU will have reduced the status of Pluto to that of a large onion so I can have a stab at the subject as well

Doug

I've changed the sub-heading of this thread to 'time spent at Emma Dean' - and closed the old Vic thread. It was very confusing to have the two running concurently. Once we leave Emma Dean I think we can have the 'First look at Victoria' thread etc etc

Remember - we have a three edged sword at the moment. Restricted sols, DSN congestion, that drive fault. It's going to take more time than usual to do the science they want to do here - but once it's done (and it will be done, I am sure, as quickly as is possible) we will be on our way again in a very obvious way. Consideration is probably being made at the moment to have the flash comparatively empty read for the arrival at Vic and the ensuing pancam workout

Doug

I was hoping people would transition to the new one - but instead I'll have to put up some road cones and a diversion sign

THREAD CLOSED - use this one - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3149

I'm guessing - but perhaps the MRO instruments and the command/data processing 'cpu' of MRO are more 'distributed' such that an instrument could safe itself whilst leaving the rest of the spacecraft quite happy to carry on whatever is planned.

Doug

We're in restricted sols, we had a drive fault, and we have limited uplink opportunities because of DSN congestion.

What I don't understand is why that video was under the MRO section.

Anyhooo - it shows that the Northern and North-Western rims is actually quite steep - but the southern approaches, particularly the South Eastern side look a lot more appropriate and driveable.


Doug

I've got 5 words for you..

MER, Loco, Sky, Hemisphere, Conjunction



Seriously - I'm suprised that they are using instruments during conjunction - but suprised in a good way.

Doug

It's technically possible...but to quote Theisinger..

"I would not do that"

Better to have low power than an array stuck in an upright position, and consider the power cables that have experienced almost 1000 100 degreeC swings - they'll be brittle and potentially breakable when performing a stunt like that.

Doug

It's still very much daytime here.

Doug

Your best bet would be to look at www.cubesat.org

You might, just, be ale to build something for 5$k - but you'll need something between $20k and $40k to launch it. Perhaps there is a local university that is doing a project you might be able to get involved with - or you could convince to start one.

Doug

2km back up at Erebus - we would have had to be 20m higher to see it. Is that a realistic figure?

Doug

I think the rule is - the sensors are a back up system as it is. However - they still want to have them there. That there are 4 is quadrouple redundency on a system that's already a backup. Thus - they're happy to have only 3 or 4 working and still launch.

If I were running things - I'd have launched yesterday....which is probably why I'm a multimedia designer and not a Shuttle Launch Test Director.
Doug

The fact that we now know the near rim to be at least 7m higher than the far rim dictates that way back at Beagle and Before, we couldn't have been seing the Far Rim.

Doug

When was that picture taken?


(answer - earlier on sol 931 than the images which show the IDD deployed)

Doug

Aerobraking is finished - but it takes a couple of weeks to do the manouvers to get from aerobraking into the final science orbit. We'll only have a few days (just long enough to turn on the instruments and check them out) before it's solar conjunction. Imaging will start properly in November.

Doug

Something of an overlap... I'm involved in medical E-learning stuff at work and have done 3d reconstructions of the upper airway from MRI imaging to produce rapid prototyped models of the airway for simulation of aerosol and nebulised drug delivery air flow

I'm also going the other way with a MER model - very low res with simple textures which might end up being of use for people like Indian3000 and his interactive software ( he doesn't know yet )

There's a couple of fairly expensive MER models on Turbosquid already - but they're not good on accuracy

Doug

Just to bring RN's info up to date

Virtually no data is returned to Earth directly to DSN at this stage in the mission - it's all relayed via Odyssey and then on to the DSN from there.

The morning uplink containing one or more sols worth of instructions are uploaded, from the DSN to the rovers High Gain Antenna.

Once the rover has recieved this, and transitioned to the new command sequence - it will 'beep' the low gain antenna for 10 minutes.

Downlink is almost all conductied via one or more Mars Odyssey UHF relay passes in the afternoon.

The current problem as I understand it is that there is something of a bottleneck when it comes to uplinking to Mars, and thus one either has to upload several sols of commands when the chance exists ( multiple restricted sols ) and/or use the UHF relay passes to uplink data to the rovers, which has quite a long lead time ( several hours ).

Doug
(oops - edited to make it a bit more obvious what I meant w.r.t DTE vs UHF)

Loving the work - I'm wondering what the end goal is - are you intending to animate it - put the model on Turbosquid, or is it a work of passion

Doug

Sol 931 was indeed a drive fault - there is some DSN hogging going on so they'll be short of a few uplinks over the next few sols.

Expect IDD work over the w'end, and Victoria by the w'end after

Doug

Nope - can't do ANY of the weekday shots this year.

Perhaps some sort of UMSF london meet-up to see it when it runs properly in '07

Doug