Winter Quarters, at Low Ridge Haven Options

[djellison]

ngunn : the blue sky is not an artefact of the process.

It's an artifact of the stretched images. The sky is not that colour. It's a compunction of the fact that the overal scene is red for the stretched JPG's to produce a cyan sky.

i.e.
False Colour
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins..._False_L257.jpg
True Colour
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins..._1_True_RAD.jpg

Doug

[climber]

Some stattistics.Today, the difference between Days and Sols is 25 Earth days and it'll be 1 month (30 days) on Dec 28th this year nearly 3 years after landing (i.e. close to 10 days/year). I'm glad they decided to go back to Earth's time when they did, I guess we could have lost one of the rovers if they didn't do so.

[ngunn]

It's an artifact of the stretched images. The sky is not that colour. It's a compunction of the fact that the overal scene is red for the stretched JPG's to produce a cyan sky.

i.e.
False Colour
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins..._False_L257.jpg
True Colour
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins..._1_True_RAD.jpg

Doug

Thanks Doug. It would be fascinating to create a 'palette' or 'sampler' of the true sky colours captured so far. If only I had the expertise . . . unfortunately I rarely know what I am really looking at when browsing the images. I keep hoping that one day they will shoot some true colour vertical pans from horizon to horizon via zenith. A narrow strip in low res would be enough. For me you are not really 'there' if you don't know what the sky is like above your head. But what do we keep getting? More and more blasted rocks. Perhaps the next time you speak to the dust-pokers and strata-fanciers you could put in a word for a frustrated landscape painter?

[djellison]

Well - dust-allowing, there's lots of sky colour samples - part of the sundial is a little mirror

Also - there's lots of sky observations and the genius of Slinted + midnight mars browser puts them into place...I'll do some screenies over this w'end if I remember!

Doug

[ngunn]

Well - dust-allowing, there's lots of sky colour samples - part of the sundial is a little mirror

Also - there's lots of sky observations and the genius of Slinted + midnight mars browser puts them into place...I'll do some screenies over this w'end if I remember!

Doug

Excellent - I'm all agog! I honestly had failed to realise we had a sky mirror. This should make it easy to normalise tone/intensity too - something I thought might be difficult for upward pointing shots.

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

A new mystery at winter haven

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20060628a.html

The discovery of the calcium sulfate (along with the zinc and hematite), the first time seen by Spirit, is very significant, as Steve also mentions in the new Planetary Society update. More evidence for past water in Gusev.

[Astro0]

A Quick OT...
For anyone who missed the UMSF BBQ, see this thread.

Astro0

[atomoid]

..hadnt thought much before about how dusty the underside of both rovers are getting.

SPIRIT: SOL 054 -vs- SOL 794

OPPY: SOL 054 -vs- SOL 794

[general]

Spirit is quietly approaching sol 900 - living 10 times longer than expected.

[tedstryk]

The upcoming months should be interesting. I remember 1000 sols being thrown around as a maximum imaginable lifetime a while back.

[bigdipper]

What is Spirit doing to keep healthy while at winter quarters?
I saw some posts in this thread on May 31,2006 et seq discussing rotating the wheels in place but nothing conclusively indicating an "exercise program".
Is there a regular exercise schedule?

[jamescanvin]

There was no motion back at the end of May - that was just speculation to explain the site number change.

There has been no "exercise" of Spirits mobility system since she arrived at Low Ridge on Sol 805. (Hey coming upon a full primary mission at Low Ridge now! How time flys.)

I have no idea if the engineers think that exercise will be needed over winter - good question.

James

[CosmicRocker]

Although it hasn't moved yet, we can expect to see movement once they complete the McMurdo pan. The following quote is from the June 30th MER update from The Planetary Society:

"Although Halley was previously described as a kind of soil target, it now appears to be "loose, broken up rock," Squyres said. "We think it may be made of the same stuff as the outcrop that's immediately to the right of the rover." Once Spirit completes the McMurdo pan, the team is considering doing a turn to the right and then roving over to measure the composition of that outcrop. "We think Halley may be a piece of the same stuff but we don't know that for sure yet," he said."

I thought I understood how limited Spirit's energy budget was, but the following quote from the July 6th Spirit update on the JPL/NASA MER site really put the very tight budget into perspective for me. While describing a new technique for correcting drift in the rover's inertial measurement unit, they said this about the old, "get fine attitude" method...

"The entire process takes about one hour, which at present is roughly equivalent to a week of winter science operations."

Obviously it depends on which operations are being performed and how energy intensive each is, but it amounts to essentially 1 hour per week. So apparently in order to stay healthy through the winter Spirit is doing very little.

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

Does anyone have thoughts regarding the calcium sulfate discovery? I thought it was quite significant...?

Quoting Squyres from the Planetary Society update (June 30, 2006):

"In other hot new news, Spirit has returned another clue found in the target Halley that hints loudly at an aqueous past. "The latest thing we've gotten on Halley is that along with the hematite and the high zinc [content], it also seems to have a significant quantity of calcium sulfates in it." The discovery marks the first time Spirit has found calcium in all its work around Gusev. The substantial amount of calcium sulfate with zinc and hematite are "things that would plausibly point toward some form of aqueous alteration," Squyres expounded. "The thing that's interesting is that we haven't really seen calcium sulfates before at the Gusev site. We've seen magnesium sulfates in places and certainly very powerful concentrations of ferric sulfates, but calcium sulfate is something new.""

[CosmicRocker]

I don't, other than to say that I think you are right. It seems interesting that Spirit has found yet another sulfate. My brain wants to think that calcium sulfate would be common in a basaltic environment where the iron and magnesium varieties have already been found. I got an email about a week ago about the second announcement for the "Workshop on Martian Sulfates as Recorders of Atmospheric-Fluid-Rock Interactions." http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/sulfates2006/

I can see how sulfates would be of interest even without a new discovery, but this should fire up the geochemical people. It might be worth keeping an eye out for the abstracts coming out of this conference.

Oh, while I am posting again, don't expect much of a move from Opportunity when she moves to investigate that outcrop. It looks as if it will be a turn to the right and a small step. The turn will likely reveal more of the outcrop. but she will not need to travel far to reach any target they find.