Looks like the procedure went well and redundancy has been restored:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-046

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/calend...10-calendar.pdf

Nice.

But isn't Sol 410 (220-m) Oppy's record? (page 15):

I recall L2 being mentioned early on, but they descoped along the way in order to fit on a Delta II -- it's sobering to think Kepler was rejected four times before being accepted!

Looks like that question was answered here in 2005:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...post&p=7923

My own favored post-prime mission activity would be to use the sensitivity of LORRI to discover more KBOs (after all, it's not often that you find yourself in the Kuiper Belt... )

From the latest Cassini Significant Events report:

"A two-day NASA Senior Review of a proposal for a Cassini Extended Extended Mission (XXM) concluded today. The review board's comments and questions indicated that they were quite impressed with the science, science team, and technical presentations, and that they understood and appreciated the XXM plans, rationale, and concerns. Within a month the final review board report should be available and some time after that a final decision is expected from NASA Headquarters."

They were only quite impressed?

You know, I really miss the gentle and constant roar of the fans from my old system; my new build is whisper-quiet. I guess the fan sound appealed to the engineer within -- it sounded like things were happening. I also opted for a solid-state drive, the silence of such is quite unnerving after being used to the loud tick-tick of the disk in the 10-year-old system I just retired.

Then again, maybe my perception is clouded by the bad case of 'flu I'm currently under (things also look slightly redder). Then again, I probably just screwed-up the monitor calibration (yup, instead of resting in bed, I'm doing monitor calibration). Priorities, priorities!



To be honest, booting is not all that faster compared to my 1998 system (yup, I installed the same 9-year-old OS on the new build ), but programs launch almost immediately, which would impress some people.

The blue sky issue appears to be a graphics card limitation:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/eart...da94c&hl=en

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-014

"This is only the second time in Cassini's 11 years of flight that the engineering teams have gone to a backup system."

Of course you can, knock yourself out!

'Fraid so. To Mössbauer 57Fe, you need a Gamma-ray source emitted from 57Fe atoms decaying for resonance to occur, which basically restricts you to 57Co...

I guess they've only just noticed the issue (it is usually around this time of year when they have to change the total sols count -- in Flash 9 land, Spirit's clock is correct but Oppy's clock reads Sol 1405.)

They say that "budget problems have forced a redesign" which sounds pretty constraining. You'd need one heck of an upper stage to get that big ol' hunk of iron to L1/L2...

Excellent summary! To celebrate the milestone, I've cut together a selection of some of the more amusing moments during the early press briefings:

http://www.speedyshare.com/556118174.html

Not quite -- NASA has awarded two contracts: to Orbital (8 flights) and SpaceX (12 flights).

Have you considered using the font override function in your browser? I also have overrides set for colors etc. and see no difference between the skins, apart from the logo...

You know you're a UMSFer when you're not just marveling at the Universe, but the fact that they deliberately pointed the solar arrays 60 degrees away from the Sun.

Anyone else having browser crashes when using Flash 9 on the new YouTube player? Just updated to v10 on Firefox which solves the issue, but will keep IE6 at v9 for the MER clocks.

Yup. FGS normally observes mag +8 and fainter. You may observe brighter targets using a neutral density filter*, up to mag +3.


*Not recommended (complicates calibration).

Excellent, many thanks for the heads-up! Saves me a trip to the library to read their copy.

JPL announces final 4 candidates:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-219

They are:

- Gale
- Eberswalde
- Holden
- Mawrth

With all this talk of ion propulsion and Mars, I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Dawn...

The thin-film technique is described here:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/19apr_dustbuster.htm

Quite appropriate, and there's even a nod to TEGA in the lyrics:

"Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew."

Doing science for 149 out of 152 Sols is an impressive record to be sure. Phoenix will be in my thoughts, although being someone who doesn't tolerate cold very well, the encasement in ice is not something I want to dwell on too much.

Unless we're talking SBC, then the observations would have to predate Jan 2007, when ACS/WFC and HRC stopped working. If we are talking SBC, my guess would be lifetimes of disks (SBC has been very busy observing photoevaporation effects on disks).

But what about the MER clocks? I have them embedded in the upper right corner of my Home Page, and would really miss them if they didn't work. According to the Adobe site, I have version 9, which begs the question: why did my system miss out on the update? After all, the update is automatic, no? It has to be automatic, otherwise I'd still be on version 7, since I never manually update software that continues to work just fine.