Post Solar Conjunction/Santorini Study Drive, The second leg in our Journey to Endeavor Crater |
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Post Solar Conjunction/Santorini Study Drive, The second leg in our Journey to Endeavor Crater |
 Mar 1 2009, 04:13 PM
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#376
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 Member  Group: Admin Posts: 976 Joined: 29-September 06 From: Pasadena, CA - USA Member No.: 1200  |
QUOTE (PaulM @ Mar 1 2009, 01:43 AM)  ... On a more serious note, what are the plans when Oppy has reached Endeavour? Is there a plan to drive to the interesting hills on the South East side of Endeavour? Are there plans to drive down to the floor of Endeavour? There have been rumors on where they want to go. I believe the North or South rim will be first. We'll see what the terrain and slopes are like inside Endeavour, it might be they are to difficult to traverse. Paolo -------------------- Disclaimer: all opinions, ideas and information included here are my own,and should not be intended to represent opinion or policy of my employer.
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Mar 1 2009, 04:18 PM
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#377
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 976 Joined: 29-September 06 From: Pasadena, CA - USA Member No.: 1200 |
QUOTE (Geert @ Mar 1 2009, 03:55 AM) Just supposing both MER rovers will still be active by the time MSL lands, how much load will that put on the ground-teams, SS has once commented that operating two rovers at the same time could be quite tough, would it be possible to operate 3 rovers at the same time? The quirks of each rover has makes MER two separate missions already. The command set is the same, but the way we operate the two rovers is so different that there is very little common ground. Stepping from one rover to the next will be difficult for sure, but not unmanageable. I'm not sure if they are going to ask to drive either one of the missions exclusively. I hope not. QUOTE (Having in mind also comm-passes and relay capacity of the orbiters, DSN availability, etc). I suppose the landing-location of MSL will be very important in this aspect, if it lands "close" to one of the MER rovers this will be harder on the relay? ... My hope that at least this time they will select a different Rx/Tx frequency and avoid the conflict we have between MRO and MERA ;-) Paolo -------------------- Disclaimer: all opinions, ideas and information included here are my own,and should not be intended to represent opinion or policy of my employer.
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Mar 1 2009, 06:23 PM
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#378
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 Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 4247 Joined: 17-January 05 Member No.: 152 |
Time for another "reading the tea leaves" post.
 The new Planetary Society story states: QUOTE The rover left Victoria heading south-southwest and basically will continue on that trajectory for another 7 kilometers (about 4.3 miles). Then, it will turn and drive east for another 5 kilometers (3.1 miles). "The path we're going to take is something like an L-shaped path as opposed to a direct path to the crater, because we're trying to avoid large dune forms that we have seen in the HiRISE images," Matijevic explained. "The path we chose looks like we'll skirt these larger dune forms, but it's added an extra 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) to the total distance," he noted. Here's a sketch of the projected route based on these comments:
It looks basically like "follow the exposed bedrock southish until it ends, then turn to the east." |
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Mar 1 2009, 09:21 PM
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#379
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 4279 Joined: 19-April 05 From: .br at .es Member No.: 253 |
This decision still puzzles me. If we continue on this heading (SSW) we will be facing a quite big dune area in a question of 2km or so.
Do we have HiRISE coverage of the area SSW of the current position for the next 7km? |
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Mar 1 2009, 09:44 PM
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#380
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 976 Joined: 29-September 06 From: Pasadena, CA - USA Member No.: 1200 |
QUOTE (Tesheiner @ Mar 1 2009, 01:21 PM) This decision still puzzles me. If we continue on this heading (SSW) we will be facing a quite big dune area in a question of 2km or so. Do we have HiRISE coverage of the area SSW of the current position for the next 7km? I do not recall the distances exactly, but we will still be heading SW-SSW for about 2-3Km then we should be able to start heading back ESE-SE. The entire path is visible in the HiRISE strips that we have collected so far. Paolo -------------------- Disclaimer: all opinions, ideas and information included here are my own,and should not be intended to represent opinion or policy of my employer.
