Spirit & Opportunit Landing Coverage Options

[Decepticon]

I noticed something I forgot about, when Opportunity landed they said opportunity is Still rolling!

And for quite some time.


Was that misread data? Or was she still rolling as said in the video clip?

[Chmee]

I beleive it was later detrmined that Oppy was rolling back and forth in the small crater for awhile (like a marble in a bowl).

Seeing this thread, I watched the landing video for the first time since the event. Wow, I still gripped my chair in the anticipation! That was exciting stuff! Anyone have a link of the Spirit landing?

[ilbasso]

MaG, thanks for the clip! That was amazing. It really brought back exciting memories for me!

[Tom Tamlyn]

Near the end of the coverage of the Opportunity landing, Rob Manning tells the room that he and EDLCOM (Dr. Polly Estabrook) had concluded that what they had previously interpreted as indications of prolonged rolling was in fact multipath interference caused by the fact that the spacecraft's antenna was pointing across the Martian surface towards a setting Earth and the signal was bouncing off the surface as well as transmitting directly to Earth.

Incurable addicts who are looking for more archival footage than is available at the Exploratorium site can find most of the landing coverage (Spirit as well as Opportunity) and subsequent MER press conferences on the premium (pay) section of http://www.spaceflightnow.com. Most of the clips are unfortunately tiny. If anyone knows of a source for higher resolution clips of this material, I'd be, er, .... happy to pass it on to any MER addicts I happen to meet.

TTT

>>I noticed something I forgot about, when Opportunity landed they said opportunity is
>>Still rolling!
>>****
>>Was that misread data? Or was she still rolling as said in the video clip?

[edstrick]

I have essentially complete NASA TV converage of the MER landings and the Stardust comet flyby and Cassini arrival and Titan arrival. That includes pre-encounter and post encounger/landing etc press briefings as well as the real time converage.

These were taped on quasi-super-VHS from DirecTV. The quality is quite decent, but I'm convinced that all the lower-viewership channels are overcompressed, resulting in soft details and fine textures that break up into quasi-geometric mottling. They're saving bandwidth for the *big game* etc.

I'm about to take all coverage of Deep Impact on DVD-R, which should eliminate further degradation of the signal by tape.

I also have fairly complete NASA-TV Voyager Neptune coverage on VHS from a C-Band satellite, if the tapes haven't degraded in the last 16 years.

I'm in no position at the moment to dub the tapes to DVD, but I'll be able to do that later, though I'm not sure when. I'd like to make them available, but it's not going to happen for a while. I'm oversubcribed with elderly family, work, and everything else.