Mars Live - Phoenix Coverage, Shameless plug Options

[djellison]

Myself, Chris Lintott, and Peter Grindrod will be gathering at Sir Patrick Moore's house, Farthings in Selsey, on Sunday afternoon. The four of us will be Blogging, uStreaming and Youtubing our way through the night, pulling together any and every source of information we can find, previewing the events of the evening, and hopefully filling the gaps between NASA TV coverage. I'll also be making sure we 'stand down' during Emily's hour at JPL, as frankly, I want to watch it myself!

We've set up a blog to preview events and to be a home for the content we come up with on the big night - hopefully some of you will pop in and pass comment through the night! We will have more details closer to the time at http://www.marslive.co.uk

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Will be there, virtually, and... munch, munch!

Congratulations on watching it together with Sir Patrick.

[Stu]

Oh good, ANOTHER website to keep an eye on on landing night! I was starting to worry I would get bored with just the six I already have bookmarked...

Sounds excellent, I'll definitely look in regularly.

[ElkGroveDan]

This might be a good place for a comprehensive list of all those links for landing day.

[Phil Stooke]

I'm old enough to remember when UMSF was all you needed.

Phil

[Stu]

This might be a good place for a comprehensive list of all those links for landing day.

Well, here's what I've got so far...

Phoenix Mars Landing Real-Time Simulation

Twitter MarsPhoenix

NASA - Phoenix Landing Blog

NASA TV

The Planetary Society Blog

Phoenix Mars Mission

Mars Live

To add to this list will be the site for Emily's live video chat, of course.

Not saying these are all websites everyone should check on the night; just letting people know what's out there.

[tim53]

I will be bringing my latest landing site map with me to the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference - Astronomy Expo in Big Bear, CA (Camp Oakes) this weekend.

The hope is that we'll be able to let people put postits on the map where they think the lander will land, and win a poster or some other non-commercial-endorsement-by-NASA prizes for the person who picks the closest site to the actual landing site.

Of course, this presupposes we'll know by late Sunday evening where the lander touched down. The Conference ends Sunday night/Monday morning.

For those people interested in telescopes and camping out under the stars (and the moon!), logistics can be found on their website: http://www.rtmcastronomyexpo.org/

-Tim.

[nprev]

Gonna stay home, crack me a few cold ones, and watch 7 websites & TV simultaneously. (Clearly, the beer is a must-have, and lots of it; multiple vision WILL be required!!!)

[elakdawalla]

Nprev, the biggest drawback to watching the mission from JPL is that I won't be able to crack a cold one. I may have to schedule an escape from the press room with a few other people for a little pick-me-up some time in the long day. Or after.

--Emily

[nprev]

Well, if it gets to be too much for you, give me a yell; I'll be in a cab to Pasadena with a cooler!

[dmuller]

Other than where you follow it, I'm just wondering when you all follow it ... when does the landing occur in your mind and imagination? Clearly NASA TV will be on Earth Received Time, but your mind (and the real-time simulation) can be tuned to Spacecraft event time (so far I see about an even split between ERT and SCET on the simulation).

Daniel

[elakdawalla]

Whenever I follow a critical mission event I'm always acutely aware of the difference between spacecraft event time and earth received time. When we're waiting for news of a deployment or chute jettison or some such, I'm always imagining the spacecraft, and imagining the information from the spacecraft winging its way across the vast reaches of space, and I'm even imagining myself sitting there at the same time that the spacecraft is doing its thing and the radio information is flying along....to the point that it can take a major effort to bring myself back to reality. In fact, I'm already halfway in that state, feeling like my brain is with Phoenix, and just loosely connected to my body, which is, meanwhile, going through the motions of everyday existence. Fortunately I've bathed, dressed, and fed my daughter enough times that I can do it in such a state -- and she's young enough not to notice how "spaced out" I am!

--Emily

[dvandorn]

Ah, but... this whole discussion depends on accepting the concept of simultaneity. And in a relativistic universe, there is no such animal.

Until and unless anyone figures out how to propogate information faster than C, as far as our perceptions are concerned, nothing "occurs" until we perceive it.

So I'm an ERT kind of guy. I just don't accept that simultaneity is a valid concept...

edit: To put it more clearly, I don't think of events at Mars as happening ten minutes ago. I think of them as happening ten light-minutes away. For me, it's a function of distance, not time.

-the other Doug

[climber]

edit: To put it more clearly, I don't think of events at Mars as happening ten minutes ago. I think of them as happening ten light-minutes away. For me, it's a function of distance, not time.
-the other Doug

Bottom line is : when we see it starts, it's already over. That's the power of imagination over physic laws

[djellison]

Here's how I'm going to play it. On spacecraft time, I'm going to run the HUD animation, think about what's happening (whilst keeping an ear on NTV ). I want to use that time to act as a 'preview' if you will. But - then - whilst we get the Odyssey coverage, in my mind I'll be thinking 'well - it's all over one way or another' - but my attention will be firmly on following events in 'real time', 'real' being ERT.

Doug