I went and found the orig MSSS image, got the IMG, NASA-Viewed it, did a trick a read that Phil uses by essentially subtracting from the whole image a vertical average of every column of pixels ( to subtract some of the streaking - I duplicated the image, resized to one pixel high, resized to the full size, inverted and put at 50%...ish) - then enlarged by 50% with simply nearest neighbour interpolation to not infer anything that isnt there, and then did the same trick of Phil's again to get rid of a little more noise, and came up with this.

Doug

ORRrr....

Design them with the ability to navigate themselves to locally safe places to land during terminal descent.

Doug

It's the first one - it's going to be troublesome. Give them a chance to work it all out and THEN see how they do.

Doug

Just had a thought - if the impact into the side of the crater wall was enough to lunch the spacecraft, then how did the spacecraft trigger the pyros to jettison the three airbags? They couldnt be that far apart yet not seperated could they? WHo knows, hopefully MRO will tell us what's really in that little crater in 12 months time or so.

Doug

Well - to be fair, Oppy didnt land in a crater, it rolled into one

I just saw CP on BBC Breakfast News, and he was fairly cautious that

Unless B2 broke up high in the atmosphere and burnt up, there should be SOMETHING on the ground. A new impact crater, or a parachute, or a parachute and some airbags etc etc depending on how far the whole thing got. Given how easily the MER chutes were spotted - SOMETHING should be visible, and this is as good a candidate as anything, so it gives a specific target for HIRISE, and given the HIRISE data flow, I'm going to be hooked on the data when it arrives

Doug

BRILLIANT - What one could do is take all the engineering plots from the zip's at the workbook site and use them to plot a really accurate route within endurance. Do you have a reasonable scale for that thing Phil?

I used the engineering plot to find out which way they left the Heatshield impact. It's a bit annoying to download 100Meg+ of seemingly nothing to get a single plot, but the results could be worth it

Doug

Not shadow - reflection

If you look at the various diagrams here...
http://hobbiton.thisside.net/rovermanual/

You can see where there are parts of rover deck where they could point the camera and get a reflection of the LGA

Doug

Oh right - that was the Music video to the actualy song called Beagle 2 - not sure where you would get that.

Doug

Yes - I think the decision between El-D and the other target is simply which to visit BEFORE going to HP, and that there isnt really time to visit both as they are in different directions.

Doug

http://www.beagle2.com/resources/video-album.htm

Specifically

http://video.beagle2.com/Descent/play_descent_a_640x368.htm
http://video.beagle2.com/Descent/play_descent_b_640x368.htm
http://video.beagle2.com/Descent/play_descent_c_640x368.htm

The first part of the animation is wrong in depicting MEX deploying B2 from what appears to be Martian orbit - whereas in actual fact MEX deployed B2 several days before arriving at Mars.

I getting asked about the fate of Beagle 2 in almost every talk I give - the British public is very proud of that little spacecraft, despite it being a failure simply because it was an underdog type situation. I just hope MRO can give us some sort of answer.

Doug

Someone from the yellow forum posted the L7 of this sequence asking what it was that was dropped onto the solar cells. Looking at it closely, it's actually a reflection of the LGA which I thought was fascinating to see in colour!

I'd agree - it'd be the work of 2 sols at most to get there, easy driving on good terrain. Then head SE to the next target.

Doug

If it wasnt moving, both would be zero would they not

And correlation between altitude and wind speed is to be expected - it's exactly what we have on earth.

How do you explain the graph on page 9 if the spacecraft was stood still? The sudden spike around the time you think it landed is simply a high altitude wind sheer. Again, something we see on earth.

Honestly, saying something like that is somthing I'd expect of Hoagland.

Doug

Bad acronym time, MRO's Atlas was a gentle under-arm lob. NH's Atlas is a full out fast overarm fling

Doug

You've had to have a failure of 4 cameras to kill of the driveability of a rover, and even then you've had to kill of FHAZ as well to make it really really impossible.

Given that there's a lot of PC imaging scheduled, I think we can put this down to a brief glitch that they understand or perhaps was the result of a brain-fart in a pancam sequence. Funny images, and they'll make a nice entry into a Mars talk anyway


Doug

He stole one of Phils image recently and put 'courtesy of...' . Cheeky sod.

Doug

By all means post that chart and give us some evidence for you astonishingly outlandish claim. I still think your supposition is very very silly. There is an accurate, detailed, step by step timeline that outlines every event on the spacecraft from wake up to landing as taken from spacecraft data. I'd love to see why you think you know better than the people who designed, built and flew the probe. The most obvious piece of data is that the Penatrator gives an accurate time of impact, and it sure as hell isnt 20 minutes after entry.

Doug

Yes - it's doing a deck pan self portrait.

Doug

They're there to absorb the acoustic shock of launch as I understand it.

Doug

You can actually see the landing event on the doppler, and it's certainly not 20 mintues after entry, that's just silly.

Doug

We have 606

Spirit's wheel (the Sticky FR wheel) is actually back to nominal, and has been for almost a year. A few months of backwards driving sorted the situation totally.

Doug

I can well understand why Steve wouldnt want to visit and post here in person. Imagine Bono posting on a U2 forum

Doug

Well, only the little entry capsule comes back - I assume the spacecraft itself will either be diverted, or burn up after seperation.

And anything not tucked away deep inside that entry capsule will be subject to very very high temperatures and Mach 25+ airflow.

So the only thing you can get back is whatever is IN the sample capsule.


Doug

Steve was here. Damn....I must have missed him...



Doug