MER@5 Years, Your thoughts and congratulations to the MER teams Options

[fredk]

From the NASA TV schedule:

January 15, Thursday

2 p.m. - NASA Science Update -- "Something in the Mars Atmosphere" - HQ(Public and Media Channels)
6 p.m. - NASA Celebrates Mars Exploration Rovers 5th Anniversary - JPL (All Channels)

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Looks like a series of interesting talks to celebrate the 5th anniversary:
Rover mission leaders will present free, illustrated talks Thursday, Jan. 15, and Friday, Jan. 16, in Pasadena, with the Jan. 15 event streamed live online and archived for later viewing.
On Friday, Jan. 23, through Sunday, Jan. 25, rover team members will give a series of talks at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. The observatory will also display a full-size Mars rover model, with team members available to answer visitors' questions.

[cschmidt]

On a different note, honoring five-years:

I’m a high school teacher and guitar player. In 2005, I produced an indie album of original compositions for guitar, called Xanthe Terra. Owing to my love of Mars, this forum, y’all, and on the occasion of the five-year anniversary of MER, I want to share that I had dedicated this CD to Steve Squyres, along with the engineers and scientists who played a part in the MERs’ success. 4 years late in telling you, but what the hell…In the liner notes to Xanthe Terra, I wrote

“This album is dedicated to the many scientists and engineers who have participated in the Mars Exploration Rover Project ’04-5, (sic) led by Steve Squyres. The MER missons - carried out with extraordinary precision, ingenuity, and passion - have to date made significant discoveries about the past presence of liquid water on Mars. The rover teams embody the living spirit of scientific inquiry, as they are the true explorers of our time and an inspiration for the generations to come.”

So why didn’t I just call my CD Gusev Crater? Well, Xanthe Terra just sounds sexier. Also, the etymology of the russian root gus- translates into English as, well, goose. For me, the Columbia Hills do not evoke flocks of geese, so there went that title. Now, Terra Meridiani would have made a dandy name, but then the official Mars name was changed from Terra Meridiani to Meridiani Planum, a much clumsier moniker. (The Martian nomenclature is such a gold mine of euphonious and wonderful names… ) Anyhow, I ended up with this CD of original compositions for guitar, and I call it Xanthe Terra. Easy to find in search, if you are interested.

For further reading, here is a rather interesting article from the Chicago Reader about it, August ’05.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheMeter/050812.html

regards, Charlie Schmidt

[RoverDriver]

...
Easy to find in search, if you are interested.
...
regards, Charlie Schmidt

Do Rover Drivers get a discount on your CD? ;-)

Paolo

[cschmidt]

Heavens, YES! PMing you now...

[RoverDriver]

Heavens, YES! PMing you now...

I was joking! It would definitely inappropriate of me taking advantage of my position. JPL sometimes has musical events on the Mall. Maybe, I can see if I can arrange things for you to come and play next time you are in the area! Let me know if you are interested.

Paolo

[Phil Stooke]

It's not really correct to say Terra Meridiani was changed to Meridiani Planum. The old name still applies, but covers a large area, and the 'planum' is just the smooth bit covering up some of the cratered terrain.

Phil

[cschmidt]

Phil, what a relief to hear that Terra Meridiani was not dumped. But now you've got me wondering whether a Terra is bigger than a Planum, or vice versa.

And Paolo and I are discussing the possibility of me doing a guitar concert at JPL; they have performers from time to time; too cool maybe maybe. Thanks Paolo!

[marswalker]

Excellent summary! To celebrate the milestone, I've cut together a selection of some of the more amusing moments during the early press briefings:

http://www.speedyshare.com/556118174.html

Hi Del,

Do you mind if I copy this audio cut to our server at work? I would love to be able to share these clips with my cohorts.
It's a nicely entertaining (space geek) bit of audio.

I would also like to send the URL for this to my counterparts at JPL. Please, sir?

(I worked on ...well, everything NASA has sent to Mars, starting with MPF. I know some of my co-conspirators in the invasion of Mars would love to hear these clips!)

Kind regards,

"The Mars Guy" Mike (aka Marswalker)

[Del Palmer]

Do you mind if I copy this audio cut to our server at work? I would love to be able to share these clips with my cohorts.
It's a nicely entertaining (space geek) bit of audio.

I would also like to send the URL for this to my counterparts at JPL. Please, sir?

Of course you can, knock yourself out!

[centsworth_II]

Spirit flashback... five years ago....

"Art comes in and says we got no Odyssey telemetry, so there will be no science tomorrow. Sol 19 will definitely be a recovery sol.... One happy consequence of a recovery sol is: no SOWG today. They have an informal version of it, but it's almost nothing like the real thing. The chair reports a lot of concern about the spacecraft, since the AM comm was erratic and we've heard nothing from the spacecraft since then. But Andy thinks the rover just overheated, in which case it will naturally be OK as it cools, and we're fine. I'm not worrying about it." http://marsandme.blogspot.com/2009/01/spirit-sol-19.html

I have a bad feeling.... (We can laugh now, right?)

[elakdawalla]

Yeah, I've been waiting for that sol 18 shoe to drop, and it killed me that it didn't do so in today's blog entry!

--Emily

[Astro0]

From Scott's Blog: As I'm coming in, Jeng Yen tells me it's going to be a slow day. Bad weather over Australia interfered with our comm link, so the day's sequences didn't get uplinked.

I remember this day really well.

As it was realised that there was a loss of normal comms with Spirit, the media started looking for answers and who or what was to blame (they're always on the lookout for a 'bad news' angle).

I think it was Jessica Collison who mentioned that the bad weather at Tidbinbilla (the Canberra DSN) was one of the possible problems. We were tracking Spirit at the time when things started to go haywire.

Well, didn't the media latch on to that. The early calls (the first at 3am from the BBC), told me that a rover manager said that we were the cause of the rover's problems. I spent the next 24 hours fielding reporters and phone calls from just about every news agency in the world saying that JPL/NASA had blamed us for the loss of Spirit - which of course they hand't.

It wasn't until the press conference and Pete Theisinger saying that the anomoly was on the vehicle that the media let us off the hook.

Ah, the joys of those heady days!

Astro0

[Stu]

Well, didn't the media latch on to that.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!?!?!?! And they're usually so diligent when it comes to checking the facts of stories involving science and technology!

Bet you found out adrenalin really is brown that day, eh, Astro0?

[nprev]

Yeah, I can see it now: "Mr. Astro, has Tidbinbilla stopped interfering with Spirit's communications yet, and is this a direct response by the government of Australia to recent media controversy concerning Mel Gibson?"