I don't recall any cleaning events before the area around Larrys Lookout.

Doug

A lot of drives end with a turn in place just to orient as best as possible for the UHF passes that follow.

Doug

Well - I had a look around the house for the perfect metal disc, etching CNC tooling and gold plating bath but I can't find them...maybe I put them in the loft but hey

If it helps - yes - I put an old IDE DVD Rom drive in there

Doug

disclaimer : I was born in Chester, a few miles from Jodrell Bank

I voted for this - the other's on offer were all well and good - but JB is an astonishing place - bigger even than the large DSN assets

Doug

Well - I'll still ask the same question - why do the images look fuzzy because of a 'stretch' process?

Doug

Scratch process?

Doug

If Phil thinks the Moon is greyscale - it means his publisher saves a fortune on printing costs

Seriously - yes - there are some very subtle colours on the moon - but not so much as one would notice with the naked eye really.

Doug

Why? Look at all the perfectly circular craters on the moon....no semi-liquid state there

Doug

Stationary Lander @ Meridiani - one of the first questions I asked SS last autumn

Doug

The problem with one large "catch all" forum is that we have some very varied topics that do not overlap that much.

For instance - people reading up on Cassini do not want to have the Opportunity route-map thread in the way, or people following New Horizons do not want to scroll through the threads of STEREO etc etc.

Getting it right is not easy - but I much much prefer this way to having them all in one bucket. I think it's probably just a matter of getting used to things. The forum I frequented the most before this one had over 400 sub forums within it...some of which I never visited because the content didn't interest me and as a result it saves me a lot of time when i go there. The majority of sites I've visited do seperate content up into sub forums and I try to resist the creation of a new subforum where possible ( i.e. recently people wanted a new thread of extra solar planets, and I simply gave extra solar planets a home within an existing forum )

Paxdan is right - the "view new post" button is great and essentially does what you want - makes a large virtual forum with all the new content in it.

Thanks for the comments - and I'll certainly pop into the Eastern US WX BB just to see how things feel when clumped together.

Doug

Top of the list in priority to be returned, but not the first image taken

Doug

Well - for that we'd need to know the height of the far rim w.r.t. the near rim

It'll work the other way around - once we see the far rim we'll know, from the distance to the near rim and height of the pancam mast - the height of the far rim :0

Doug

Here's my take... everything blue is beyond Victoria crater, everything red is bits of Victoria we can see.

Doug

Tosol will be untargetted remote sensing only - yesterday was Labour day in the US, and that drive was the last sol of what was probably a 3 or 4 sol plan over the weekend.

What they WILL do today is take the rest of the navcam 360 from this position (5 pointings centred on 324 degrees ) and quite a lot of atmospheric pancam observations.

I'm not sure if they'll make the decision to drive on from Epsi..whatever it's called from just the Navcam imagery - they may do some targetted remote sensing tomorrow and then drive on, or some targetted remote sensing follow by approach drives for in-situ work. I think we'll have a better idea tomorosol (930)

Doug

The party only really started after I went to bed

Doug

I think you're right - because we're just not seing the sort of outcropping or features on the far rim that we should from here if the crater were 'flat' from side to side. I think it might be at quite a slope and thus we're seing some near rim, a tiny bit of far rim, and then the annulus beyond and etched terrain beyond that.

Doug

LMA - Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
Doug

I think the sort of words they would use are instrument power up, check out and calibration.

Doug

SHARAD has to be deployed and CRISM has a cover to be ejected.

Doug

I can't imagine it being anything else - near as makes no difference we've covered 100m which would put us a few metres from Epsil...whatever it's called

I'd expect some Nav's and perhaps some of the drive dir Pancams in about 7 minutes time ( 2235UT ...ish... ctrl-refresh, ctrl refresh.....maybe at 2335 then... images normally come up at specific minutes past the hour - so if a few are done at X:35...the next lot will be x+1:35 ish.)

OK - a few mintues late - but here come the navcams...

Epsilon...
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...23P0685L0M1.JPG

Victoria...
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...23P0685L0M1.JPG

Doug

The images have been on the ground for less than an hour....give us a chance

The record drive was 220m just south of Vostok crater - typical drives back then ( with quite a bit more power than we have now ) were 100m or so.

However - I make this drive 98 metres.

Doug

'post bump' would suggest a short backup - followed by imaging of the scuff area - and THEN followed by a larger drive. A 'bump' drive wouldn't be long enough to warrent 'penultimate' Hazcam imagery on its own.

Also - if we were only having a bump drive, it's unlikely we'd have Drive Direction imagery when we already HAVE drive direction imagery from this spot.

Don't quote me....but I think we'll see quite a good drive distance. 70m is the dougcasted drive distance.

Doug

Every time I try and think of when uplink and downlink are w.r.t. EDT and PDT, and I think I know when restricted sols is going to be - I get it wrong....not sure why...

I agree though - Epsilon as this coming weekend's science stop, it makes sense to see if it's anything different to what we've seen before.

Doug

No no - there ARE no blowers on the rovers - that's the point

What you point out are the pyrotechnic bolts that held the solar arrays together before the thing deployed on Sol 1

Doug

You do know about google don't you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program

Viking 1 Lander 20 July 1976 till 11 November 1982 for a total of 6 years, 3 months, 22 days

Viking 2 Lander 3 September 1976 till 11 April 1980 for a total of 3 years, 7 months, 8 days