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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ MSL _ MRO view of MSL

Posted by: jmknapp Jul 16 2012, 01:21 PM

Playing around with the latest SPICE kernels posted to the public NAIF website shows two points in the MSL landing sequence where the HiRISE camera is pointed directly at MSL. I made a couple visualizations:

The red dot is MSL. The field of view of the images is 30° while the HiRISE fov is 1.15°. MRO's pointing direction is taken to be HIRISE_OPTICAL_AXIS.

According to the kernel data, the landing occurs at 05:17:54 UT, so apparently the advertised landing time of 05:31 is Earth-received time. The images show when HIRISE_OPTICAL_AXIS intersects the position of MSL.

Posted by: djellison Jul 16 2012, 01:31 PM

QUOTE (jmknapp @ Jul 16 2012, 06:21 AM)

so apparently the advertised landing time of 05:31 is Earth-received time

Yes, it is.

Posted by: jmknapp Jul 19 2012, 11:34 AM

Here's an animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5G-VhHocVM

Posted by: RoverDriver Jul 19 2012, 01:27 PM

QUOTE (jmknapp @ Jul 19 2012, 03:34 AM)

Here's an animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5G-VhHocVM

That is so cool!

Paolo