I cant see ANY benefits compared to the '60s plans, certainly nothing that will make this any cheaper.

Doug

Not really Any tech/imagery stuff would be at home there.

Doug

BUT - that forum is tucked in the MER sub-section.... it's the most appropriate place for now, but I'm always trying to think of ways to catagorise and compartmentalise discussions better...it's harder than you'd think

Doug

Indeed you did - just saw it on Cspan2

Doug

Well - not put in my place, but I did ask on the Sat before the Thur when Sunspot found those images - and she said they didnt expect to see them till next year

She didnt know who I was w.r.t. this place though.

Doug

THe story of Kim Keller - I was a s.s.s. regular at the time and utterly gutted about that.

I've not been into SSS for years - is Maxson still at it?

Doug

An accurate retelling of events would be...

Sunspot spots a spoke, Emily shows it to people at DPS, People at DPS tell CP

They only told half the story really - and the full story would have been more interesting and a credit to the policy of putting raw images online.

Doug

Restricted sols - and seemingly a deck pan is in order - keep Oppy busy.

Doug

Having it intelligent enough to know which way to point is easy

GETTING it to point in that direction is hard. micro-gyros are expensive, electromagnetic stabilisation is slow.

Doug

Within the 'scope' as it were of a cubesat, you dont have THAT tight a control on orientation, even with electro magnetic or gravity gradient stability control. It might be worth checking out previously actively stabalised sats to see how much pointing accuracy they could muster.

I think a sensible, modest Cubesat is a sensible precursor to anything more bold.

Every few days I get an email from Cutesat...

Hello! This is XI MAIL.

* Message from us
This picture was taken over Japan.

* Status of XI-IV
Remaining Battery Level : 49.8%
Charging Current : 0.0mA
Electricity Generated : 0.6W
Temperature(+X Panel) : 24.7deg
Temperature(-X Panel) : 24.7deg
Temperature(+Y Panel) : 24.7deg
Temperature(-Y Panel) : 21.2deg
Temperature(+Z Panel) : 23.3deg
Temperature(-Z Panel) : 18.4deg
Temperature(Battery) : 21.9deg
Temperature(Transmitter) : 21.9deg

and the attached image was todays image

A 1024 x 1024 CCD camera - which could be commanded to take images as close to a given Lat/Long as possible would make an excellent resource and a superb outreach project - and as a second string, perhaps fly on one of the 6 sides - some prorotype solar cells as an engineering project.

iirc - baisc cube-sat kits are around $10k ish.
http://www.cubesatkit.com
http://cubesat.arizona.edu/rincon_sat/structures/cad.cgi
http://littonlab.atl.calpoly.edu/
http://www-ee.eng.hawaii.edu/~cubesat/



I'll tell you what genuine contribution I can make....pretty 3d pictures of a cubesat in 3ds max

doug

LOL - he's not ACTUALLY Jake, it's a transcript of Jakes recent Directors Update from the JPL website - OWW kindly transcribes them for here - they make an excellent record of the mission

Doug

I think it's very very sad that what ever happened, happened - and we've all lost out because of it. No one was trying to steal any scientific thunder - we just wanted to share the adventure. In the MER world, our efforts are praised and enjoyed by team members. It seems things change once you go beyond the asteroid belt

I'm not sure if it will do any good, or if it's worthwhile - but I'm going to email a few people to say that Jasons efforts were appreciated, enjoyed, of great benefit to the project as a whole, and the demise of his blog is a very sad and unfortunate thing. No one is trying to steal any scientific thunder - we're just trying to share in this amazing adventure, a billion miles from home.

So - avoiding a rant, just expressing sadness, I'm emailing

Project Manager (Bob Mitchell) - Robert.T.Mitchell@jpl.nasa.gov
Project Scientist (Dennis Matson) - Dennis.L.Matson@jpl.nasa.gov
Deputy Scientist (Linda Spilker) - Linda.J.Spilker@jpl.nasa.gov
and
Public Information Officer (Carolina Martinez) - Carolina.Carnalla-Martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

Those email addresses might be wrong, alternatives are...
rmitchel@mail.jpl.nasa.gov , dlmatson@mail.jpl.nasa.gov , lspilker@mail.jpl.nasa.gov , carnalla@mail.jpl.nasa.gov

If nothing else, Jason deserves praise for his brilliant work that did nothing but give credit to what is an amazing mission - and if anything can be done to find out what caused what I consider to be a tragic mistake for the mission's outreach efforts -all the better.

