MSL Post Landing - Commissioning Period & Early Observations, Commissioning Activity Period 1B - Sols 9 through 16 Options

[marsophile]

http://marsweather.com ADMIN: Link fixed

There seems to be a new website in preparation for the weather reports. But at there and the old site

http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/marsweather.html

which is up to Sol 22 now, I notice there is no entry for the humidity. The humidity sensor is on Boom 2, the damaged boom. Does that mean the humidity sensor is non-operational? (Although that was not mentioned at the press conference where the damage was discussed.)

[Tesheiner]

I setup a MSL Route Map thread to keep record of Curiosity path during the mission.
Some basic rules are on the first post but here too, just in case. (Phil, I "stole" your yesterday post here for that purpose. Hope you don't mind )

Thread created for posting MSL route maps and map updates.
Comments / suggestions adding value to the route maps are allowed, but discussions regarding the route itself and "future" paths are not. Use the currently active thread for the latter.

[Doc]

There seems to be a new website in preparation for the weather reports.

which is up to Sol 22 now, I notice there is no entry for the humidity. The humidity sensor is on Boom 2, the damaged boom. Does that mean the humidity sensor is non-operational? (Although that was not mentioned at the press conference where the damage was discussed.)

I noticed the websites too marsophile. The humidity data must be missing for that reason (though according to the bbc which is where I got the news first they implied it was wind sensors only that might suffer a glitch.)

Whether or not they can recover the data is up to there engineering wizards.

[mcaplinger]

The humidity sensor is on Boom 2, the damaged boom. Does that mean the humidity sensor is non-operational?

I had the impression that the wind sensors were more fragile than the humidity sensor. http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/rems_instrument.html
I don't know, but I'd be surprised if the humidity sensor was damaged.

[scalbers]

All is explained. The Vaisala data sheet indicates that the probe measures relative humidity so this is probably no more than an descriptive error on the weather page.

Sounds good, though trying to specify an average relative humidity during the day with such large temperature swings becomes difficult to interpret. If we assume the specific humidity is approximately constant, then the saturation vapor pressure during the day would vary by orders of magnitude, as would the relative humidity.

It is impressive though the range of temperatures the probe can measure RH at:

http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/rems_RHS_en.html

[serpens]

If we assume the specific humidity is approximately constant, then the saturation vapor pressure during the day would vary by orders of magnitude, as would the relative humidity.

http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/rems_RHS_en.html

Yeah, the thing is that a miniscule amount of water vapor remains miniscule regardless of the temperature driven level of saturation so specific or absolute humidity (rather than RH) would be the best metric.

[Tesheiner]

Moved several posts related to the Descent Stage and debris to the MSL EDL Hardware thread.