OK - there is SO MUCH footage for me to play with via the JPL video catalogue that I'm struggling to trim it down to a sensible DVD Video size.

I'm thinking, currently, of ripping it down to 360 x 240 resolution videos, probably Quicktime H264 format...30fps for most live footage, 15fps for press conf's etc. - BUT - some may not like that compression idea - so I'm open to others.

Bottom line - I want to get as much of the 'missing 3 weeks' between Spirit Landing and Opportunity landing, expecially all the live events captured and onto something that we can all share.

Any options / suggestions, much appreciated.

Doug

Yup - two spacecraft launched together that separate after launch, and then they both use Lunar flybys - one a month after the other, to chuck one ahead of the Earth, and one behind.

Doug

A good one.

I've heard Steve talk about Magellan's expedition which set of with several ships and 270 people......and returned years later with 18 men and one ship....the Victoria - at the time he had images of a team of 18 grad students driving Opportunity to Victoria crater

Doug

True - but you still get 'something', even if it's not the full mission objectives - one could rescue something from a mixture of SOHO + One stereo spacecraft perhaps.

Doug

Fence Sitting could be considered a "Neither / Both" option, thus we'd win

QUICK - someone make a Fence Sitting mascott icon logo thing...we could WIN


On second thoughts..



Doug

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts121/060703crack/

At this point, pure speculation, but it could be anything from..

Fly Tomorrow
Repair at the pad ( 3, 4, 5 day delay? )
Repair in VAB ( couple of weeks? )
Replace ET ( even longer?)

and frankly, one has to ask, if they can't stop foam-loss while the thing is just sat on the pad....well....I can't find the words, it's just beyond belief. The entire ET Foam issue is becoming a farce - I don't know what they can do about it either. I feel really sorry for the crew, they've been waiting for what seems like forever...and now they're being put through a total rollercoaster.

Doug

Of course Jim is on the science team, and is thus Cornell not JPL But I'll ask anyway

Hopefully - driving down one of the ramps into the crater, we'll essentially have the outcropped layers to one side as we progress further in. It will be nothing LIKE what I've attached, but that's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Yellow is the outcrop. Green the drive-route in. Blue the IDD-reachable outcrop, and brown, normal soil.

Doug

MER like redundency in that there's two spacecraft I suppose.

Looking at the Orbit sims (and I'm not sure how accurate they are w.r.t. SKM's or TCM's ) - by something like 2010, they'll be on opposite sides of the sun from one another, and by 2012 - they'll be in almost 120 degree seperation around the sun, with the Earth at the third point, abnd by 2014, they'd overtake one another not far from a solar conjunction ...now THAT is looking in Stereo

I'm looking forward to the imagery - approx 3x better resolution than SOHO's imagers.

Doug

I'd be astonished if there wasn't a single way 'in' around the entire rim - on the understand that the interior of Victoria Crater would be a suitable place for the 'end of mission'.

However - if we can't / don't go in, then obviously one would do a lap of the place, work Mini-TES to the bone, I'd say three Pan positions ( 10 O'Clock, 6 O'Clock and 3 O'Clock ) - and then perhaps NE to some interesint white features and larger ammount of exposed rock in and around the area in the NE part of the Victoria Apron.

Other than that, anywhere else involved going through a lot of Purgatory like terrain...or even worse. The only interesting target would be the larger crater to the ESE, but that's more than twice as far as the rover has covered to date ( 12.7km ) ...and all the "ooo 50m/sol, 3 sols a week.." maths really just don't work as we've seen so far. You could speculate that sort of maths to make it anything between about 200 and 1000 sols. Perhaps MRO imagery would help route-finding for such a field-trip, but I imagine much of it would be like the area between Olympia and Purgatory....pretty bloody terrible driving.

Truth be told, if we got to Victoria with no Endurance-like easy way in....I would be very tempted to find the best drive-in place, even if it were 35 degrees or so....and just take it nice and gentley and go in anyway - traverse the slope to make it less agressive and see what happens. Given there is no realistic target beyond Victoria - there isn't much to loose in terms of getting stuck on the way into, or at the bottom of Vic. If we do get stuck down there, the Atmos scientists could have a Mini-TES field day, Wolff could get his Sky hemisphere (LOCO Mike, LOCO ) and heck - thing of the imaging one could do stuck in there.