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Mar 1 2009, 09:58 PM
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#381
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 578 Joined: 5-November 04 From: Denmark Member No.: 107 |
Curios about the wheel motor current. How much higher is it above normal? What is the normal current draw for a wheel motor? How's it looking driving backwards now? Thanks
-------------------- "I want to make as many people as possible feel like they are part of this adventure. We are going to give everybody a sense of what exploring the surface of another world is really like"
- Steven Squyres |
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Mar 1 2009, 10:13 PM
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#382
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 976 Joined: 29-September 06 From: Pasadena, CA - USA Member No.: 1200 |
QUOTE (dot.dk @ Mar 1 2009, 01:58 PM) Curios about the wheel motor current. How much higher is it above normal? What is the normal current draw for a wheel motor? How's it looking driving backwards now? Thanks The currents depend on soil type, slope (only a bit) but in this specific instance (MER-B Sol 1787) all wheel currents were around 0.2-0.25A while the RF wheel was around 0.5-0.55A. These motors can take 1A continuous, so there is ample margin, but it is the fact we had never seen such a large discrepancy (0.1-0.2A difference had been seen before). Paolo -------------------- Disclaimer: all opinions, ideas and information included here are my own,and should not be intended to represent opinion or policy of my employer.
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| Guest_Oersted_* |
Mar 1 2009, 11:22 PM
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#383
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Guests |
QUOTE (Geert @ Mar 1 2009, 12:55 PM) Just supposing both MER rovers will still be active by the time MSL lands, how much load will that put on the ground-teams, SS has once commented that operating two rovers at the same time could be quite tough, would it be possible to operate 3 rovers at the same time? (Having in mind also comm-passes and relay capacity of the orbiters, DSN availability, etc). Can it be that difficult? Just hand UMSF a rover manual and we will take over the day to day running of the MERs when MSL lands... We have plenty of experience by now...
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Mar 2 2009, 06:42 PM
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#384
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 Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2262 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Melbourne - Oz Member No.: 16 |
I've been a bit out of the loop recently, learning how to be a parent! However I think I've mastered the important 'hold baby in one arm while using the other to process MER images' technique.
Cobble survey from sol 1811  James -------------------- |
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Mar 2 2009, 09:24 PM
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#385
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 753 Joined: 23-October 04 From: Greensboro, NC USA Member No.: 103 |
QUOTE (jamescanvin @ Mar 2 2009, 01:42 PM) I've been a bit out of the loop recently, learning how to be a parent! However I think I've mastered the important 'hold baby in one arm while using the other to process MER images' technique. ... James James, the correct (Martian) way to do this is to hold the baby in one arm, use another arm to process MER images, and use the other arm to... -------------------- Jonathan Ward
Manning the LCC at http://www.apollolaunchcontrol.com |
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Mar 2 2009, 09:25 PM
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#386
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 Special Cookie Group: Members Posts: 2168 Joined: 6-April 05 From: Sintra | Portugal Member No.: 228 |
You don't know how you've been missed James!
Hope all the three of you are doing great there on good old mother earth, here on Mars I was impacient for your return, now it is time to name a little crater after...well...you know who...
-------------------- "Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Alan Poe |
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 Mar 4 2009, 07:51 PM
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#387
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 Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
Paolo,
I was just wondering, how are the engineering testbed rovers holding out? Do they need to get their motors replaced regularly? Any odometer on them measuring how far they've gone? -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Mar 5 2009, 05:08 AM
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#388
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 976 Joined: 29-September 06 From: Pasadena, CA - USA Member No.: 1200 |
QUOTE (hendric @ Mar 4 2009, 11:51 AM) Paolo, I was just wondering, how are the engineering testbed rovers holding out? Do they need to get their motors replaced regularly? Any odometer on them measuring how far they've gone? We have only one real testbed, and the actuators are holding up quite well but it has not been used as extensively as the real rovers (we do not keep track of the wheel odometry on that one) and the environment is quite a cozy stable 20C 24/7, so I don't think it counts as comparison data point ;-) Paolo -------------------- Disclaimer: all opinions, ideas and information included here are my own,and should not be intended to represent opinion or policy of my employer.
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Mar 5 2009, 01:48 PM
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#389
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 20 Joined: 9-August 08 From: Lucens, CH Member No.: 4309 |
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Mar 5 2009, 02:05 PM
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#390
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Member Group: Members Posts: 128 Joined: 28-October 08 From: Boston, MA Member No.: 4469 |
Very cool. This was right after she buzzed by Ranger and Surveyor I believe.
I also think we saw a short drive yesterday, about 35m to the SSW. Can someone verify? |
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