Phoenix SSI Reference Material Options

[Airbag]

With all the attention on the filters, let's not forget about the boom that deployed the ISS:

http://www.aec-able.com/Booms/coilboom.html

Looks like they can add a new entry to their "successes" table!

I've always been fascinated by these "tensile" structures. Although it doesn't use quite the same principle as the coilABLE boom, the Hirshhorn museum in DC has a really great example of such a tensile structure; you can stand right below it and wonder how it stays up with just wires and rods (and the rods don't touch each other) and also how it was raised to begin with.

"Needle Tower" at the Hirshhorn, via flickr

Airbag

[Deimos]

An attempt at browseable access to the raw images has been added to the SSI site. The format borrows heavily from Emily's, with some extra info. At the moment RAC and OM are not included. The page will be hours behind the UA image page, but it is hoped the organization appeals to a certain small corner of the net.
http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/

[djellison]

Mark - that's just ideal - perfect. Given how hard you must be working at the moment, this is above and beyond the call of duty!

Incidentally - I was hoping that the descriptions would help me figure out what one set of obs was....but I'm still none the wiser "11DE-0: SSI_MS_OFB_1200-1300" - is that part of the SSI hardware atop the mast or something? It looks a bit like some of the various brackets and so forth on the lander deck, but far too big.

Doug

[Shaka]

Ya gotta love it!

[Airbag]

Man, I almost hate to mention this...but the Sol 15 page appear to have what looks like an html bug ("v>") towards the end:

CODE

<div id="data">
<div class="container"><div class="spacer">&nbsp;</div>
<h2>-</h2>
v>

Perhaps related to there not being any images (yet?) on that page?

Airbag

[James Sorenson]

Why isn't the "Peter Pan" Mission success panorama being done at full resolution color?. I would think that they would be doing this at full resolution. Or are they gonna do that later after this pan?.

[ugordan]

I was wondering about that as well, James. Seems like a waste of bandwidth to first be doing a 2x2 binned panorama only to redo it again at full res at some point in the mission.

[djellison]

MER did it.

Twice.

[fredk]

An attempt at browseable access to the raw images has been added to the SSI site. The format borrows heavily from Emily's, with some extra info.

It's great to see this page - thank you! And the "extra info" is certainly appreciated...

[Deimos]

Why isn't the "Peter Pan" Mission success panorama being done at full resolution color?. I would think that they would be doing this at full resolution. Or are they gonna do that later after this pan?.

This is a really good question, and like all such, it has multiple answers.

One answer is about quality. On that front, the color pan from SSI is actually closer to full resolution than, say an image from your digital camera (making assumptions here..). The difference is your camera hides that fact, SSI is open. A typical Bayer pattern CCD takes images such that the green are half-resolution and the red and blue are quarter resolution. The image is manipulated on chip or in software to predictively extrapolate to full res before you ever see it. SSI has some filters at full res, others at quarter res, and they can be upconverted even better than the Bayer-sampled images can be (see the sol 2 pan press release, based on 1 full res and 2 1/16th res filters).

OK, the pan will be full res, but why not do better? Well,there's the practical answer. We need to see the pan before it is useful to us. Finishing it on sol 150 is not an option. So, design a pan that can be acquired and downlinked in a reasonable time. This pan is a requirement for full mission success, and a useful planning tool (interpretation of immediate workspace through context, identification of interesting distant features). So you figure out how many frames you want, how many sols you have to finish, and what fraction of the downlink you can use (unlike MER, the panoramic camera is merely one of 3.5 major data hogs). Then, you land, get great comm and thermal, end up with more data. So the runout version of the pan is obsolete, and the new and improved pan is in. Another practical issue is that Phoenix has very little flash memory. The pan is the last thing saved, almost, so we cannot just take lots o' data and play it back at leisure.

Isn't it a waste to take multiple pans? Well, no. An "efficient" way to acquire a pan would be to spend the whole mission getting the best quality. That would mean on sol 45 *half* the site is unseen. Thus we plan not 2, but 3 pans. The sols 1-3 site pan, low res, for quick look. The full res color pan to sol 30(??). Then, maybe, if needed, a high res, low compression, many filter pan. But if that never happens, we're still good. (Actually we need to reacquire the low res site pan a couple times, just as pancam does, as part of an orbiter-coordinated experiment.)

[vk3ukf]

Oh, these pages are heavenly, really.

May I ask you folks if I can host any links to your own MER and Phoenix software on my own MER software page. I was also going to weave the Phoenix codes into my MER software as well.

http://www.vk3ukf.com/vk3ukf_files/MERDAT.htm

I need to read more here, I also need sleep badly.

Back in day or two for a look see.

VK3UKF.

[climber]

From Mark row images pages Sol 17 : http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/017.html
Is this a confirmation that Steve the Cat is really on bord ?

SSI 13F - CheshireCat 1248 15 9
SSI 13F - CheshireCat 1249 15 0

[Tman]

Currently it isn't possible to match these two "Peter Pan" pictures regarding brightness of the hills, except doing extensive manipulations that, however, cause no satisfying result:

http://www.greuti.ch/phoenix/peterpan_az220_az231.jpg

It is probably due to the different time of sol (3hrs) that caused the different brightness, isn't it.
- left picture of that mosaic http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/i/SS018EFF897...5_11E1ER1M1.jpg (13:42:53 )
- right picture http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/i/SS017EFF897...9_11E1CR1M1.jpg (10:42:20 )