A few days old - but I made this in response to a little troll on another forum



Doug

Looks like a BIG drive today - still trying to figure it out

Ahh - spotted the new local rock next to a 2ndry crater

Pancam from pre-drive puts the rock at 37.8m and 37.1cm tall
Navcam from today puts it at 4m away, and 43cm tall

Drive distance estimate - 33.5 m

http://img294.echo.cx/my.php?image=sol515pano1dl.jpg (dilo stitch from old position)

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...EJP0715L0M1.JPG - navcam frame showing rock next to 2ndry impact crater - visible near the 3rd-4th image join in the pancam mosaic above

At the time of posting - images are 3hrs 37minutes old


http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/s_520_nav.jpg (396kb)

The way ahead looks very navigable towards the frame1-2 join on that Navcam mosaic

Doug

I still think they should do more work here - figure out the characteristics of this thing, what pressures it can take. If something like MSL or a follow on comes to Meridiani - we need to make sure it can just take something like this in its stride - so this investigation is worth while.

another week, 10 days, and we'll be off again I'm sure.

Doug

I linked this at the back-end of another thread - but it belongs in here really...



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...ten_val_510.jpg 2meg

The full 10x2 The last good view of Tenesse Valley

Doug

I had a hack at this one myself...



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im...ten_val_510.jpg 2meg

Doug

If any 'Pros' are going, I'd love to sign up and go as a Guest The top whack price is just a bit pricey though.

Doug

I found some interesting image sets recently - but had to make do with red green violet - the results are quite pleasing though.. This is a composite of two frames, for some reason they did it in three frames - but the middle one is totally redundant as far as I can tell.



http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_im.../sat_jun_05.jpg 64kb

Doug

Well - it's solar arrays, or no mission at all given the mass and financial constraints.

Consider Rosetta and Stardust - both will/have gone out way beyond martian orbit relying on solar power alone

Doug

Sometimes people just know things. They might be friends with someone on a mission team, they might be actually part of a mission team, they might just swop emails with someone on the inside, all SORTS of sources of information.

I've found it usually best just to enjoy the information and not poke to hard to find where it comes from

Doug

Yup - another good drive today - that's three days of successive driving

Ust - what sol was your first image taken on? 300ish?

Doug

Yup - Sojourner was still functioning ( as a solar powered spacecraft only by that time ) and infact plans for long drives away from the lander were being made, when Pathfinder coughed, spluttered and died.

I very much doubt that Soj is still healthy today, but how much driving it actuall did after Pathfinder died has been a fascination I've held for the last 8 years.

Doug

Theres nothing that MRO brings to the equation that MEX and Odyssey couldnt have done - but no attempts have been made by either of those iirc

Doug

The effect of the stereo imaging only works (with navcam) out to a few 10's of metres of so, and pancam a little further, but not the 100's of M's these devils are.

Doug

the stereo pair are taken at the same time

2N172089761EFFAB70P0715L0M1 and
2N172089761EFFAB70P0715R0M1

The 172089761 part tells us when it was taken

doug

Yesterday
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...00P0745L0M1.JPG

Today
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...70P0715L0M1.JPG

Pointy rock gives a good point of reference in terms of progress.

We're seing the normal pattern for driving sols now that we used to have almost every sol up to Bonneville and across the plains to the hills - first downlink FHAZ, RHAZ and forward Navcams, second downlink more Navcams and L7/R1 stereo forward Pancam imagery. Lots of new members since those old days Dont get too fussy over these image sets every sol - you'll drive yourself nuts keeping up with the rover

What you can do though - is take a range measurement on a feature in Pancam on the first sol, then do the same on the same feature in navcam the following sol and get a distance drive, so for that pointey rock, pancam on Sol 514, it's
object distance: 28.1 m, one-pixel error: 0.370 m
object dimension: 46.5 cm

Then Sol 515 on navcam it's
object distance: 7.09 m, one-pixel error: 0.023 m
object dimension: 12.5 cm
(me thinks there might be a bug on the object size for the parallax calculator)

Anyway - net result suggest an 21m drive

Doug

Nope - L7 and R1 are infact the same colour filter as it wouldnt be scientifically accurate to attempt to generate terrain models by interpolating between images taken in different wavelengths.

http://www.ominous-valve.com/pancam.html

As you can see L7/R1 and L2/R2 share similar filter allocations

Doug

This looks news..

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/traverse_maps.html

Doug

I cant wait to see what imagery we get from the 'hopper' - it will be the first PROPER landing on a small body if they can pull it off

Doug

Holy CRAP Nix - that one's a STUNNER

Doug

I guess this is backstay

Doug

They will always 'take' 1024 x 1024, but they can read out a 2x2 binned or 4x4 binned image - or downsize or a sub-sample after the image was taken

Doug

Its more than likely that they just took down-sampled images anyway.

Doug

I've been tweaking this one for a while, I still struggle to get L2,5,6 to look 'nice' - but I'm getting there using some unobvious techniques ( start with an auto-level and work backwards )



Full Size - 7352 x 2288 px - 1.8Mb

Thats all the imagery I can find for it - I presume they did a 10 x 2, then bolted on some extras or something like that.

Doug

I think they'll try and get to a progress comprimise, one that balances progress versus the risk of getting stuck again.

If they make progress at half the speed as before, but dont get stuck, it's a better deal that getting stuck for a month every couple of weeks

Doug

WOW - Hoagland will be having FITS over this one

Can we expect any closer approaches in the primary mission?

Doug