oooo- pretty

Orbit 648, nIR, G and B, not calibrated, but just adjust to look 'nice'

Doug

Thanks Emily

When I get a chance I'm going to try and do these transcripts in the same style as the Steve one with lots of appropriate images to go along with them.

I apologise for those that listen to this and go "hmm - Doug sounds funny" - I've got a bit of a cold

Keep the (sensible) questions coming in

Doug

You know how some MER mosaics are large....

The Gusev obs from Jan 16th '04....oh my...

4295 x 75,543 - call it 325 Megapixels.

Doug

Just getting stuff via the RSSD and I can see your folders on the server Dan

Panic not people, I've already advised against a Planetary Society naming competition

I think I speak for everyone here in wishing you and D all the very best - you'll be missed, but I don't think anyone can feel anything but happy for you - we'll survive!

Now - does Cafe Press do baby wear

Doug

Not sure of the orbit number ( which is how the images are arranged ) but
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=34531

The center of the Gusev crater with the landing site of the NASA Spirit rover marked with a cross. The image was taken by the HRSC instrument in colour and 3D on 16 January 2004 from a height of 320 km.

(Managed to do an order via the RSSD Esa 'thingie'. Dan - would your technique for radiometric processing of this stuff be suitable for public consumption.)

Doug

Looking at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/0...Ellipse_25m.gif - there's nothing out there after Victoria realistically - the large feature to the SE if you wanted a suicide run of big blind drives and to hell with the risk...

Doug

Q'n'A is done, just waiting for Emily to put it on TPS website - but Jim said they have about 10% of the whole thing down, and the L7/R1 will be uncompressed, and the remaining filters will have very little compression.

Doug

LIke the one's that resulted in cancelled UHF sessions whilst still on the lander, and turning the spacecraft off in the afternoons whilst atop Husband Hill

Doug

Blimey - I'm reaching WAYYy back into the distant past here - I seem to remember that they were a few degrees above predicts whilst still sat on the lander, but I've not heard anything since then.

Trying to convert that heat into a 'power saving' obviously requires more MER facts than we mortals have.....

Call it 4 degrees. Say we have an equiv within the structure and contents of the WEB of say 20kg of water in terms of equiv thermal capacity.

Specific heat is 4186J, x 20, x4 - 334880 Joules of energy.

3600 seconds in one hour, 1 Whr thus provides 3600 Joules - so 4 degrees of heat in 20kg of water is 93 Whrs. I have no idea if that relates in any way shape or form to the potential for saved power onboard a rover, but it's a thought isn't it.

Still waiting for that sky hemisphere eh Mike

Doug

Dust. They expected the dust to kill them soon after 90 sols.

To engineer the robustness and longevity to last 1000 sols ( i.e. design spec of 3000 sols as they design for minimum component life of 3x the requirement as I understand it ) from the outset, it would have put mass, volume, time and money over the edge.

Doug

BJORN - img2png has another 'requriement'

Dan - did you get those via the map interface or elsewhere? The bottom image is superb.

Doug

Opportunity is about 2 - 3 Victoria diameters to the NW

Doug

They've not said they're going to physically RAT the soil ( that would be silly ) - just use it as a type of shovel - push stuff about.

Doug

Only difference between this and the trenching ( two intentional, several unintentional ) is the degree of accuracy in the depth being taken away. I don't imagine there will be any 'wow' moments, just good science.

Doug

I think it's to do with range geometry - someone may be able to correct me

Doug

What's more odd is the post SRB-sep dogleg. You get that with West coast launches a lot, and sometimes it's visible with East Coast launches, but I dont remember seing such an obvious dog leg as that.

A lot of Delta II onboard vids, if you play them at 4x speed, you can see a big of a dogleg

Doug

The ability to bulk-download, preferably as zipped-batches is something I insisted is an appropriate means for downloading PDS data when a gentleman who is doing a project of assesing use and formatting of the PDS spoke to me a few months ago

Doug

We just don't have the ability to do the very very fine auto-nav that would be required out there. It will require people in the loop throughout the mission.

Doug

I can't imagine anyone being able to do such a mission with anything less than a New Frontiers budget ( $750M+ ) - and it's just unrealistic to suggest it would be a new space fairing nations first mission into deep space - it's a mission that would require a LOT of experience with deep space tracking, and seriously accurate navigation.

Doug

So on one hand we've got reports of a terrain so hard they'll struggle to dig through it, and on the other reports that the engines will blow away 1/3rd of a ton of the stuff.

Doug

Sea Launch is 5200kg to GTO
Delta II Heavy - 2064 to GTO

Sea Launch is more like a low end Delta IV in terms of performance ( at one point I believe it held the outright commercial payload mass record )

Doug

Unfortunately, most of Spirit's traverse since leaving the summit of Husband Hill is obscured by near-field topography.

Doug

I think that would sit quite nicely in the Communtiy Chit Chat sub forum - by all means get lyrical therein

Doug

I don't intend to colourise monochrome images for it - I'm trying to document as well as possible the images they took. It's just a smidge of artistic interpretation too much for me - I love that image, don't get me wrong, I'll be using it in my talk to the BAA on Sat. AM as the only Spirit image in an Opportunity talk just to mention Spirit's current state of health, but that's not the image the rover actually took . But that mosaic in B'n'W is certainly on my list of contenders - it'll be Christmas time before I get the raw data for it though. Who knows - there may be even better mosaics of that area at low-sun angles before we leave the 'sunbed' of winter.

The other issue is that a colour page costs more to print than a black and white page - and when it comes to spending on the colour, I'd rather it were colour taken at the time than suggestive artistic colour. Possibly an unpopular choice but if and when I get this book done, I think it'll be the better for it.

My next 'wish for' is MRO HiRISE imagery to act as basemaps for fold out route maps front and back.

Doug