I suppose the accelerometers on Pathfinder and MER could be used to so SOMETHING like that - use some white noise and use accel as amplitude

Doug

quite agree - I've moved all the stuff that doesnt ask and answer the question "where are we" from 'where is spirit ' to this thread

Doug

Well - we have a 6 month sample by re-visiting tracks just after leaving Endurance, and we have a new sample of about 6 weeks here at Purgatory. I think this gives us a two points on the graph that probably dictate the pattern.

Doug

I swear I saw some fantastic nebulae observations by one of the Rosetta instruments somewhere online at one point.

Buggered if I can find them now

Is there any sort of public-group that represents the public to Nasa? I'm not aware of one, but a representative body that say "right - you need to tell us about x, y, and z, and stop wasting money on b and c" or something? (nasawatch doesnt count )

I think something seriously needs to be done to sort ESA out. I wanted to find some HRSC images a few days ago, and it took me for ever to find that page that just has them all listed, it's ..well...crap.

The interface for HRSC data is worse than crap as well.

The Marsis thing is a case in point. We should have had a blog type thing, something, ANYTHING to keep us up to date, I figure there's about £1 of my money invested in MEX, so it's time for some pay back

Doug

Bruce - would you classify ESA's press efforts as almost being obstructive in places?

Doug

I'm off to the cinema tonight - but if there's post-drive pics when I get back, I'll do the maths before heading to bed

Doug

(No new pics as of 0014GMT - Boring )

Yeah - the ones up there are down-sampled images of the autonav sequence from yestersol, not tosol. The last of them was Sol 521 1224LST

It's about 1740 Sol 522 now - if there's been a drive, the images will be down in the next hour or so on the PM Odyssey pass or passes

The ones that are up now are probably left-overs from an AM Odyssey pass.

Doug

I dont see any Exploratorium images from today yet - are you guessing?

Doug

They had a pair of the solar sails packed onto an experimental craft that came to nothing iirc, the idea being a simple lob into space - deploy the sails as a test, then jettison and re-entry in a sub-orbital mode, but nothing came of it.

I suppose they could have gone with a Dnepr - they've worked a few times and are bound to be a similar price http://www.russianspaceweb.com/dnepr.html

Doug

WAGHGAHAG WAGHAHA - that WOULD be freaky

Doug

It's going to be a bit like NEAR in a way isnt it - image image image wow - didnt expect them this low - image image - crunch

I would imagine there isnt enough grunt or time to compress, it's not like they can re-transmit to get back some lost bits - and compressed data suffers a lot with a single lost bit, so they'll wizz straight back to the fly-by uncompressed I'd imagine - and thus, the last image will almost certainly be partial
Doug

And as fans of orbiter know - the kick need to raise from say 500x90 to 500x500 isnt that much iirc

(goes away, opens orbiter)

Yeah - from a 500km x 90km orbit - I was at 7055m/sec and needed to raise that to 7174 m/s to circularise at 500k (ish) - we're taking 120m/sec. I doubt, to be honest, if it's got that much kick on board.

Depending on the current atmos. conditions, 90km might be enough to kill it in half a dozen orbits or it might survive a dozen or so - who knows. Sans-sails, it's fairly small so not that

This might turn out to be one of those amazing mission-rescue jobs, or it might turn out to be a total loss

Pity - I was really looking forward to spotting it with heavens-above.com


Doug

Hands up - I actually got complaints about this stuff being OT ( fair enough ) and being obscene (bit excessive me thinks ) which is why I just dragged the whole lot into here

I've grown fond of these rovers, and somehow the female phraseology seems appropriate, as it does with my totally non-sexual Venus Fly Trap who is also a 'she'

Doug

And the award for stupid use of copy and paste goes to..

ME


Link Fixed

Doug

Yup - Vessels of exploration are always female

Doug

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/s311.jpg (567kb)

I quite like the psychidelic colours of auto-leveld stuff, but this is much nicer to the eye I think

doug

Moving a few posts

Guess it might have safed during launch or something

Who knows.

I cant wait to try and spot it in the sky with my new digi cam

Doug

Ahh

"Liftoff the rocket won’t be immediately confirmed. The launch is being conducted by the Russian Navy. They will contact Lavochkin Association near Moscow who will then relay the information to The Planetary Society."

Old School Russia alive and well

Doug

1946Z is the expected launch time - but the Planetary Soc site is totally down, and I'm flicking between Sky News, BBC News 24, CNN, Fox, ITV news, Euronews - not not a sausage so far

Doug

Only a couple of metres - from just infront of that large rock, to just beyond it. Certainly no more than 10m or so I'd think

Compare Before
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pa...EJP2433L7M1.JPG

with after

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pa...FLP2434L7M1.JPG

Time to play 'how well did Doug guess the drive distance'

Range to that curved+angled rock on the near horizon in first images...
object distance: 17.9 m, one-pixel error: 0.151 m
object dimension: 37.7 cm

Range now
object distance: 10.3 m, one-pixel error: 0.050 m
object dimension: 38.4 cm

Progress towards that rock
7.6m

given that they were not driving To that rock but slightly off to one angle, perhaps 8 or 9m?

Doug

I love these two - in one they're checking the solar arrays, in another, a guy looks like he's trying to stow away onboard

I'm sure they will given time

Are there any PC frames of these things - I'll try and draw some graphs of intensity compared to wavelength

Doug

Both girls imho

Doug

I guess the DOD bit means we will never see data for it - but the grav-grad stab technique is one being used quite a lot now - the comms sats of the type that recent Darpa misison tried to rendezvous with use one, which doubles as an antenna I believe. Some Cubesats use them as well

Doug