You are a credit to the whole mission Jason, and for that, you deserve praise and congratulations.


Doug

Spirit got very close to being dead during the Sol 300-400 phase - that 25% was an enabler to do science and mobility during that time - and the alternative - a southerly route with -25% power - WOULD have killed it.

Doug

Oh - extandorama - I've seen designs that include that (infact, I think Cutesat, the japanese one does )

Well - it would have meant writing another imaging sequence, probbaly using a bit more fuel to do another fast pitching manouver to do it.

I'd rather the time, money, and fuel were spent on taking more images at Mars

Doug

Need a lot of power and a high pressure Xenon tank. Wonder if it could be doable in a tripple cube.

Doug

Looking at a typical cubesat, that double cubesat hasnt set aside enough room for the basics, such as the radio, central control, power and modem hardware. It's takes about 75% of a full cubesat just to do the basics, let alone anything else.

Tell you what WOULD be cool....

interplanetary cubes

Doug

I dont think they will. It would be several weeks to get there, several weeks to get back, and I think they'd rather have that couple of months on the clock toward Victoria. I'm sure there will be a stop at or near Erebus for IDD and Pancam, but not a long one imho

Who knows - the one predictable thing about MER is the unpredictability of it

Doug

Is this
http://themis-data.asu.edu/img/-V07441001....tretch=S2&tab=0

Our patch of real estate? Endurance and Victoria visible on the left? I think this is the only themis colour image of it

Doug

Without that northern-slope to enjoy during the winter, we wouldnt have had a misison to go straight to Homeplate

As it is, now we have a healthy rover, with loads of power, and seasonal conditions about to start benefiting southern slopes....life couldnt be better

Doug

Ah...fame....

http://planetary.org/blog/20050912.html



Doug

The force of 'gravity' will be so very very weak for Minerva that even though it's held up by little more than some knitting needles, I doubt it will sink in much

It'll be our first images-from-the-surface-of-a-new-body since Hugyens

Doug

You'd struggle to justify putting a tiny tiny scope in orbit and show a benefit compared to a £1500 9" scope on the ground - the work of Damien Peach with a modest scope and good seing is utterly remarkable. Canada has a suitcase size sat that does excellent work for extrasolar planets, but thats an order of magnitude or two outside the scope (no pun intended) of a Cubesat.

Cubesats to date have been mainly an engineering exercise ( and a superb one ) - but I'm sure there's something they could really do...maybe fields and particles with a cluster of a few of them - who knows. They need a 'killer ap' - and suddenly, once you've got $200k, and a spare 10kg on a Falcon 1, you've got something amazing.

Doug

Oh I LOVE cubesats...I have dozens of PDF's and PPT's about them. Infact, I get email from the Japanese 'Cutesat' which has a tiny camera in it

I'd go with quite a long deployed antenna which would then create a nice gravity gradient to keep the spacecraft orientated to earth - perhaps deployed on a reel. To be honest, I think a camera is going to be the #1 cool thing to have on board, but I'd TRY and do pushbroom - not single shot. Basically - schedule it image at the best time of each orbit based on minutes after the arrays get over a certain voltage. Then, do as much as the memory can handle, and then keep it onboard until the next downlink pass.

The real problem is downlink capacity though - it's quite slow.

Cubesat's are just - JUST - too small to be brilliant, but a double cube sat ( 20x10x10) probably gives you enough mass and volume to have the power to do good imaging with downlink.

Actually - I'm surprised the Planetary Society havnt put together a cubesat proposal - it's just hard to find a scientific goal for one - apart from taking cool picture.

Doug

And I just cant see how Shuttle derived launchers in the future are going to be any cheaper than what we have today.

We're going backwards.

Doug