SUPRISE......New Steve Q'n'A, Recorded Nov 6th 2006 |
SUPRISE......New Steve Q'n'A, Recorded Nov 6th 2006 |
Nov 7 2006, 11:26 AM
Post
#1
|
|
Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Everyone likes suprises right....
At very short notice ( <36hrs ) - Steve and I managed to meet up in Milton Keynes yesterday evening and do another Q'n'A - this time an hour long talking about everything that's gone on in the last 12 months or so since the first Q'n'A last September. http://www.rlproject.com/audio/ss_qna_071106.mp3 Approx 14 Meg, 1 hour 48 seconds long. Sorry I didn't have time to do a call for questions - but with the time between knowing it was on and doing it being so short there just wasn't the time to call for them, plough through them and then pick them...I think I got through all the good stuff though. I tried to see any left over stuff mentioned here, things that might have been asked for a Pancam update but better suited to Steve rather than Jim - and I was able to ask my admin team if they could think of any as well ( thanks guys ). This time it was on the lounge area on a hotel landing....no ducks or wind noise - but occasional passers by heading to and from their hotel rooms - I hope the quality's good enough (I think it is) If someone wants to put down time markers for transcription and people do the same as last time, I'd be happy to put together another PDF like last time. Enjoy! Doug |
|
|
Nov 11 2006, 12:01 AM
Post
#2
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 646 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Forest of Dean Member No.: 617 |
I got a bit carried away... here's chunk #8. Sorry if anyone else had their eye on that bit! Doug, I'm sorry to report that I can't make out what you're saying in a couple of places; I've indicated those with (?) bracketed question marks.
SS: ...they're going to be fabulous mosaics when they come down, but, ah,.. [ 00:37:40 ] y'know, the thing that's hurting us right now is that we still don't /quite/ - almost, but not quite - have enough power to start grabbing a.m. Odyssey passes. I mean, those a.m. Odyssey passes can be tremendously valuable in principle; A.W.A., right? We're /real/ close to being able to use a.m. Odyssey passes, but not quite yet, and so right now our data volume is pretty restricted, and that's going to be the limiting factor on our pace along the rim of this crater for a while. DE: How do the A.M. Odyssey passes work - do you, actually [?] the rover stay comparatively awake and then deep sleep after the pass, or..? SS: The way you do an a.m. Odyssey pass is, simply, that you wake the rover up - you turn the CPU on - at the time when the, uh, vehicle is going overhead; but the problem is, you can't deep sleep on a night like that, because the battery - what deep sleep is, is you take the battery off-line, essentially, and then it automatically goes back on-line when the rover wakes up in the morning; but you can't wake the computer up if the battery's off-line; and so, especially on Opportunity, a.m. Odyssey passes are pretty costly, powerwise, and we just can't quite afford 'em yet. It'll change soon, but I think about 500 watt-hours is probably the magic number, I think once we get above 500 we'll be able to start doing a.m. passes again, and that'll speed things up, because the science that we have for Opportunity planned for the next several months is very, very, very pancam based; you're going to be seeing a lot of pancamming, and not too much of anything else, because that's where the real science lies for the next few months. DE: Now, you've said that you want to go... clockwise. SS: Yeah... initially. DE: ..because clockwise looks perhaps a little more exciting... SS: Yeah. DE: ...is that based on the pancam imagery, or is it based on HiRISE? SS: No. HiRISE, HiRISE. I mean,.. DE: ...cause you can't really see what's up, because we're up against ?? that way. SS: OK. You notice that the MRO project acquired that image in their first six days of normal orbital operations. OK. They did that at the request of the MER project. We went to - I mean, I'm on the HiRISE team... DE: (??) SS: ...but, yeah, we had a team meeting in Berne, is Switzerland - gosh, what was it - probably five, six, seven weeks ago? I don't know, a number of weeks ago; and my whole pitch at that meeting was, `Let's make sure that we get a HiRISE image of Victoria crater before conjunction, so that we can use that to support this upcoming strategic decision of, do we go clockwise or counterclockwise around the crater.' The entire timing of that image, the reason that the HiRISE took it when it did, was so we could use that image to help make the decision on which way to go. um... It's a fantastic image. I'll tell you a funny thing about that image. It was - as I said, it was planned during the first six days of HiRISE operations. We had no idea how good the pointing was going to be. There was considerable concern that we would just miss the target altogether. DE: It was *spot on*. SS: Well, you see, that's the frustrating thing. If I knew -- what we did was, the most important thing was getting Victoria crater. Everything else - Eagle, Endurance, all that stuff - was secondary. We had this big image, and we wanted to make sure that we got Victoria. So what I said to the HiRISE team was, look: don't screw around, you know, while it's tempting to bias the centre of the frame northwards so that we can get Eagle, and Endurance, and the heatshield, and the backshell, and the parachute, and the lander, and all the tracks, and all that stuff, let's just put it dead centre on Victoria and maximise our chances of getting Victoria, because /that's/ the image that we have a tactical need for now, is - is to plan which way we're going to go around the crater. Had I known that the pointing was going to be that good - DE: Yesss! SS: -as it came out, it was just dead nuts right in the middle of the frame, you know? And if I'd've know that it was going to be that good, we would indeed have biased it north, so one of the things that's now on our to-do list is to, at some point, to go back to the Opportunity site and do a shot that *is* biased to the north, and that will catch all of our other hardware, and tracks, and everything we've done in the past. But, yeah, it was funny the way that image worked out, because I was, uh, prepared - we were all prepared for the pointing to be bad, and it was perfect - just perfect. DE: (??) just bang-on. SS: ...and what a picture. DE: It's, um... it's nice to see something -- MOC did a fantastic job, seeing the rovers, SS: Oh yes, yes. DE: ...it's extraordinary to see them at all. But what HiRISE does is, you go - "Ah, that's a rover" - you recognise it - SS: Yeah. That image had a lot of impact on us. I said at the time that it was good to see the rover again, and you could sort of say it's a silly thing to say, because every day that we take pancams and navcams and hazcams, we see the rover - bits of it - and, you can take a panorama of the whole deck and that sort of thing, and that's... But somehow it doesn't have the same visceral impact as seeing it. DE: Sort of,... SS: Sort of, this lonely, valiant little rover -- DE: ?? SS: Yeah, in the middle of nowhere like that, and especially right up on - you know, just poised on the lip of that enormous crater that we fought so hard to get to. DE: Being so brave... (?) SS: ..that was a wonderful picture, that was a wonderful picture, you really got to tip your hat to the HiRISE team, Alfred McEuan and that whole team that did that instrument, because that was just a magnificent accomplishment. [00:43:33] DE: Now, HiRISE will image Victoria again.. -------------------- --
Viva software libre! |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 23rd September 2024 - 10:57 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |