Helvick, you should have a look at MER mobility reports

Doug

Very rought and read - but L257 of the same pan from earlier, plus the new Navcam Mosaic

Doug

As I understand it - spacecraft are all moving very quickly in different directions, so there is dopler to worry about, and they are scheduled to listen at particular upilnk rates, and so on and so forth.

If MRO's listening to it's uplink at X bps, and it's being sent at Y Hz off the specified frequency, it may be that Spirit interprets that as a bad uplink as it was expecting W bps and is moving in a way that is Z Hz of specified wavelength.

I'm fairly sure they'll be able to sequence things intelligently to sort this problem out.

Doug

Links to them - not a problem. Having them inline of the thread, not so great for those without BBand

Doug

Another 9 hours away till the sols add up - but yup, I was thinking about that a few days ago, and Steve's comments last year about reaching 1000 sols.

Also -we're coming up to 150,000 images - 67,237 + 78,008 = 145,000. About an average of 96 images per sol.

Doug

There's a common node that's causing trouble, but no news yet.

Doug

Here's my cunning maths on the matter

My digital camera takes 4 x 2100 mAh 1.2 Volt AA cells. - they offer a total of 10.08 Whrs - so for 600 Whrs, you'd need 240 good AA Ni-MH cells for a days operation

Doug

Ahh - you're assuming 100% efficiency in the use of petrol.

Typically, an efficient Petrol engine is 30%, Diesel perhaps as much as 40% or more

So you'd need not 72 ml/sol, but more like 220 ml/sol

Doug

They are 281kg. I assume by 'big enough' he means dimensions, not lifting capacity. And even so, it's not a dimensions issue - it's simply that the russian docking ports are smaller than a CMG. There is no external cargo stowage capacity on LV's - that's the problem.

What we don't have is a US unmanned ISS vehicle. There is an ESA one in the works, and a Russian one that's is very very relaible. There is no doubt that a means could be found to carry many CMG's to ISS using one of those vehicles. Similarly, it would not be the work of billions of dollars to build a simple unmanned bus that operates like progress, to have externally stowed cargo to launch via a EELV. It really isnt a big technical challenge.

What Bell is saying is that they are going to intentionally launch the next shuttle knowing that it will shed foam and thus he is alledging that NASA is knowingly and intentionally endangering the lives of astronauts. It's not just idiotic, it's sick. He's sensationalising in the extreme to draw attention to himself, that's all.


Doug

I feel your pain, beleieve me. It's an utterly shocking data set. I'm going to re-visit it once Bjorn has finished the next incarnation of img2png which will deal with FITS imagery as well

THere seemed to be hundreds of images of, well, nothing.

Doug

One of Maggie Thatchers few highlights - not involving the UK in Hermes and infact, despite there being a Union Jack in the ISS, as I understand it, we're not involved in Columbus either. We don't spend much on space here, far far far too little, but what we do spend, at least wasnt poured down that particular black hole...

HOWEVER...

I still maintain that the US HAS to complete it's obligation to international partners with ISS. Bush called for international cooperation in the VSE, and he's simply not going to get that if they scew over Japan and Europe with ISS. NASA can do that however it wants - using STS or something else - but it HAS to do it. ITAR makes international cooperation harder now than ever before ( ask the Canadians working on PHX ) - so the US, if it is serious in wanting future involvement with other agencies, HAS to do what it signed up to many many years ago. Reading the excellent 'Titans of Saturn', I'm more convinced of that than ever,

I take little notice of what Bell says, he has an agenda in everything he says and interprets everything to support his agenda, it's hard to take him seriously as a result. He occasionally flags up a good point, but rarely more than that, his article reads more like a forum ranting than a piece of journalism.

The early Atlantis retirement makes a lot of sense, and shows to me that Griffin really does want to get rid of STS as quickly as is reasonably possible.

The scrapping of plans for a cargo CEV shows, perhaps, that he's prepared to take commercial options for shifting smaller loads into orbit (Delta 4, Atlas 5 etc ). An alternate interpretation of that particular piece of evidence.

Doug

two posts deleted, one that was a personal attack and contributed nothing but flame to the thread, and one that replied to it.

Healthy debate is welcome here. Unsubstantiated ranting and attacts at members have not, nor ever will be.

Doug

Actually - I've found MER imagery to have a much better range than most digital cameras - and whilst I've played with HDR a little in the 3D field, I can't imagine much benefit for MER purposes.

