MSL - Stopover on the Road to Glenelg - Arm Commissioning, Commissioning Activity Period 2 - Sols 30 through 37 Options

[Doc]

Judging by Google images, this should be an evocative image .

"Reach for the stars..." ;-)

[Doc]

Depends on what you mean by self-portrait, but the belly pan is not what we think of as the self-portrait, nor do we call it the "MAHLI self-portrait" because it's not a self-portrait of MAHLI, but with MAHLI. Some people call the self-portrait of the rover taken with MAHLI the "Myspace image" but I'm too old to know what that means.

Should have clarified... yeah I meant the belly pan though my ustream connection isn't as good as it should be so when I saw the MAHLI panning video I thought 'MAHLI will image Curiosity's portrait'

[volcanopele]

Any idea how close we are to Glenelg? There's no new route map, but since the terrain here is quite bland that's not a surprise.

Maybe this will help?

http://www.uahirise.org/releases/msl-tracks.php

[jmknapp]

Leo Enright of Irish TV and of course Emily can always be counted on to ask the best questions at the telecons. From the one just concluded:

Emily Lakdawalla: Looking at the recent navcam pictures we've noticed that there are some dents on the wheels. I'm wondering if that was expected or surprising for you to see that--tiny dents.

Michael Watkins: Umm, yeah, I think, so we've seen small dents before in our test rovers, you know, up in the Mars Yard and when you're driving around.So I think it's probably, it's pretty much as expected. I think that there's nothing unusual about that. So it may have been associated with the touchdown event or otherwise driving across, you know, some of the pebbles and cobbles and stuff. So we've seen that before and so we're obviously going to try to take reasonable care of the wheels, but nothing unusual so far.

Matt Robinson: Em, this is Matt. It's benign, it's nothing that would cause us any angst or worry about the performance of the wheels or driving.

Leo Enright: My other question, much more generally, I hope, Joy, you won't mind me asking it. Scientists at the moment are kind of in the back seat, but you must have your nose pressed to the window looking all the time, and I just wondered, is there anything you've seen in the immediate locality so far that really interested you and that gave you a flavor for what you think is coming up, even though obviously at the moment the engineers are actually, you know, controlling the steering wheel. Was there anything that really caught your eye? I'm thinking particularly, I thought one stage I thought maybe there was some hint of a vein, a lighter vein in the soil. You know, is there something there that you particularly noticed and made you excited for the future?

Joy Crisp: So this is Joy, uh, there's two main things that have intrigued me, and I think most of the team. One would be the MASTCAM imaging of Mount Sharp and seeing the structures and layers and we're not sure what it all means, but it's pretty spectacular and not something we've ever seen before on Mars, and the other would be the rocks nearby, some of them are showing quite amazing textures that we've not seen before on Mars, some that look like they might have big mineral grains in them that are light in tone and in a dark matrix, umm, just eye-popping but we don't know what it means, so we need to examine rocks like that more thoroughly close up to get at what... how those rocks formed. But that's whats been exciting, to see things that we've not seen on Mars before.

[xflare]

I think this is the rock Joy Crisp is referring to

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...1_DXXX&s=24

[elakdawalla]

jmknapp, xflare, you've made my blog-writing job considerably easier today Thanks!

I had not noticed that rock. WOW.

[drz1111]

That rock looks like a dead ringer for a porphyritic basalt or andesite, with big ol' plag crystals. Its always dangerous to do armchair geology, but, wow.

[Ant103]

Sol 30 Navcams showing the extended robotic arm .

[Eyesonmars]

Not sure where to put this question but here goes ...
Could the brush on the arm be used to clean the dust off the rover (cameras, instruments, etc) if need be ?

[neo56]

According to this abstract : http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPS...PSC2012-326.pdf
an eclipse of the Sun by Phobos should occur inside the landing site ellipse on Sept 13, 16 and 17.
Does someone know if it is planned to image the Sun with the Navcam during these eclipses ?

[djellison]

Not sure where to put this question but here goes ...
Could the brush on the arm be used to clean the dust off the rover (cameras, instruments, etc) if need be ?

I would not do that. It's an abrasive tool. It would do far more harm than good.

[Doc]

I think this is the rock Joy Crisp is referring to

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...1_DXXX&s=24

Goodness!

[Joffan]

Sol 30 Navcams showing the extended robotic arm .

Great to see the arm in action there, but it's definitely a "take me to your leader" sort of shot. Or perhaps, given the number of poker chips apparently stuck on Curiosity, "take me to your dealer" .

[Deimos]

Could the brush on the arm be used to clean the dust off the rover (cameras, instruments, etc) if need be ?

Don't scare me like that!

...an eclipse of the Sun by Phobos should occur inside the landing site ellipse on Sept 13, 16 and 17.
Does someone know if it is planned to image the Sun with the Navcam during these eclipses ?

The 9/16 event is a near-miss. The 9/13 is a partial; 9/17 is annular but, shall we say, thermally challenging. It is possible these have come to the attention of the team, but no promises on outcome. And don't forget little Deimos!

[fredk]

Does someone know if it is planned to image the Sun with the Navcam during these eclipses ?

Mastcam has solar filters, not navcam. Solar pancams are common with MER, where they're used to fix the fine attitude of the rover, but I haven't noticed any solar filter images from MSL yet. But I'd love to see the sun during a Phobos transit with mastcam 100!