It's a point worth making - there have been many many ellipses. The early one pre-launch. The one that got shrunk mid-cruise. The one that shrunk futher and moved a little south before landing etc etc.

Didn't see that one coming at all - it was a Mercury transit..

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-183

When it's firing the laser, the spectrometer of ChemCam is collecting data for the spectra - not sure if it could image at the same time. I would expect it's a few seconds between frames in any case.

D

Sol 657 MastCam L mosaic ( with a tiny image from a few dozens sols earlier to patch a tiny gap on the Mt Sharp skyline )

http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/156227

Take a couple of screenshots a few seconds apart and try it.

I had a go a few weeks ago basically without success.

For those who anaglyph....

Apart from the observations others have already mentioned, there's good words by Jim Bell on what they were looking at when doing similar observations with Spirit a long time ago.
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...projects_2.html

At last a nice blog post full of details about exactly what they've managed to do so far!

http://spacecollege.org/isee3/isee-3-reboo...e-and-more.html

Looks like they'll need only 5.8m/sec to divert onto the appropriate lunar flyby trajectory.

Nope. If you look closely at this one (and the many seen by Spirit and Opportunity over the years) there are little patches tucked away inside some of the regmaglypts that could be signs of chemical erosion. It would also be quite hard to tell apart surficial dust ( being as it's largely iron oxides ) and rust on a iron meteorite ( being as it is also largely iron oxides )

Previously I'd only been able to track it during '08 when there were subtle changes ( bits folding over etc ) twice in October '08 and once between then and December.

NICE FIND (especially as the HiRISE team didn't use the word Phoenix in the observation title! ) As some of you know - watching parachutes in HiRISE is something of a personal obsession. Spirit's flapped around once and hasn't moved since. Still waiting for follow up images with Opportunity. But I hadn't thought to look at the Phoenix chute. Now on my to-do list!

Yes - but Juno was coming to within a few hundred km of Earth - thru the shell of comm HEO, MEO, LEO spacecraft - thousands and thousands of active and tens of thousands of deceased bits of hardware. That is deserving

ISEE-3 with possible lunar flyby or lunar impact? Using words like "threaten other spacecraft in Earth orbit" - that's laughable. There's as much chance as a random asteroid taking out an earth orbiting spacecraft

Agreed - it's a laughable suggestion.

Indeed - the AmSat DL team at Bochum with their 20m dish that's just 1/15th the diameter of Arecibo received a signal almost 2 months ago

http://amsat-uk.org/tag/bochum/

Guys - this is a thread for actual route maps - not hypotheticals. Please take that discussion elsewhere.

Yeah - the trick ( with PTGui or even HUGIN ) is to have it retain the positional information based on control points on one eye....to project out the other eye.

That's one way.

The way I do it is to use PTGui with one set of images ( say left ) and generate a mosaic. Then, swap the input frames out and export a new mosaic....and then merge the pre-stitched L and R mosaics afterwards.

That's how I went from http://dougellison.smugmug.com/Landscapes/...ity/i-8MQHgg4/A to
http://dougellison.smugmug.com/Landscapes/...ity/i-mMdVrJn/A

Don1 - you're attempting to read an awful lot into...well...nothing. You're working from a sample of 1 which is not significant.

Sol 620 Pan looking toward the foothills of Mt Sharp.

Full Res here : http://dougellison.smugmug.com/Landscapes/...MR-Panorama.jpg

For ChemCam - yes - I believe the window is flat. The mirror behind it is concave obviously.

However as I've already said - the mast is typically pointed away from drill sites during drilling. We were explicitly told to show that when the rover is doing drilling - the mast looks about 120deg right of forwards - as away from drill sites as possible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw#t=541
(9 mins / 540 seconds in)

Those are going to be some beautiful images - congrats to the MSSS team on being selected!

The mast is typically commanded to point away from a drill site when drilling is taking place, so that seems unlikely.

I see no less or more design advances in that list than the decade after it, or before it.

You've asked the "sincere question" and you've been given the same answer many times over.

It was launched two weeks ago. It is currently hanging off the side of the ISS waiting for final installation later this week before being powered-up on Saturday.


Both heatshield and parachute's have already been thru initial testing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YVOpdqdULU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOzxEOlDJg

The first of three atmospheric tests comes later this year.



I know. Dawn increases upon the Delta V of DS1 by nearly an order of magnitude. 1.3km/sec -> 10km/sec. That's revolutionary.




Wrong. The only reason Sunjammer may not fly is budgetary - not conservative engineering or 'enthusiasm'.

There is no shortage of new technology and innovation in spaceflight.

All this stuff is a simple Google away.

We are in a genuinely exciting period of technological innovation in just about every aerospace engineering discipline. The stories are out there if you care to look for them.

I would urge you to do a little research of your own - and ponder Mike's question

Last decade alone.....

Communications:
MRO transmitting at up to 6 Mbits/sec ( 40x the rate of previous Mars orbiters ) from Mars
MSL UHF relay at up to 2 Mbits/sec - 8x the rate of MER->ODY
LASER demo from LADEE at 620 Mbits/sec
OPALS about to be tested on ISS
Continued transition towards more Ka band 32Ghz DSN comms.

Power Sources
Increasingly efficient solar arrays enabling the first dedicated Jovian mission to fly with Solar Power ( Juno )
Development of the ASRTG ( currently on hold, but near completion )

Propulsion
Dawn's Ion engine has given it more than 6km/sec of Delta V - more than any other spacecraft in history -and may reach a total of 10km/sec
First interplanetary solar sail ( IKAROS )

Shielding
Juno's vault
Orion spacecraft student lead shielding experiment

Avionics
Transition from RAD6000 to RAD750
New avionics of SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon (triple redundant with much COTS hardware)

Plus:
LDSD program including SIAD test program for increased EDL capacity to Mars ( potentially doubling the delivery mass of an MSL EDL like architecture )
Continued revolution in miniaturization. RACE scientific cubesat (among many, many others) , the INSPIRE cubesat BEO program.
HD color video from the surface of Mars. 1600 x 1200 MARDI movie.
Proven EDL performance increased from a 400lb rover in 2004 to a 2000lb rover in 2012


Is your statement broadly true? No. Not even slightly.