Pathfinder site, for comparison with HIRISE Options

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

My 2 cents about possible final sojourner location.

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[djellison]

Which bit do you think is sojourner?

Doug

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Which bit do you think is sojourner?

Doug

I'm donloading the TIFF version of the image...
But from jpeg version I obtained this image.

Given that stero pairs allow a virtual resolution increasing and that TIFF are less noisy, I think Sojourner could perhaps be found by comparing 3d panoramas to 3d orbital photos (3d allows better association between objects in panorama and objects in aerial map).

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[Guest_jumpjack_*]

BTW: why is the lander so bright? Shouldn't it covered with dust too??? Not airbags perhaps, but at least ramps and Sojourner original location!

Was the lander affected by battery failure, or the rover?
Maybe Sojourner is STILL rolling some kilometers away from lander, having lost its way???
Is this theoretically possible??

[Phil Stooke]

Sorry, jumpjack, but Sojourner was much smaller than your size of 3 by 6 pixels. It is only about 1 pixel wide. The double line you show for the ramp is too wide as well. I think Tim Parker's identification is most likely correct.

Phil

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Sorry, jumpjack, but Sojourner was much smaller than your size of 3 by 6 pixels. It is only about 1 pixel wide. The double line you show for the ramp is too wide as well. I think Tim Parker's identification is most likely correct.

Phil

Ops, you are right, upper left "ramp" is actually an airbag, as per this attachment!
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&id=8990

Where can I download from thee two images used for this animation?

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[djellison]

The overhead projections are from the Planetary Photojournal.

Doug

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Sorry, jumpjack, but Sojourner was much smaller than your size of 3 by 6 pixels. It is only about 1 pixel wide. The double line you show for the ramp is too wide as well. I think Tim Parker's identification is most likely correct.

Phil

which post are you referring to?

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Mabye IR will solve this issue!

The size of a rather large toaster oven (63cm lengthwise), Sojourner was last spotted around 13 meters away from Pathfinder, and that was three months after it first set foot on Martian sands. Trying to interpret MRO photos, scientists believe they found Sojourner 6 meters away from Pathfinder. Or maybe they spotted some rocks - they can't really be sure.

They'd like to study future pictures of the Pathfinder landing site from HiRISE, this time taken with higher resolutions in infrared and blue-green, in the hopes that one of these color wavelengths would be reflected by Sojourner's solar panels. Then they'd get positive ID on the toaster.

http://science.qj.net/MRO-finds-Pathfinder...pg/49/aid/79098

What are they talking about? Where do they think Sojourner is??

[djellison]

That is a little missleading.

HiRISE is 10 x 2000 pixel wide CCD's to make 20,000 pixels wide. The middle two of these are also replicated in the Near IR and Blue/Green - so giving a false colour 4000 pixel wide swath down the middle of HiRISE images. It is not at higher resolution though - it is the same res as the rest of the instrument. They missed Pathfinder with the colour first time around, but I am sure they will have another go at it.

The idea is that while everything looks very 'similar' in the normal red channels - perhaps the lander and sojourner will be a little more forthcoming with the nIR and B/G channels.

Please look at the rest of this thread and the HiRISE website for their preliminary location identification which is already very compelling given the fact that there is a roughly sojourner sized feature at a space where no such feature exists from the Pathfinder surface imagery.

Doug

[jamescanvin]

I can assure you there aren't two images that were received, the first attempt, as tim stated, was lost with problems with DSN. We received only a few channels, and none of them was with the lander included.

Yeah after my last post I went and made an anaglyph of the whole region with both jpg/tif and jp2 coverage and couldn't really convince myself that there was any stereo, so fair enough it's the same image. I did have to do quite a bit of streching to get the images to overlay so clearly one had been projected differently. I'm still really surprised at how different the lander looks in each image though.

As for color, well, that will come with the next image to finish the stereo, which AFAIK, hasn't yet been assigned. The lander was in RED6, which you're probably aware just missed the color strip.

Ahh so you missed the lander with the colour this time, I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

James

[edstrick]

".. Power went from the RTG to the battery to the spacecraft, and attempts to run directly off the RTG failed."

Actually, as I understood it, the RTG system was putting out it's constant 50 or so watts of power, but *DOING* anything useful, most specifically playing data back off the tape recorder or taking a real time image AND transmitting the data and doing spacecraft housekeeping, took more power than that 50 watts (or whatever). The battery couldn't buffer the surge in power demand, so the spacecraft had an instant "brownout" drop in voltage and safed itself every time they tried to do something. They turned off the vehicle's transmit mode to the last surviving orbiter (both direct-to-earth transmitters had failed), which shortly after ran out of attitude control gas and was turned off too. End Of Mission, with or without battery failure.

I *think* Pathfinder died while they were trying to configure it for a no-battery mode, and the software they uploaded wasn't really ready... some capabilities they were planning to put in weren't there yet or something, so they uploaded a "beta" version when it became an emergency. The expectation was that it wouldn't last long due to damage from deep thermal cyclling even if they could get it into a no-battery mode, but they were hoping for days or even weeks.

It's unlikely the rover went that far. It would have bumped into rocks and probably <i presume> gone into safe mode and hollered "Mama!", and gotten no answer.

[djellison]

The rover was programmed to - after a while - backed up to where it last had succesfull comms with the lander. If that failed - it was programmed to drive back toward the lander - but also maintain a keep-out zone around the lander. This would have resulted in the rover heading back toward the lander ( a fairly clear route that indeed includes the spot where we think we see Sojourner ) and then probably turning right and circulating that way until its position knowledge would drift and it would start roving just about anywhere.... the 'return and circle' sequence didn't actually exist per se.

I'm fairly confident that Sojourner could very easily have got to that point we see in the HiRISE images - I can quite believe it got that far.

Doug

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

This would have resulted in the rover heading back toward the lander ( a fairly clear route that indeed includes the spot where we think we see Sojourner ) and then probably turning right and circulating that way until its position knowledge would drift and it would start roving just about anywhere.... the 'return and circle' sequence didn't actually exist per se.

Imagine if in next hirise shots we'll se just a single pixel different in each image...
Maybe Sj is circling around the lander since 10 years!
ok, just kidding...

[djellison]

You jest - it would be suprising, but not beyond the realms of possible to see that little feature move. Sojourner is designed to be totally solar powered and did work for about a month with no other power source after its non-rechargable batteries had exhausted. She might be too dusty - and things may be broken inside - but it's plausable that the old girl wakes up every morning, tries a bit of a move, and then goes to sleep with the setting sun. Despite the enormous cool factor - this would also help confirm the current Sojourner feature...rocks don't tend to walk

Doug