I was thinking of this - but the other way around



Doug

It's where a wheel stopped - and then turned I believe

Doug

http://picasa.google.com/index.html

It's ace

Anaglyph = cool

Doug

I dont think that lowering the rover down is any more challenging that lowering, say, the lander from the backshell for the MPF/MER edl sequence. It's a bridle with a rate limiter.

If you have that system, but upside down (one cable out of skycrane, down to a shackle, with then 3 cables going to front, back right and back left of the rover ) it's actually fairly simple.

And you have to admit - compared to making the whole thing landable, and having egress aids etc etc - a bridle and a limiter are a LOT lighter.

The parachute/backshell/airbag/DIMES/TIRS system was just insane - skycrane is no worse imho. It presents different challenges - but if you can get a lander to put itself on the ground just using rockets - you can get it to put itself a few M above the ground with rockets and drop the thing on a rope. Yes - it'll impart some force on the crane, but we're talking about a couple of seconds.

Bruce - any idea when things are going to get going with the testing out in the desert?

Doug

I'm not from London, but I was in Kings Cross on Tuesday night and have spent the day just rather shaked up.

I've just got an email from Chris King who I know works in London saying that he's fine - I dont know of anyone else in the forum from in or around London.

From the joy of the Olympics yesterday - to utter shock, horror and fury today.

Thanks for your concern - there's a lot of people who are in a mild state of shock and will be for a while I think.

Doug

Wow - it's not far out now

It's closing speed is very slow as I understand though.

Doug

Here's a view using Phil-O-Vision
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...riz_stretch.jpg

Part of the sloping is due to dodgy alignment of the frames.

Doug

I'll say Europe.


COUGH*Rosetta*COUGH


Doug

Thinking of all this - I still dont know if/how one can get from the data we have for Pathfinder via the PDS - to the equiv of a MER RAD file

Doug

If you're going from IMG's - then you should pop in the radiometric offset and stretch and get lovely calibrated seamless pictures

Doug

Who knows - as I understand it the theory is that the crater formed, then it got wet, and THEN verbose volcanism filled it in. How much a 'shoreline' would survive that I dont know - but it's highly tempting to imagine water lapping up against that little piece of outcropped layered rock isnt it?

Doug

I rememer going to a tiny little office in a small IT company in Tetbury, Glos, to download pictures from Pathfinder onto a floppy disk and printing them out on a dot matrix printer at home! That was joy! Then, I started at University just as Pathfinder wound-down and got all the images in the blink of an eye down the Uni connection, and put them on a Zip disk!

Now - I download MER images at home on a 2Mbit line, and put them onto DVD

I wonder what I'll be downloading with and saving to when MSL arrives.

Doug

I think we're still at independance to be honest


http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...s_534_indep.jpg (730kb)

Thats the IDD area just there isnt it? Maybe a turn in place, but I dont think we can starting singing "We're on the road again...wooahahaaaa"

Doug

EIGHT YEARS

I feel old

Doug

Well - there was never any mention of an extension at any of the press confs. and when pressed my a reporter, the reponse was that indeed, they would simply prepare for a sun-safe hybernation state after playback was complete.

Doug

A berry laden clod dropped off a whele, which has since been wind erroded a little?

Doug

Ahh - from the IMG's..I was thinking "huh - how'd he get pointing from a jpg?"



Now - we just need to twist your arm to decode the xyz models from every stereo pair and we're on a winner

Doug

One word.

How?





Doug

1600GMT Press Conf Highlights

Web Hits : Last 24 hrs 1 billion hits. 2.5X that of busiest day for MER

Flyby Spacecraft in Great Shape - amazing picture post-shield mode, plume looks as large as the whole comet

Pre-Release targetting was a few km off to the left. Post ITM1 was way below the comet, Post ITM2 was just left of centre, and ITM3 just below and to the right of it.

New result : Map of temp of the Neuc pre-impact. Sub-solar part is warmest (obviously)

Ejecta/Outgassing coming out for several hours after impact.

Lots of topographic relief - things that really do look like impact craters.

Bright spots, mostly just steep sun-facing slopes - a couple are not. Almost certainly there is layering, jets coming from somewhere they hope to trace

Two circular features were refered to as craters

Sequence of videos - shadow caused by ejecta

Processed HRI imagery movie of impact - not THAT much better than the MRI movie

Height of ejecta on lookback image (at about 27,000km) 1000's of Km's height to ejecta. Mainly dust

Not 100% sure if they can actually see the crater - they have a 'feature' that may be the crater.

Approx 160kg useable fuel onboard flyby. Do not have specific extended mission plan currently, will probably mothball the spacecraft in a few weeks. (I assume to pick it up again in the future)

Further simualted impacts at the ames canon.

'Dual-ish' plume, i.e. one narrow straight-out plume, then a wider plume to follow. Happens when the impactor goes into the surface ( a soft layer ) then goes kerpow.



Doug

I was thinking more Golden-Hammer for the science team

Doug

It may be that it started to tumble / wobble with impacting in the last few seconsd perhaps?

Doug

Well - I'm not a member, but Helen ( my long suffering other half ) and I want to go. I gave a talk to the BAA not that long ago (two infact) and am due to give another one soon - so hopefully they'll let me go If I do - I'll see if I can do an interview with Steve, or at least get his paw-print on a copy of his book!

It's in Cambridge - about 80km N of London, or about 1hr from our house

Doug

Well - there are some utils out there to generate gallerys using PHP/SQL etc - I'll look into it

Doug

Well - I used firefox, coupled with a program called FreeDownloadManager for getting all the links from a page, or a program called SurfOffline to grab the contents of a whole site ( as I did to grab the sojourner archived)

Doug