Is that it? All the lovely info from data tracking gone!

James

I'd vote for that, what an amazing site!

Looking forward to the mac version...

Sol 621, that's about the same time as more crud appeared on the front hazcams isn't it? Must have been a windy day, I wonder if there was a cleaning event?

Very interesting update! Thanks for noticing it Tesheiner.

The top of the steep step was always very hard to see on the MOC images, nice to have it added. If the bottom of the steep step is where it appears to be then it is much longer, and hence shallower than I thought. We can't be far off being able to see the bottom of the slope meaning it's not much steeper than the the current minimum (17 degrees).

Of course there could still be dangerous outcrops but I would be a lot happier trying to manouver around them on a 20 degree slope than something close to 30.

James,

P.S. Don't be embarrassed, I think your map was the best that could be done with the information we had. I spent ages staring at pans trying to work out where the top of the drop-off was on the MOC images and couldn't come up with anything!

Somewhere I heard a quote that there had been 10 recorded since 1877.

Looking into it a bit further there appear to have planet wide storms in

1877 (Schiaparelli), 1909, 1924, 1941, 1956, 1971 (Mariner 9), 1973, 1977 (x2? Viking), 1994 and 2001.

James

OK, it looks like the source I have frrom the angle the hazcams are mounted was in error.

Corrected gives Spirit a current tilt of 10 degrees with that 10 degree slope continuing to the edge.

oops! more like a factor of 1000. (m => km)!

So what's going on with the horizon in the summit hazcams, let me get back to you...

For comparison here is a quote from Steves last update



>27 = very steep!

Unfortunately it's a good deal bigger than that!

I'm not sure what height difference to take for the surrounding plains in the summit JPL press release they say 82m but 106m above the landing site. I guess the 82m is the height of the summit above the plains right next to the hills, where as we need to know the height of the plains on the horizon which considering the difference in height to the lander could be quite different.

Being ]really conservative and using 60m as our current hight above the plains that still means the horizion is 10.5 degrees below the horizontal, and thus what you are really saying is that the steep slope is >26 degrees!

Note that in my previous post about the slope using the hazcam, 200 pixels below the top of the frame equates to 9 degrees below the horizontal and is the reason that the limits are different. (I now think that should have been using a higher number than 200 anyway as I had forgotton at the time that the rear hazcam is angled differently to the front, doh!

I still maintain however that it's not the steepness that will be the problem but rocky near vertical outcrops that could make up the slope.

James: waiting with great anticipation for the next 10m.

It is cheap (relatively!) as it is only a suborbital flight.

Yes, but it is relatively easy to check the timestamp against some of the latest images (rear hazcam is a good one if your interested in driving) For sol 639 the end of drive time starts 18309, the ones you posted had 18308 and hence don't show a new drive.

Also I beleve somewhere this is a utility for decoding filenames, and of course there is also MMB.

James

Note those were from yestersol (639) there was no driving tosol (640)

I think that is because they are opposite ways up, the one on the left has a connector on the top, the other one has one on the bottom. When these are taken it consideration they are effectively in the same position. I think the reason they they are opposite ways up is because they have side connectors to the navcams.

Looking again at the picture you sent, they must be the control for the navcams, only the CCD is inside the camera and you couldn't read the raw data out of them and all the way down the PMA into the WEB. Look at the far ends of the bar, the pancams have a similar shiny box too.

James

I don't know, but the're not mirrors, you can see the ruler reflected in them in that image and the refection is quite distorted.

I'm guessing they are reflective for thermal reasons, in which case they are probably electronics boxes of some sort.

Perhaps it's a good thing that I don't have any 3D glasses then!

Based on the latest forward hazcam image:

Spirit current angle ~14 degrees.
Slope between current position and top of steep step ~19 degrees.
Slope of steep step (based on the fact that the pancam can't see it) >23 degrees.

This is not a rigorous analysis by any means, but should be within a few degrees.

James

I hoped you were right too, but unfortunately you're not!

See this attached image



Raw here

I have matched up some of the features (red lines) near the end of your 'path' and you can see from the latest images that a whole load more ground has been revealed! I have also used parallax on a couple of features between us and the path end showing that there is still 40 meters unseen!

I'm starting to worry a bit more now. The closer we get the worse it looks!

James

To count pixels load the image into a graphics package (I use the GIMP) but I think most do this as a standard and the current pixel that the mouse is pointed at is given in the lower-left corner.

0.12 degrees per pixel is the angular resolution of the hazcams, that infomation is on the web, can't find it again off hand, it's probably on the ATHENA site.

James

I discoved this some time ago, last time we had a major outage at JPL and Expl (when the Tracking site was first found) I have mentioned it in this forum somewhere.

The trick is, do you see that big button titled "Table of All Images From All Sols"? (Just below the select sols box) well give it a click...

Then find the seqence you want and click on the link in the "Seq.Ver.Iter" column and hey presto you should get some 200 x 200 thumbnails.

James

I think the turn is primarily to line up for better UHF passes not the HGA which can, as you say point in pretty much any direction (although they may take shadowing of the HGA by the PMA etc into account as well, i'm not sure)

James

Sol 638 drivve direction pan

I don't know If you'll be able to see this better in stereo images (I don't have glasses) but using the parallax calculator It appears that there are no features between 30 and 80 meters in the dead ahead direction.

i.e in this image,



Terrain below the added line is closer than 30m above, further than 80m! 50 steep, unknown meters.

And with that - it's back!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...00P1214L0M1.JPG

No better than the navcams really but attached is a screen grab of the Sol 637 drive direction Pancam thumbnails at Pancam data tracking.



Would make a nice pan of where we're headed if the full versions would turn up

A Sol 638 version is also down but thumbnails are not showing up yet.

638 p2388.06 12 0 0 12 1 25 pancam_drv_dir_L7R1

James - Addict, hoping I won't have to keep reloading Exploratorium every five mins for much longer.