I figure it's because of using filter sets that are not particularly faithful to 'rgb' - it's more like the MER equiv of using L257 (and infact, that can come out a little green as well). Also - I'm not 100% confident when using the FITS Liberator - which high and low end value to use. I tried to use identical values for all of them but it varied a lot - and arguably the exposure is in the mix there somewhere.

Doug

That's this winter's holiday trip sorted then....we're going climbing again

Actually - I wonder if they will go for the summit again, with the aim to roll to the top by next summer - would there be any benefit, or would it make more sense to head to different terrain.

Doug

68 Colour observations of Mars that I've been able to make into reasonable images - the job of putting these into order, adding the ACS images into the chronological sequence and annotating them is 1) long and 2) saved for later...however

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im..._wfpc2_contact/

12 contact sheets ( 6 to a page ) outlining all of them at a browser-worthy res.

Doug

Given the speed with which Spirit went from shiney and 850WHr+, to "must get to the hills now!" - I think the southern slope of Husband Hill could well be such a place to some extent. I know that the terrain and the season's are not helping, but Spirit has got very dirty very quickly since leaving the summit, and given the El-D feature - it would make sense that in this region, dust is getting dropped.

Doug

There's some great discussion about this going on over at the Planetary Society members forum, (the chance to interact with Louis and Bruce warrants the price of admission) - and I think this says everything we're all thinking..

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.rss.html?pid=19811

Doug

Alternatively, just write a convertor for the released data which includes meshes

Oh yeah- hint hint

Doug

I'm not particularly up to speed on US politics and the way these budgets get approved or adjusted and so on..

What potential is there for the budget submitted to be changed before being signed off?

Doug

That doesnt change anything though. "But it's only two tanks" or "that's a new cinema" or "12 hours of ISS" or whatever - none of those make the $40m any less or more available.

Doug

I make a 2km drop to Europa a 72 m/sec impact after a fall of 52 seconds.

I'm guessing you want the forebody at least 2m down, and thus that's, I THINK - 124G.

The afterbody, you want it to stop very quickly, perhaps 25 cm, thus that's, again, if my maths is right - approx 1000G

Doug

Then once you have a fairly populated array of values, you can generate a mesh......and put the image back on it...and bingo - the full on 3d navigable environment we've been dying for

Doug

If it IS cancelled, then surely it deserves the Phoenix treatment? Put it up for another team to pick up and fly, because the science is still justified imho

Where's our save the mars lander and save the pluto mission man when you need him - time for a new campaign

Doug

How would one know what? That there's no dust devils at night? They are an afternoon phenom. kicked off by warming slopes by the sun. That the cleaning happened over night? Because solar array output was much higher than it ought to have been just after sunrise compared to the previous day.

Doug

The Feb 29th manouver would have been TCM 4, that statement is refering to the half-way-point-ish manouver a few months ago.

Doug

7 frames in all -



(Some were duplicate frames, multiple filters on the same spot)

Interesting little mosaic - nice bit of fun - here's the official job ( notice the properly calibrated imagery doesnt have the between-ccd-'cracks' http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/...14/image/b+warn

Doug

That stuff from Garvin wont be release for raw-pleasure until later this year ( it's usually 12 months )

However - I think I've found the Storrs stuff - it's listed as 'copernicus' with the PI Caldwell (as I believe these obs were a ride-along type observation)

Having a look at them now

Doug

I've looked - but searching under 'moon' doesnt work. Searching for 'mars' does (for mars images) - ditto 'luna' or 'lunar' - nothing.. Not sure what other values to try using to be honest.

Have a look for yourself if you like - http://archive.eso.org


Doug

No - targetted remote sensing only looking at the tracking - I assume a fair ammount of Mini TES at the outcrop to determine if its worth staying around to look at.

Doug

I'm having difficulty imagining a Europa impactor.

You'd have to have active attitude control, thus either hydrazine thrusters, or perhaps some cold-gas thrusters to maintain attitude for the nose-first impact.

You've not got the budget, I assume, for much delta V to slow the thing down before impact - so we're talking a very VERY fast impact - are we talking straight in from approach, or a deorbit manouver after arrival? The former might be several km/s - the later is going to be a very low angle of impact. ( I assume you want the later so some sort of targetting can be planned from high res imagery )

A 355km Europa Orbit is something like 1.3 km/sec orbital speed.

If you do a deorbit manouver of say, 100m/sec, your impact would be at about 5 degrees and more like 1.5 km/sec

Given that attitude control would require some sort of pressure vessel, be it cold gas or liquid prop, you're going to have an explosion on impact of some sort.

DS2 heritage is 1) not too great because let's not forget, DS2 was a failure for whatever reason. 2) the speed of impact is going to be an order of magnitude higher unless you take some sort of decelleration propulsion, in which case the mass is going to be an order of magnitude higher. 3) DS2 was passively orientated and required no active attitude control for entry or impact.

We're talking RTG (as you mention a long life span) which means a fairly heavy craft before we even think about anything else, and the rtg's going to have to be built like the proverbial brick out house to survive the thing going in. Plus the fact that we're talking about highly sensitive biological experiments - which don't really like hundreds of G.

I'd really really like to see something like this - but I struggle to see how an impactor probe would work out there.

I have to say - it's a very very long shot - the sort of long shot that'd I'd expect you to lambast for being totally outside the realms of sensibility Bruce

If there are specific design details around, I'd love to see some - see how they're proposing this thing.


Doug

I know JB's out the office at the moment, but I'm sure he'd help you out if you needed more info - his email addy is easily googlable.

Doug

Well - stats for an NH2 type launch are not particularly available, but - figures that are include mass to LEO and mass to GTO - they're both a good indicator of the potential performance of the vehicle.

For the Atlas 551, it's 20,520 and 8670kg
For the Delta IV Heavy (which has flown once, with only partial success) it's 12,757 to GTO (can't find an LEO figure) - so approx a 50% hike in performance

However....going on the baseline of whacking a star upper stage on to the vehicle, the performance maths probably comes out a little more complicated than that.

Also - there's the cash issue

An Atlas 551 is approx $192m ( according to Astronautix.com ) - whereas a Delta IV Heavy is $254m. That alone, the $60M difference, could be a deal breaker.

Doug

I'm expecting the winter slopes to be almost exactly inbetween your green and yellow areas - just about where your blue line makes it's highest point. I don't think anyone's expecting them to go all the way over to that green area. Your yellow area is west facing, which doesnt offer any benefits.


Doug

This is the first WFPC2 image I've done, they're 800^2 not 1024^2 - so a little smaller, but in terms of image quality, they're just as good - and there's a LOT of them - as you can see this one is from 1994

Doug

Remember - it's not the dust devils that actually cleaned Spirit - these cleaning events often happened over night - no dust devils at night

Hills, summits, valleys - that's what we need to keep Spirit clean - places with just strong wind.

Doug

I've submitted 3 more tracert's to the host. Flicking between my internet connection and a neigbours internet connection ( Plunet ADSL and NTL Cable ) - mine works, the neigbours doesnt. Who know how many people have just given up on the place - and the coincidence of this problem first appearing with a drop in total visit numbers for Feb is too much to leave un-attended - so I'm going to keep hacking at the hosting firm till they correct it.

Doug

No - it's not just you - I'm looking into it - but edited your post manually to sort it out in the mean time

Doug