In conclusion to that long winded nonsense - realistically, we've almost got to go in, even if the best access point isn't proven to be driveable, because we've got nothing left to go and do.

Doug

Independance Day weekend. Recharge, downlink, flight software uplink, targetted remote sensing. Busy rovers, but a bit of time off for mission people. (After the sprint from Erebus to here, and the Purgatory 2 situation...I think they're entitled)

Doug

Hopefully doing another Jim'n'Doug show tonight - I've got a shed of questions myself, but if anyone has anything burning....let me know today...before about 1700UT

Doug

Edit - will add to this as the day progresses.



On the Menu

(yes - I'm chaning the colours as I chat to Jim so I don't forget where I've got to )

General
Toma B : Flight software update - how long left, what can it do etc etc
Photon transfer calibration.... what / why etc.
Calibration - how to you monitor camera performance with a dirty Calibration target (relating to above)
Tesheiner: Pancam - actual field of view ( varous papers/websites have different figures, 15.8º, 16.0º, 16.8º ) ( each pixel 0.273 milli rad 0.003+/- - 16.1 degrees )
Ustrax : Grad Student involvement...what do they do and what could it mean for their futures.

Spirit
Mc Murdo Pan - how is it going, how much left, what's it revealing etc ( And it's today's APOD! )
Changes over time - any changes seen over the past couple of months?
Meteorites....how many in total...potential post-winter target?


Oppy
Toma B: Beagle Crater (that name hurts ) - What imaging plans?
RNeuhaus: Approach strategy to Vic. Straight there or Rim craters etc?

The Amateur World
Paxdan : Have you composted team members into some MER Pans (no) ( or indeed, team photos using flight or flight spare hardware? (yes))

Right - all done....I'll top and tail it, pack it off to Emily and hopefully it'll be online a bit later

Well - that sort of terrain is the best match I can make to the apron in the MOC imagery

Doug

Using the R1/R2 stuff - dragging out some more details.

Doug

Pushbroom?

Doug

Well - 1231 local time aquisition - so it'd be suprising to see it at mid-day

Attached image shows the earth was 45ish degrees above the horizon at the time of aquisition

And....it's a bit of noise in the L5...but it's not in the L4 or L6 - so I think it's just a cosmic ray hit..

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...O9P2629L4M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...O9P2629L5M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...O9P2629L6M1.JPG

Doug

From Spaceflightnow.com

SCRUB! The weather has won for the second day in a row. Launch director Mike Leinbach just decided to stop the countdown for liftoff today due to the miserable weather conditions here at Kennedy Space Center. Management has decided to replenish the hydrogen supply in the shuttle's electricity-producing fuel cells and make the next launch attempt on Tuesday at 2:38 p.m. EDT (1838 GMT).

STEREO footage via the KSC Video Feeds...

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/countd.../video45lh.html

I'd certainly rate their chances at <50% - but something of a front has come through and they may get a clear window at the end of it...if it ties in with the actual launch window..before new weather comes through

Oh - it's very very cool, no doubt, and I'm sure, at some point, we should see some even lower better sequences like it.

Doug

I don't think it's shadows - I think it's more likely contamination on the camera combined with internal reflection that appears to move as the spaceraft targetted the crater, and they then cropped the image thereafter.

You have to ask - a shadow of what? Smart's orbit is several hundred km - we're not talking Hayabusa here.

Doug

They can also do uplink via UHF now as well - but there's a long lead time for getting the data ready to send as it has to go up on whichever uplink to Odyssey is before the UHF pass, and it can be 24 hrs or more.

Charge batteries, downlink some lower priority mid-drive imaging (such as a sol 812 and sol 856 L1 albedo pan), , do some more flight software uplinks, all good stuff.

Doug

3:26 p.m. EDT - 1926 GMT - I think you're an hour out.

Doug

They've scrubbed and have another hack at it tomorrow.

Doug

They're going to hold at t-9 as long as the window will allow

Doug