Brilliant!

It does look like some script somewhere might need a kick.

Driving planned for sol 999 so clearly nothing wrong with the rover (before anyone starts panicking!)

On the beacon for sol 1000 then!

Anyone know when the first image of the beacon was taken?

James

Check the product type. Only the 995 thumbnails are listed as being down, not the full images.

I don't think it's Exploratorium that has the problem, it must be further up the pipe as nothing has shown up at the tracking site either.

James

Phil, are you using the HiRISE to to get your position? You can actually see the individual little bits of bright exposed rock in front of the beacon in the full res HiRISE! So I'm actually pretty confident of this position even with limited images.



James

Have we gone past the 7 days out of contact yet?

It still seems likely to me that MGS is happily pointing her arrays at the sun and waiting for 7 days before attempting to contact Earth through the HGA, as she is programmed to do in safe mode.

The BBC is reporting that the Exomars launch is being pushed back to 2013 but that it may now include an orbiter.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6133712.stm

James

Yes, bays are given the same designation as the cape on there 'clockwise side', hence the bay between CV and CStM would be 'Bay A2'. I only labeled major bays on the map to avoid it becoming too cluttered.

I don't think so. AFAIK it has only been mentioned by the team once (when the far rim was starting to appear) when they called it 'Bright Crater', obviously a reference to it being bright in L2 and not an official name.

James


EDIT: BTW, I've just updated the names map to include Cape St. Mary and Sputnik.

FYI: There was no driving toward CStM on sol 993 but the will be on 994.

I don't think we are in restricted sols at the moment are we? Not sure why 993 was so light on activity.

Well I would, if my code wasn't so embarrassingly poorly written and inefficient! Most of it has been written very experimentally to try and fix problems while rushing to get pans made for you guys and is therefore not the best code you've ever seen. Way down my list of jobs are lots of things to tidy up, I'm not sure they'll ever get done.

I do keep meaning to write a web page detailing the procedures used to make the images.

Too much to do too little time though...

James

OK folks, eye strain time. Here is a long baseline colour anaglyph of the Victoria dune field. The baseline is a bit long really and the repetitive and low contrast nature of the dunes make this a little tricky.

I'm going to upload three scaled versions. The full resolution one is great for viewing the dunes on the left (which are stunning!), but I find the right side very difficult. In the half resolution version it is much easier. I've also included a small quarter scale one which is good for seeing the whole dune field at once.

Full res version - start by looking at the dunes 1/3 of the way from the left.


Half res.


Quarter res.


Enjoy,

James

According to Mars24 (which agrees with MMB) Oppy Sol 1000 starts at 02:16:49UTC on Nov 16, 2006.

Well there is still some missing data, but you can hardly tell in this version. So this is probably it for Duck Bay.



Enjoy,

James

I'm a bit rusty at this, and I could have done with the navcam covering Duck Bay, but I think it is more or less right.

Route Map for Sol 992.



James

Hey that's the second time today that MMB has been attributed to me. As much as I'd like to take the credit, I think Mike deserves a mention as I'm sure he contributed to it somehow.

(Well what do you know, Doug does appear to say James on the recording, Climber mush have subconsciously absorbed this when listening and thus made the same mistake in the 'New Adventure' thread. )

James

Well there is no name for the strange MI images in the database, but the similar looking hazcams are down as 'photon transfer' observations. And they do look a lot like the Spirit images when she did the photon transfer calibration a while ago.


Nothing to worry about.

James

Underway - but cloudy here in Sydney.

Hoping it breaks up a bit before the end.

EDIT: I saw it! Just for a few seconds through half a gap in the cloud.

Some links to live feeds at spaceweather

It's part of Duck Bay.

Edit: Just left of centre in this navcam

And indeed, it looks like tosol (992) is a driving sol.

Let the magical mystery tour continue...

James

Fuzzy Smith, Sol 772, Seq 2595 - http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit_p772.html

Yeah, I'm not sure there is enough discussion to warrant multiple threads at the moment. I've merged the 'first light' ones, moved the launch vehicle discussion to a new thread (in Policy and Strategy) and renamed this thread.

James

Great idea.

Looks like this turn was to bring the stuff disturbed by the broken wheel into arms reach. I wonder if we'll see another turn in the next few weeks to get that thin outcropping into reach?

I'm pretty sure that this



Is the last part of of the Cape Verde pan.

So we could be on the road again fairly soon. Beacon here we come.

Thanks guys.



I am surprised that it works across the the whole image, especially when you consider that toward the left side the motion between the two images is almost along the line of sight. I guess the point is that it actually only works on small scales, if you zoom out, the crater does not look nice and round as it should, the Soup Dragon looks closer than the rim to the left of it. It would take some clever distortions of the images to fix that.



Cheers, and thanks for reminding me about the DB-CV long baseline, it hadn't crossed my mind till I saw yours.

James