Ummmm.... oops?



-the other Doug

As always, it is a great read that continues to get better and better. This is one of the best yet, with all kinds of interesting tidbits. Pick your favorite bit and post it here.

I had a difficult time deciding, but I think this quote was my favorite regarding Opportunity: ""But it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway." That's because as the rover drives southward, the scientists expect to find younger rock layers on the surface and older cobbles that may have come from craters larger and deeper than Victoria."

As BrianL and Rui have said elsewhere, it is all about the journey, and this has been one of the greatest of all journeys for our species. Let's savor it's continued excitement, regardless of the obstacles that we might be required to overcome. As Paolo has pointed out, we have HiRise for this new leg of the journey, and all of the fancy maps our experts have been preparing...

As always, great reading for us rover enthusiasts! - I have one suggestion though. These reports are not meant to give us a blow-by-blow account of what happens on an everyday basis. They serve to digest the action of a prolonged period. Therefore, I think the account would work better if one narrative is told at a time. The Bagnold story, the cloud time-lapse story, the mosaics and calibration images, they are all different narratives - sub-stories if you will - that belong to the grand tale of Oppy. As it is, they are sometimes meshed together in the report, and I think that weakens the story.

An example:

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"The rover approached the ridge from the west, driving on flat ground, on Sols 1648 and again on Sol 1650 (September 14, 2008). Then, after reaching a sort of staging position, it tried to climb the ridge. The rover’s wheels, however, began slipping excessively on the sandy slope. “It was a situation where we had to kind of climb up to Bagnold and as we got closer and closer the wheels were sinking deeper and deeper and we were seeing slip numbers in excess of 98%,” said Squyres. “The wheels were turning and turning and turning and we weren’t going anywhere.”

Opportunity searched for clouds passing overhead with more six-frame, time-lapse, movies with the navigation camera on Sol 1652 (September 16, 2008), then checked for drift -- changes with time -- in the Mini-TES and conducted another test of the instrument on a target nicknamed Velvet, before beginning another attempt at getting close to Bagnold. No luck.

The following sol, Opportunity acquired a mosaic of westward-looking images with the navigation camera and took images in total darkness with the Pancam for calibration purposes, while the MER scientists and engineers huddled to figure out what to do about Bagnold. After discussing the situation, the MER team decided to give Opportunity one more chance by loosening the slip constraints and the rover bravely tried once more to get to Bagnold, but the attempt was, again, futile.

At that point, the team decided to abandon the effort. "The rover continued to encounter excessive slip, so we ended up deciding not to pursue that target any further,” said Laubach. “We took a lot of images, but we just could not do the in situ campaign.""

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I really think the "search for clouds" narrative should be told following the Bagnold story, not in the middle of it, though that is the chronological way to do it. You read about Bagnold, then suddenly there's a break, and then it comes back again. The mosaics and calibration images detail could also be removed somewhere else. Respect for the chronology is not of paramount importance in this report format, it should be about telling the individual stories of what went on in a given period.

This is just a suggestion, hope the writer doesn't take it badly, if he (or she) pops by here...

This explains D-Star for those unfamiliar.

D-Star

"which enables the rover to plan optimal long-range drives around any obstacles in order to travel the most direct safe route to the drive's designated destination."
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/image...int.cfm?id=2168

http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/40330 mentions D*

I was glad to hear that we have had favourable winds to help clean off the solar arrays. Now if we could only encounter someone with a lens brush...

My favorite quote:

“We could have decided to do is just go noodling around out on the plains, sniffing at cobbles until the wheels fall off,” said Squyres. “But you know, that just didn’t feel to me like the right thing to do. These are the Mars Exploration Rovers. We decided that it would be good to set a really challenging, maybe impossible goal for ourselves, then take on the challenge of trying to meet it.”

My sentiments exactly. Puttering about over ground already covered would have driven me to tears. Can you imagine anyone else heading up this mission? It would be like Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford, Star Wars without... um, well Harrison Ford, The Fugitive without... Tommy Lee Jones. And Harrison Ford.

Anyway, I know this will make Doug cringe, but I'm convinced these rovers are still going on Steve Power. I'm sure a Kirlian photo of these rovers would show an aura stretching back in a thin line to one point on the Earth. When the Large Hadron Collider finally produces the Big Bang, scientists around the world will be startled by an image in the traces. "Is that a face? Doesn't that look a lot like..."

Harrison Ford?

Some interesting tidbits were the 2-year estimate to reach Endeavour, named after a city in Saskatchewan.

And the fact that they're trying to shake some dust off the mini TES on Oppy.

Happy Halloween

http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/1031_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

This was my favorite quote...

"Anytime we see a good cobble, we're going to jam on the brakes and go after it," Squyres assured rock hounds, "but right now we're just trying to cover as much distance as possible."

Well, perhaps this was my favorite quote...

I can't avoid it...I really can't...rereading the TPS update I made a stop at that this words from SS...:
""This area [which has not yet been named] is about a kilometer or kilometer and a half south of Victoria and we're moving pretty well along the rim of the crater down towards that outcrop."

Huum...not yet been named? That was what I was talking about...
Here goes a suggestion, since we are following Endeavour's how about taking locations, currents and navigational terms directly connected to Cook's journey?
And since we are leaving the port the following name sounds sooo appropriate and...catchy!
The Sound

"Sailing the Sound"...Sounds just perfect in my opinion...

I love old charts...here's a couple:
http://www.antique-maps-online.co.uk/plymo...sound-chart.JPG
http://www.turnchapel.com/images/Old%20map%20of%20Sound.jpg
http://www.antique-maps-online.co.uk/john-pine-armada-chart

mine too.

and, of course, this one:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/1130_Ma...ate_Spirit.html