Read up on 'Floating Bus'

In that one image, perhaps. But in others it looks very round. I'd suggest it's probably more of a processing artifact of that image rather than anything else. 22 images stacked of 10 seconds...and the stars appear to be registered....so the Comet was moving. Thus the nucleus is not registered and we are probably seeing the stacking version of motion blur.

Look at the rest of the Sol 411 Mastcam images... it's the inside of the soil scoop
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...mp;camera=MAST_

I think I found most of the city features here
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=203752

Many many things in deep space are the inverse of self-evident.

And yes - there does have to be something...some sort of evidence that your theory holds water. Experimentation, simulation etc to lend it validity.

Is there anything in the literature to suggest those suppositions are true.

Moreover LEO is a poor place to checkout because you have rapid day/night cycles, and any one DSN pass would only be a few 10's of minutes, rather than a more typical 8 hours. And it's quite possible that LEO on an LGA is a poorer downlink than cruise on an HGA.

No - not this site. Nasaspaceflight.com - great resource.

That drive was autonav only - it was sol 2 of a 2 sol driving plan. All it got was a go-no go without a full up planning cycle

Honestly - I prefer ugordan's

At that point - why not just render an animation derived from the MARDI imagery. You're so far from the original data you might as well just make a composite HiRISE / MARDI image mosaic, drape it over a HiRISE DTM and rotoscope it to match the MARDI frames.

The rover has to stop to take images - and it's not a quick process either - it can take several minutes.

The distance you're seeing, the 'choppy' nature of it...that's the distance between autonav steps.

To stop more frequently to take more images to make a smoother 'road movie' would actually result in a far shorter drive because more time would be spent taking photos, not driving.

Look toward the second half of this graph - see how little time is motion. The rest is taking autonav imagery, like the images you've animated together.
http://curiosityrover.com/tracking/speedpl...hp?drivenum=101

Look more closely at that graph - there are many days in that graph that are not drive days. The last 10 drives have averaged more than 70 meters each. ( thank you http://curiositylog.com/ )




That brochure should be considered...a brochure. It's not an engineering analysis, it's not a peer reviewed paper in an engineering journal - it's just...a shiny brochure.

200M represents a round number near the upper limit of what Curiosity may eventually reach given full deployment of Autonav, smoother terrain with better visibility etc etc.

We may not see 200M in a sol - but in a perfect scenario we might.

Anything you put in it will be corrupt beyond recognition in a few decades anyway so the entire exercise is without merit.


And with that - I'll refer you back to the moderator note added to your previous post.

Go to any aerospace grade machine shop.

I'm guessing a little bit here - by comparing shapes of Urban areas with this - http://www.google.com/gadgets/directory?sy...id=703857012153

Also attached - METEOSAT IR image from 2000UT on the night of the flyby - fairly clear, but some cloud N/NE OF J'berg. Hopefully that city will be visible once we get a bit more image.

It's GREAT stuff. One tub and you can do the non-newtonian fluid trick of "it's a fluid....now punch it and it's hard" and blowing some down a straw and it burns beautifully

Remember - the wheels were built with several large holes in them....that spell JPL in morse code.

They make little to no difference to traction or surface pressure. Remember - it's 899kg across 6 wheels each with basically the same surface contact patch. It wont change significantly with a few dings and dents in it.

However - your conclusion "the builders did their job, then there's nothing to worry over" is 100% accurate.

It really really really doesn't. It behaves like talc or cornflower. A fine dry powder. It's nothing like wet sand. Imprints in wet-sand sag greatly. Those in dry fines ( analogous to talc / cornflower ) don't. Wet sand glints and shines in the sun. Dry fines don't.

Grab a tub of cornflower and stick a spoon in it, or push it around with a spatula. I would expect any Martian soil behavior you don't quite understand to sort of 'click' in an instant.

Signal delay isn't really a significant contributing factor to the processing of understanding, crafting and testing commands to resolve, and fixing a safe-mode entry.

However - you can get significantly higher downlink rates from omnidirectional antennas at these sorts of couple-hundred-thousand-mile ranges. THAT can help a lot.

N deG T also goes on to say he enjoyed it

Part of me is looking forward to this movie as all reports I've heard are that it is utterly breathtaking

Part of me is dreading walking out at the end thinking "they went to all that trouble to make it breathtaking. it would have taken no more effort to make it breathtaking AND accurate"

And all of me just wants to enjoy a movie and wishes people would stop applying documentary like criticism to a piece of pure entertainment.

No. The arm must be fully stowed before driving. In principle, MARDI could be used during I drive I think - and that would show a small part of the FR wheel moving.

Not with the raw JPG's it isn't. By the time calibrated images are in the PDS, we'll have seen the results already from the science team, I'm sure.

We will know long before then.

It would have taken weeks to get to a location worthwhile for imaging that hardware. Weeks. Split the cost of the mission into Sols. Do the math. The lost opportunity would not be getting to Mt Sharp before the end of the prime mission.