Are the A/B computer systems completely separate, or might they share at least the solid-state memory?

Intrinsically, however, avionics fault tolerance is provided by adding redundant boxes with some degree of cross-strapping. (Cross-strapping permits redundant boxes to work with other redundant elements in the system architecture.) On MSL, the project took an intermediate position of incorporating some partial avionics redundancy to mitigate box-level failures while not driving EDL risk adversely. Unfortunately, the resulting system is neither fish nor fowl from a complexity perspective. By having a combination of single-string and redundant elements, the resulting fault-containment architecture is more complex and more difficult to design, analyze, and verify than either a single-string or fully redundant design. The marginal increase in reliability associated with the partial redundancy may not have been worth the increased complexity.

Your post made me curious as to how long they've actually been there, and to my surprise it looks like they've been present since the first good 34mm shots came down on Sol 3.

~ First, I run raw MC100's and MC34's through the appropriate (manually recorded preset for image size in question) Photoshop automation to carefully remove all the lens "schmutz" from each set (MC100 has 2 big ones and MC34 has now developed 3 smaller ones)

The OS is bound to have a name? Scheduling algorithms have to be described someplace?

...I don't think I understand what you mean by this.

On earth this problem would be considered among the most serious.

also wondering how much ACS fuel expenditure would be needed to do a good job of observation; every burn shortens their operational lifetimes, and this thing will be really moving at closest approach.

Update.

Having a very tenuous atmosphere, the surface of the red planet will be subject to intensive bombardments by microparticles which, among other things, might cause malfunction of the space probes currently there.

I can ask only, if there is any possibility to observe comets in near future from surface of Mars...

Are there any plans to use Curiosity to observe the comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) in 2014?

Since the NAIF files at least nominally have all the joint rotation angles, I wonder if they will be any different when they ultimately make it the the PDS.

Please don't hesitate to share it

I'd like to look under the hood of that impact model and see what makes it tick.

Although simple, we have found the prescription above
to give a fairly reasonable account of atmospheric entry over
a wide range of impactor sizes and compositions. As
mentioned above, a much more complex treatment must be
made on a case-by-case basis if more exact results are needed.

Wow, that's a lot closer than the other accounts of how flexible the arm is.

Is the mast mounted detector (REM Boom 1) in a MAHLI blind spot?

Enright also asked if MAHLI could be used to view the damaged REMS boom. (This is one of two wind speed sensors mounted on little booms sticking out from the rover mast.) Michael Watkins answered that the REMS team had, in fact, made that request. However, the geometry is difficult; it's on a part of the mast that faces away from the arm. It would be awkward to position MAHLI to see the boom, and they could only get as close as about half a meter away, limiting the resolution of the view. So, Watkins said, they do not plan to attempt such imaging, in the short term anyway.

Wouldn't the levels all go up proportionally with exposure--i.e., if the intensity is up for the tailings because of exposure alone, shouldn't it also be up for the dust, from a different part of the same image?

Here's what I get for the relative radiance (R1=1.00) for the (presumably) R1-3 filters...

Umm. If we're going to get historical, let us certainly not forget the directly-observed-and-mapped-by-famous-astronomers canals of Mars...

...can we safely assume that the drilling resistance (based on the relationships of penetration depth for revolutions, force, torque etc) can provide an accurate assessment of the cohesion or 'hardness' of this rock?

I have the struct kernel at least--here's my kernel file:

http://curiosityrover.com/rover2.txt

...I recall that Earth-based spectroscopy of the planets has a long history that began with inappropriately low standards of calibration...

...I'm at a loss to figure out the SPICE code to get the XYZ position of the camera--it keeps giving an error when I try to use spkpos_c(), which works well enough for, say, the rover itself.

IMO, I think it's time to stop recording rocks pictures and take some images with a strong public impact...
with half an earth year on Mars, and so few great pictures to deal with (to dream with if I dare say), except a lot of rock collections, I think it's sad.