Doug

Then you'll know and understand perfectly that the scientists would love to make progress, but it makes no engineering sense to do things like get more stuck in a sand dune, or irreperably damage the IDD.

You want them to rush the procedure out of Purgatory and get stuck even more?

You want them to drive in a way that risks damaging the IDD beyond use or crank the current at that shoulder joint till it burns out?

YES - we all want to make good progress, but there are times when one simply can not do so.

Another 100 engineers on the case, and perhaps the purgatory and IDD situations could have been worked faster, but they're not around to do that, the money isnt there. Say "we'll need X engineers to keep running" - then the financial 'ask' for further extensions is too big and it's not going to happen.

Lest we forget, it's only by hanging around at Erebus that we discovered the potential festooning. Another part of the jigsaw. We'd never had a panorama taken in all filters, we do now. These are not 'lost sols' - they're simply sols not doing what you want them to be doing. That's not lost, it's just different.

I still maintain you dramatically underestimate what has been discovered at Erebus, and given the time it takes, there will be many a scientific paper which makes reference to the work here.

Again - yes - driving is great and we'd all love to see much much more of it, but it's a case of what is possible with the resources ( on both planets ) available, not what we 'want'.

Doug

Hell yeah

Again - you're making the mistake in assuming the scientists CHOSE to stop at Purgatory and Erebus. They didn't. These are situations forced upon them by engineering limitations. There is no choice to be made. Listen to Jim Bell - they WANT to leave Erebus, they WANT to get moving, they WANT to get to Victoria JUST as much as anyone else.

To say they've learnt nothing in the last year is an horrific underestimated of what Opportunity has been up to.



An no one knows that more than the MER team. Look at the progress they made when engineering allowed them to! 220M in a single day - that's HUGE. They barely stopped at Viking, Voyager, Vostok, Naturaliste, Argo, Arvin, Jason, James Caird, nor way back at Anatolia or Fram.....and when they did stop for science when first getting to some Erebus outcrop, they found a new previously unseen coating on the rocks adding more recent data to the story of water.

Look at Spirit, listen to Jim talk about how they totally passed up some AMAZING targets between El Dorado and Home Plate - they utterly utterly RACED that distance, these guys know how and when to give it the berries for covering ground. When they can - when it is appropriate - they do.

There is a difference between wanting to do something, and being ABLE to do something. Only the people who designed, built, and control these vehicles know their engineering limitations and know how much they can or can not do at any time. Criticism is unjustified.

Everyone, EVERYONE wants to foot-to-the-floor-to-Victoria. But just because you want something badly, doesnt make it an engineering posibility. It's that simple.


Doug

Well - there's no ethical issue imho, as there will have been much cross contamination between both planets via meteorite impacts and so forth. Yes - keep spacecraft clean, but you're never going to make a sterile spacecraft, and it doesnt really matter if you take a few friends anyway.

Doug

Looks like an 11 x 2 ish Pancam mosaic from the top.

(actually - i think there's some nearfield / clast survey in there, but there's certainly a 9x2 L257 from the top coming down)

Doug

I think as long as one rover is driving, then the money will still come, all be it in increasingly smaller ammounts. If we end up with a dead rover in terms of mobility, then there's only so long one can justify using it (a purgatory type of time probably- 3 months maybe ) - at that point you have to admit that there's not much more to do ( even JB said they were running out of things to do here at Erebus ) - and start a very restricted mode of operation - just occasional contacts etc.

Remember - they fund MER, not Spirit and Opportunity - it's one pot of cash, so as long as one is still doing good stuff, I think the money will still flow. The backlash and outrage if they do otherwise would 1) be audible in Washington from here in Leicester and 2) be huge in the US as well.

Doug

I guess it could - it's not the sort of situation I imagine they'd want to get in to, but there's nothing they could to to 'jetison' the IDD

Doug

Every B2 Component got treated by plasma or other methods at some point as I undertstand it.

Doug

False colour like that is used by the Pancam team as well - a new catagory of images at the PC website is going live soon with loads of not-true-colour images. Quite freaky in places The blue-loons will have a field day

Doug

The ultra clean processing of the Viking Landers ( and B2 ) was because they were looking for life. No point looking for it if you take it with you.

MPF, MPL, PHX, MERA and MERB were just 'clean' to fit in with international regs. The reason for the difference is what they went to look for

Doug

Unquestionably the former.

Don't confuse scientific aspirations with engineering limitations. What the scientists would like to do is not always possible.

Doug