MSL Curiosity Lands Safely in Gale Crater, Landing and Commissioning Activity Period 1A, sols 0-8 Options

[stewjack]

Curiosity Rover ‏@MarsCuriosity tweeted:

For more mission news, tune in Fri, Aug 17 10:30am PT (1730 UT):
http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL.

NASA To Host Curiosity Rover Teleconference Aug. 17

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT, 1730 UTC), Friday, Aug. 17,
to provide a status update on the Curiosity rover's mission to Mars' Gale Crater.

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are checking out Curiosity's subsystems and
10 instruments. Curiosity is in the opening days of a two-year mission to investigate whether conditions have been favorable
for microbial life and preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life.

Mission team members are "living" on Mars time. A Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than an Earth day,
meaning team members start their shift 40 minutes later each day. The scheduling of this teleconference
and other Curiosity media events is determined by their availability.

Visuals will be available at the start of the teleconference at: http://go.nasa.gov/curiositytelecon.

[Stellingwerff]

Two still missing and my stitcher freaked out a bit and left a horizontal line across the image but apart from that...

Wow!

I especially like that wheel:
Curiosity's wheel

Wow indeed!

[iMPREPREX]

Two still missing and my stitcher freaked out a bit and left a horizontal line across the image but apart from that...Wow!

Nice job! Wow!

I can't get the new images into my pano. Would you mind me asking what program you're using? This is killing me!

[jmknapp]

That brings the details of the stratifications into much clearer focus, yes. Using Photoshop's levels calibration tool and curiosity as a base for calibrating the black, gray, and white values here's a white balanced version of the whole base of Mt. Sharp. Oh my, there's some interesting stuff up there...

http://www.edtruthan.com/mars/MSL-Sol2-Mt....te-Balanced.jpg

I tried photoshop on one of the images--here's an after and before with white balance, levels and contrast applied:

[jamescanvin]

Experimenting with an interactive VR version as they seem to be popular right now:

http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/vr/msl3/



@iMPREPREX I'm using Hugin it sometimes takes a bit of effort to get it to work with >100 images. Years of trial and error with MER has helped!

[iMPREPREX]

Thanks, James. I'm trying Hugin. I got the control points set, but I can't merge them. It's a complicated program!

I have the pano minus the new images and I can set the points, but can't execute it. Time to Google!

[dilo]

Experimenting with an interactive VR version as they seem to be popular right now:

Fantastic experience, I feel really in that place! Thanks.

[cIclops]

Hopefully this is a new link for everyone; John Grotzinger's lucid introduction to Martian geology presented during the Mars Society 2012 convention on 3 August:

John Grotzinger's MSL presentation (see especially from 13 minutes onwards)

[jamescanvin]

I've added a huge polar projection of the sol3 colour Mastcam pan.

[xflare]

Hopefully this is a new link for everyone; John Grotzinger's lucid introduction to Martian geology presented during the Mars Society 2012 convention on 3 August:

John Grotzinger's MSL presentation (see especially from 13 minutes onwards)

What he talks about at the 28:28-35 second mark might explain what we are seeing in this mastcam image http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...8000E1_DXXX.jpg

[Ant103]

Excellent James, as usual How many times does it take with your Hugin to export the full size ? For me it tooks more than an hour (on my Macbook Pro late 2007, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2Go of RAM).

The result here :



Two more frame, just two more frame an it will be done (except if some pics on Mount Sharp are expected).

Edit : Sol 2 Navcam pan is actually complete

[iMPREPREX]

Two still missing and my stitcher freaked out a bit and left a horizontal line across the image but apart from that...



Wow!

Hey James - just one more thing:

Where did you find 0003ML0000103000E1_DXXX ??? (103)

I'm getting an access denied.

But incredible job. Incredible. I'm using algorithims. You're doing it the hard way. Much respect.

[jamescanvin]

For me it tooks more than an hour (on my Macbook Pro late 2007, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2Go of RAM).

Yeah, I used the brute force method this time and it took over an hour to blend (iMac, Early 2008, C2D, 4Gb). For big MER pans I tend optimise the order that images are blended which can speed this up dramatically. I'm working on a method of doing that automatically for MSL. This was required back in my G4 Powerbook days when it would take all day to do a full 360 Pancam panorama without careful optimisation.

Where did you find 0003ML0000103000E1_DXXX ??? (103)

I'm getting an access denied.

It is E2 rather than E1

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...3000E2_DXXX.jpg

[Astro0]

More art than science


Crude but effective.

[jmknapp]

Fantastic! At this point I almost enjoy the self-portraits more than the first panoramas, just to see again that all the pieces parts are indeed in the right place and in good order. It's still hard t' believe.