Did you mean to say 'no covers at all' ?

As thinking back to imagery from the KSC gallery - I certainly dont remember any covers on the instruments you mention.

Doug

(PS - Galileo was basically knackered - electronics exposed to huge ammounts of radiation - and certainly not enough fuel to go into Europan orbit - the reason for crashing it into Jupiter as I understand it was that they didnt expect to have enough fuel for manouvering on board to keep control of the vehicle, and they wanted to dispose of it whilst still in control of it.)

Looks like S.F.'s just about ready to take off after a 24 hour wave-off

Going to be an astonishing flight if they can pull it off : 450 degrees of Longitude to cover. Amazing.

Using Google earth on 28.59683lat 80.6824lon - It puts it current RIGHT at the southern end of the Shuttle Landing Facility - right at the tip of the last yellow chevron on the 'run up' to the main strip.#

Live tracking here - http://www.virginglobalflyer.com/MissionControl/Tracking/

Amazingly, no news website seems to be carrying the take off at all - but one can just see a little screen of aircraft in the mission control centre, which I'm watching as a feed - it's bad but it works

Good luck to S.F. and VAGF

(FWIW - I've pulled off this flight in FS2k4, KSC - east, to KSC, then NNE to Maine and E to the UK - it's EASY - don't know what the fuss is about. Using Autopilot at 16x time accell is possible in real life, right? )

Doug

(PS - update -Engine started and chocks away....and TAKE OFF!!!)

It does strongly remind me of Burns Cliff - the middle parts that are suggested as being depositied by wind, and then being altered by water. Who knows. Why is it here? What IS Home Plate, what's that stuff made of, ahhhhh---it's all too much

Big MI sequence tosol it seems, Spirits IDD will get a work out today.



43 Mi images - suggestive of perhaps 12 pointing locations? a 4 x 3 or 6 x 2 mosaic?

Doug

That would make a lot of sense. UMSF is indeed entirely DB driven, PHP, SQL and Apache all have to work to serve each page. If for some reason you have a local cached version perhaps with your ISP or work network - that would 'break' it.

Doug

Still 100% for me from both work and home- I really don't know what to suggest.

Doug

The Rat's ability to grind has been lost for months - it's worn out. They can brush, but not grind.

Doug

two threads merged

Trying to sway the colours toward a 'this is what I think it's like' ballpark is a dangerous game - it assumes that mars is the same every day - and boy oh BOY if you look at the calibrated stuff, it isnt - sometimes it looked redder, sometimes greyer, sometimes browner, sometimes even a bit bluer

I'll admit it - that image I posted isnt where I'd leave it, but it's not that far off to be honest - it was a fairly dingy period around then.

Doug

They wont climb to the top here ( infact, they'd have no chance ) - but they're in a 'Hillary' type position- parked up a bit of a slope probably as far as the rover will go - wheel wiggle to settle it - and IDD away

Doug

I think the flow from DSN->Exp is probably too long and convoluted to make anything accurate - but I'm fairly sure I'm right that that last figure is the beginning of the on-the-ground-time. At the very bottom of that page you can see the data rate that Odyssey is downlinking to earth - and some are quite slow - so they'll take perhaps as much as 30, 45 mins+ to get that data in full.

Doug

That's a stunning approach drive, with the slope, the distance - I'd have called it a aprt 2 - but they're birded that - they can go straight into an IDD sequence - fantastic!

Doug

it's only 1504 for Spirit, don't expect any new imagery from Tosol for about 2 hrs.

Yeah - with not HUGE power, and so many consecutive driving sols, I think Spirit needed a day off to recharge and empty a bit more flash ready for what I guess will be an IDD campaign on this slope, plus perhaps another Pancam Pan.

Doug

The very easiest way for this is if someone can get it into celestia, and we can just run thru the flyby looking for interesting moment

You've opened a big bad can of worms here John Downlink was 2048kbps from Jupiter wasnt it

I'm sure you'll have lots of loonie ideas - but a moon rising or setting from behind Jupiter with possible refraction thru the upper atmosphere could be interesting....

Not sure of exact timing (see attached) if I have the night-side-day-side right, this would see a crecent Io set behind the dark-limb of Jupiter, so it would be squished and squashed as it set, in a way a little similar to this...
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images.../s103e5037.html but without a bright limb of Jupiter to get 'in the way'

Some upper atmosphere refraction has been seen by Cassini...
http://ciclops.org/media/dr/2005/1114_2631_2.png
http://ciclops.org/media/dr/2005/1191_2857_2.png
http://ciclops.org/media/dr/2005/1017_2487_1.jpg

Perhaps something to be learnt about the properties and extent of the upper jovian atmosphere by catching this little event?

