Sol 2 : HiRiseorama and UHF bugs. Options

[ustrax]

I'm frankly speechless (and that's difficult to happen...) beholding all this HiRISE stuff...
and that windy animation...

About HRSC images...Michel Denis told me that the images were indeed attempted but the result is very uncertain, it was also referred that the data is now all on ground, but he added that, if anything is in the images, by no way HRSC results can approach the exceptional image made by MRO HIRISE of the parachute and Phoenix.

Rob...can I hug you?

[ugordan]

It says in the comments of the HiBlog entry for the parachute image that apparently the image was taken about 5 seconds after heat shield jettison. Now, here's a rough estimate of the distance of the heatshield to the lander using simulated data from the Phoenix EDL HUD animation:

At shield jettison the stack was moving at about 100 m/s (about 107 actually, but for the sake of simplicity...). 5 seconds later the lander was slowed down to around 85 m/s. Let's approximate the deceleration as linear so that gives 3 m/s*s and the distance travelled by the chute/lander stack is 460 m.
For the heat shield there are two simplest options to consider:

1) Neglecting further gravitational acceleration and air drag and propagating the 100 m/s velocity at separation gives 500 meters travel distance.
2) Applying a rough estimate of vertical gravitational acceleration to the heatshield. At separation it was roughly moving 45deg off vertical so H and V components of the speed are roughly equal at 75 meters/s. After 5 s the vertical velocity would be 93 m/s. Averaging the initial and final velocities gives (100+120)/2 = 110 m/s.

The distance between the aeroshell and heatshield after 5 seconds would then be somewhere in the range of (500-460) and (550-460) meters. That's 40 to 90 meters.

What's the point of all this? I'm suggesting the heatshield should be visible in that crater backdrop image as well, probably as a dark speck. I couldn't find the length of the parachute cords which to use as a yardstick in this oblique perspective (and probably foreshortened) view, but 100 meters looks comfortably within the HiRISE coverage judging by the pixel separation of backshell and parachute and assuming chute cord length of around 30 m.

[SFJCody]

It feels pretty great to have my layman opinions on planetary exploration confirmed by the Mars Program Chief Engineer!

UMSF.com is like a fragment of the old days of the internet; full of knowledgeable, friendly people- professionals, enthusiasts and interested onlookers alike all sharing ideas and information.

[Ant103]

Hum, look like that Hirise team wil release full frame image of the EDL of Phoenix : http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008579_9020

[ugordan]

Hum, look like that Hirise team wil release full frame image of the EDL of Phoenix : http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_008579_9020

If you enter any number in the URL, it "opens" a page with that number so I'm thinking that's just a glitch with their web.

[Ant103]

Okay Gordan .

An other question : they don't have put the Sol2 pictures here : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/..._archive_1.html but, they are visible on the index. Why?

[remcook]

from the wind animation it seems the 'string' of the wind sensor is permanently bent... is that right?

[remcook]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/phoenix...27mroradio.html

" Data link between Phoenix and MRO restored"

[Josh Cryer]

Hey guys, as you might know a lot of the color images that came down last night weren't full resolution, so they suffered a bit for it, but I played around a bit and with slinted's suggestions came up with these pretty images: http://picasaweb.google.com/joshcryer/MarsPhoenixLander/

Anyway, I just wanted to return some appreciation for all the hard work everyone in the enthusiast and professional community puts in. I'll be updating that album within a few minutes of them being uploaded on the site. I hope to improve my knowledge of this field considerably more!

Take care all.

PS I know the skies are wrong in my images, don't shoot me!

[Stu]

Hey Josh,

Nice pics, looking forward to seeing what you do with the ones that follow.

BTW: welcome aboard! About time you were here!

[Ant103]

Wecome Josh nice pics you have made

Here is a try to making a colorization of the Hirise-EDL pic :
http://www.astrosurf.com/merimages/Upload/...orisationV2.jpg

[tuvas]

So I am guessing that the team won't be on Mars time?

Actually, the team is on Mars time, I think it has to do with the MRO/Odyssey passes.

[tim53]

I think this might just be the first lander that Tim didn't find even from the HiRISE images. No, wait, that would be Opportunity, but that one was easy... The first one that was not positively known where it was might be more like it... Hmm...

Actually, I found the Opportunity lander YEARS before HiRISE imaged it!

But it is true that MOC got it before I did. I had a very Eagle-like crater identified, but since we couldn't see much outside the crater, we didn't know it was Eagle until MOC imaged the site.

I hope personally they do a repeat with MSL...

MARDI will be the first to image the MSL landing site, and I'm a team member!

Mars is cool.

-Tim.

[fredk]

I enhanced that image a bit to bring out the reflection in the mirror to show direction:

Thanks, I hadn't realized that was a mirror. I imagine it's an essentially fully reflective mirror. Since it gives us a tiny view of the near zenith sky, it shows very nicely how much darker the sky is overhead than near the horizon (metadata says image altitude is about 11 degrees). I'd also be interested in how the sky hue differs at zenith.

[ugordan]

Not sure if you've seen this, but the first HiRISE observation (T+11h) is also up: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/phoenix-hardware_11.php

Regarding this: with low sun angles and exaggerated topography, is this what we should be looking for in MPL landing zone? Note Phoenix' backshell ended upside down as well. The only thing that consistently stands out is the parachute and if it's buried in dust over the years, well... The fact Phoenix landed at the edge of the 3-sigma ellipse doesn't help constrain things, either.