I'm sorting out Q's for the next one - going to ask about the typical end-of-drive imaging, what it all is, what it means, why certain bits of it are done etc etc

Also - the flatfields, darkfields, how often and how are they done - and how Oppy is managing with it's hand on its head.

Doug

(PS - Jim's schedule is a bit packed for the second half of this week - so we're doing this one tonight)

Unarguably, the DSN is the most under-celebrated facility in the NASA arsenal. To pull the signals out that it does, to get the data rates that it does, and the navigational accuracy - it blows me away.

Doug

Well - each rover usually gets a DFE uplink in the morning. They've tried commanding using Odyssey - and it works - but I imagine that having to have a sequence ready to uplink to Odyssey, for an am Odyssey pass, makes the scheduling even more difficult and if you relied on that exclusively, you'd be in restricted sols even more regularly - so both rovers still get uplink from the DSN fairly regularly - plus listening for the 'beep' to confirm handover to the new sequence.

Doug

Oh - they've both trenched to that sort of depth I'd say

Doug

http://search.unmannedspaceflight.com/

OK - it's just a little empty right now, but it's still reasonably usefull. I want to add some little tools into it if I can - i.e. rover times, MRO MOI countdown etc.

But I'm also going to add a big catalogue of links on that page as well - hopefully they'll be navigable in a cunning and clever way, but I'm still working on it. Don't start sending links yet

The aim is to generate a webpage that people might use as their homepage.

Doug

Perhaps you would have to have some sort of small solid stage that takes the thing down to a much lower velocity at a few km altitude, and let it fall from there.

I wonder - would a Europa Impactor work at a Discovery budget ( unlikely I'd have thought ) or are we talking New Frontiers post-Juno ( with some small relay ability installed on Juno to handle it?)

Doug

Martian penetrators I can understand, a couple of hundred MPH impact - but places without an atmosphere? How do you go about bring the thing to a sensible impact?

Doug

Yes - I think they've been super-res'd recently.

Doug

WEll - if you're on a North Facing slope of a hill - you can drive around a little from target to target - you can still make progress as they did between Cahokia and Larry's Lookout - you've got some north facing teratory to explore.

BUT - if you're just in a place with a small north facing slope, then you're essentially stuck there until the sun starts to climb again.

Doug

Again, it looks like a thousand chunks of rock we've seen - it's just that now they're being considered 'odd' because there is plenty of fluffy volcanic material around

Doug

Nahh - I thought I'd just let it crash and loose everything at some point - I didn't think anyone would mind or notice.

In actual fact, database ( i.e. the text content, forums, members etc ) backups are taken daily, and stored on my laptop, my desktop machine, and ftp'd to a machine at a geographically distant site.

The attachments are downloaded weekly, and again, copies are held here at home, and elsewhere and regularly dumped to CD-R (soon to be DVD-R given the volume)

Doug

It's easy. I live in the northern hemisphere. You want a house with some nice south-facing garden so you get lots of sun. If you watch frosty roofs, you'll see the south facing ones de-frost much much faster than the north facing ones. As you get to winter, the effect is even stronger as the sun stays lower in the sky. I've got some little solar powered lights for the garden. I've actually tried this - if I stick them in the ground, one tilted north, one tilted south, and one not tilted at all - I can watch them as the night goes on, the north one goes out first as its battery flattens, then the 'flat' one and the south one will run for another hour or two.

Spirit is in the southern hemisphere of mars, so it wants a North facing garden, north facing slopes. Yes, it's only a few degrees south of the equator, but add that onto the tilt of the whole planet, and there's plenty to be gained by finding good slopes.

Lest we forget, after one unfortunate drive that put Spirit onto an un-favorable tilt back between West Spur and Larry's Lookout - she got down to less than 300 watts. It is no exageration to say that using the tilting terrain actually got Spirit thru its first winter.

Doug

And to add to that, from the day Spirit Landed - the MOC WA Globals of the South Pole one after the other. One could make, if you did this for months of imagery, a nice movie showing the expansion and shrinkage of the cap over the seasons.

Doug

Allow me.... (attached)

Is it fair to describe MGS as being from the 'old school' of spacecraft systems, whereby much of it works based on 'data rates' - wheres Odyssey is more from the new school of spacecraft which simply generates files? I suppose this is a symptom of the carry over from '92.

Doug

I'm thinking given that we've not really had more than a handfull of people show firm interest in the idea, that an '06 event isnt going to be feasable - and it would make sense to write it off as early as possible so people have that 'gap' in their schedules again. Helen and I may go to Valencia during taht week ANYway, but the logistics of starting to organise something more concrete for UMSF members dont add up at this stage.