I think that the classic Cassini 'mutual' events of transits etc are likely to be uncommon at a range worth imaging (guessing here).

Another potential target that's perhaps half scientific, half Kodak - is a lit side of a moon, being partially occulted by the jovian ring system- not sure how it might look or if it would appear at all, but again, potential for something 'interesting' if not beautiful


Doug

Has the NASA slice of the pie been altered much during 'processing' of the budget in years past? It's such a small slice of 2T$ that I can't imagine it would get that much attention apart from a brief glance from the politicians who have a local interest in each NASA center or major contractor.

Doug

I think they're using the ONC more as a tech-demonstrator to feed forward to future missions that will require that sort of accuracy. As it is for MRO, 'classical' navigation techniques are probably enough.

They wont be pretty pictures, but they'll be interesting none the less.

Doug

Because the super res channel was a last minute botch-job-bolt-on and has suffered bad focus since launch.

The images from it are at the PDS - but they're not great.

http://www.fpk.tu-berlin.de/forschung/mex/...Performance.pdf


One could be negative or positive about the situation - on one side, we've never had it so good....
3 (+1 en route) functional Mars Orbiters, two working mars rovers, a new lander launching in 2 years and another rover in 4.
A spacecraft orbiting Saturn with prospects for a long extended mission.
New twin solar observatory about to be launched
NH on it's way to Pluto
Ulysses and Voyager 1+2 still giving good data
Samples returned from a Comet for study for decades to come
A new Lunar orbiter in early phase planning
Mission en route to land on a comet and orbit mercury
etc etc

BUT - one could also be quite negative...
Nothing on the board for beyond Jupiter in the forseable future
MSR seemingly accelerating it's progress down the calender to the 2020's.
No dedicated Mars comms assets ( but then nothing apart from MSL that might need it on the board )
Little progress with the Discovery program
An asteroid mission on 'rain check' status
Hayabusa in questionable status
etc etc

Basically - consider it this way - it could be better, and indeed Europa deserves serious attention. But it could be SO much worse.

But seing an increase to the US Military budget that is 1875% larger than the total spending for Space Science hurts - a lot. I have no grounds to moan - I don't pay US taxes, this isnt my money - but were I a US citizen, I'd be writing letters.

Doug

If you're parked at HP when the winter sets in, you can just sit there - that's it. You can't move on because you'd get to some flat slopes or south slopes taht could give you critically low power

Get over to a big slope like the hill, and you can actually drive around with a northerly tilt getting some sun whilst still making some progress to a new area.

Doug

Meanwhile...

"Mr Bush has sought backing for a 6.9% jump in US military spending to $439.3bn."

That increase is about $30B

Now - I'm not going to get into the whole political thing - but it's clear that his Space initiative of '04 was all talk and nothing else - he just wanted to ride the popularity of MER.

A 1% increase in NASA budget is actually, in real terms, a 1.5% cut.

Doug

Let's wait to find out what it's actually made of first

Doug

Well - consider the MER MI cover - that's an orange filter - so even if the cover's shut, you can still see something.

I'd imagine using something like lexan or other transparant materials for a thermal cover of an instrument has potential for a lot of problems with being britle, heavier, bad thermal properties, perhaps outgassing and contaminating optics etc etc....

And as Alan's said a few times, better is the enemy of good enough.

Doug

I've been looking at the new entries at the PDS for WHR quotes, to compile as good a list of actual quoted Whr values as I can......so if you find one, add it to this thread and I'll update this post with figures....any source as long as it's an actual figure and an actual sol.


B0515 - 418 Whrs
B0522 - 462 Whrs

Ahhaaa...
Sometimes it just pops out at me - "ahh - THAT rock = THAT rock...." and bang - I know what's going on, but sometimes it just doesnt quite work

It all makes sense now ( as does the last few posts of this thread after a bit of culling )

Doug

It's images like that that prompted me to ask about the possibility of imaging the ground during a transit instead of the sun, to see the terrain darken. Hopefully next transit season


Doug

I'm struggling to place the rover w.r.t. the imagery from before the last long drive....any pointers?

Doug