Doug

Just thought of a question and YOU would be the man to answer. Reading the Flight Director reports over at the MER Notebook, I and saw mention that using MGS MOC relay, they tended to have trouble with image file products. I know that they dropped the MGS UHF passes after, what, 6 months or so ( I assume to do more work with MGS's instruments instead of having to have science downtime for relay? ) - but any idea what/how/why/where the trouble w.r.t imaging products was?

I have the full Opportunity EDL as about 50 mins of DVD, but it's a lady at MSSS that time I think, not sure who - but she mentions that MOC had started taking 'the global image' which I presume is http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/im...3/R1303894.html + http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/r10_r15/im...3/R1303895.html ?

Doug

Excitingly, it's 'OK'


MC - fear not - your moment of fame is available to download....

http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000100/

09:28

Flight : MGS MOC this if Flight on MER A Ops
MGS MOC : Go ahead flight
Flight : Can you give me a current status please
MGS MOC : We're not quite yet able to say how much data volume we're getting, stand by and I will let you know ASAP



13:14
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC (with more than a little noticeable excitement)
Flight : Go MGS MOC
MGS MOC : I have some indication of greater than 240 kilobytes of MR data at this point which may be indicitive of reception after landing...we'll have to wait about another 4 minutes to get this data back down

16:43
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC I have positive confirmation of more than 240 kilobytes of MR data (Planetary society then go wild - THEY know what it means)

18:10
MGS MOC : Flight MGS MOC
Flight : Go MGS MOC
MGS MOC : I have 16 frames in lock, we see it in lock earliest is 04:24:57, latest is at 04:28:57 which is considerably after the expected landing time (translate as....why are you not going nuts, I've got data from your rover right here) I'm still waiting for the second chunk of data, standby

At this point we give Wayne Lee a slap for calling you Mike Malin

21:01 the "It's THERE..it's THERE" LGA beep - and they finally figure the spacecraft is OK - MGS MOC thinks "for god's sake -I was telling you that 5 minutes ago!!"



Doug

From memory here....and I'll get it wrong I'm sure

"OK Engine stopped, ACA out of detent ,Descent Engine Command Override, Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in."

It's SOMETHING like that. Whenever you see a clip on TV, they go "OK Engine Stop, Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed" andin my brain, I drop in the lines they 'missed'

Doug

I'll sort something out at some point - but it needs to look 'appropriate' to fit in with the little site as a whole. I dont want to scare anyone.

Doug

Personally, I think these are shock waves. Very similar features can be seen above Thrust SSC when it broke the sound barrier at Black Rock.

If you look carefully at some of the images of Thrust SSC - you can see some of the sort of thing - the slight 'double line' appears in the visualisation that appeared by kicking up dust

http://www.galleryoffluidmechanics.com/ss_cars/shockvsm.htm

And quite clearly here



Somehow - the shockwave(s) have a large refractive index, as you can see in the Thrust SSC image. Now - the same process would refract light from the exhaust plume around to make it look like little bright lines which is what we see.

Doug

So sad - it's a lesson we all go thru at some point, I genuinely feel your pain -it's horrid.

Doug

That was YOUR voice for Mer A? Wow - you knew before anyone else that Spirit was alive basically.

I'd have been tempted to do this....

FD "MGS MOC - Flight"
You "Go ahead flight"
FD "Do you see anything yet"
You "Nope - not a thing. Nothing, bugger all"
FD "OK, Keep us posted"

Just to keep the suspense up a bit longer, then 5 minutes later

You "Flight MGS MOC"
FD "Go Ahead MGS MOC
You "I've got like, a quarter of a meg of stuff here from that thingie of yours, do you want me to put it on a data stick, or email you or something?"



Doug

1905Z on Jan 26th, according to Skype

Doug

There's no need to specifically for this place. As I mentioned when introducing the google ads - they are fundamentally optional. If you check the bottom left of the forum, you can pick a skin to have ads, no ads, or a search box.

Doug

I told Jim about the JPG's being totally borked, and so the JPG's have been re-processed in a way that meant they were not stretched to hell and back - so we've had a 're-release' of the recent Phobos tranists - one of them is just an utter bullseye shot - the best to date I think - I call it the 'polo mint' transit These are using the new 'sport mode' for Pancam, down to 3 sec between shots in places - very clever indeed - as mentioned in the Pancam Update MP3

Doug