[X] My Assistant

[aldo12xu]

Don't mean to compete against the Home Sweet Home thread, but I thought I'd put together a summary of the main observations and points discussed so far with regard to Home Plate, especially now that the thread is almost 20 pages long. I wouldn't be surprised that even after we eventually get the spectroscopy data, we'll probably still have a way to go before we get a handle on the origin of Home Plate.

So, anyways, I hope everybody finds the post of some use. The link is on my homepage.

Cheers,
Aldo.

[abalone]

Could it be that these layers in the distance and on the side of McCool hill are a continuation of the Home Plate sequence? I know its not new speculation but the evidence appears to be mounting

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[neb]

Could it be that these layers in the distance and on the side of McCool hill are a continuation of the Home Plate sequence? I know its not new speculation but the evidence appears to be mounting

Abalone: I am confident the beds you refer to are equivalent to the HP section but possibly reduced in thickness. It will be interesting to see what their dip is.

[Shaka]

Abalone: I am confident the beds you refer to are equivalent to the HP section but possibly reduced in thickness. It will be interesting to see what their dip is.

Hmmm...well now. Do I get the drift from this discussion that HP may not represent a specific impact or volcanic structure, but perhaps just a chance residue of once continuous beds filling inner basin?

[Bob Shaw]

Hmmm...well now. Do I get the drift from this discussion that HP may not represent a specific impact or volcanic structure, but perhaps just a chance residue of once continuous beds filling inner basin?

Yup!

Though perhaps not all-enveloping - though any airfall could well be such.

Bob Shaw

[Shaka]

Yup!

Though perhaps not all-enveloping - though any airfall could well be such.

Bob Shaw

Donnerwetter nochmal! I suppose this finding was always lurking off in the fringes of our imaginations, like a gray stormcloud threatening our bright postulates for Home Plate. And I suppose we needn't hope to rove into the extinct volcano that did all this, since it could be far away or deep beneath the plains lavas. Sad, if true, but at least it will salve our regret if Spirit never returns to the Ballpark.

Side note: I got very confused by the latest batch of MIs at Exploratorium: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/mi...ger/2006-03-07/
until I figured out that they were over six months old! How can relics of the past like this suddenly show up? Surely these were not languishing in the deep recesses of Spirit's memory all this time! (I am unavoidably reminded of a Woody Allen seasickness joke about "a lunch he had in 1956".) sorry

[odave]

How can relics of the past like this suddenly show up? Surely these were not languishing in the deep recesses of Spirit's memory all this time!

It all depends on the image priority. Images that deal with the next sol's drive/sequence planning always have higher priority than other data products. Some of them may in fact be parked in flash for a long time, simply because other images need to get down first, and there isn't enough time in the pass to get to lower priority items. Check out the transcript from the 1/31/06 pancam update, 3rd DE question

[Shaka]

It all depends on the image priority. Images that deal with the next sol's drive/sequence planning always have higher priority than other data products. Some of them may in fact be parked in flash for a long time, simply because other images need to get down first, and there isn't enough time in the pass to get to lower priority items. Check out the transcript from the 1/31/06 pancam update, 3rd DE question

O.K., ODave, I'll concede it's possible. I'm just very surprised that the MERs have so much memory to burn that we can neglect to download so many MIs for so long. How can MIs be so low in priority? How can there be no download opportunities over 6+ months? It's almost like somebody (or some computer) forgot they were there, yet I can't conceive how that could happen. How many other views might still be lingering up there?
You can tell I'm no engineer, can't you.

[djellison]

O.K., ODave, I'll concede it's possible. I'm just very surprised that the MERs have so much memory to burn that we can neglect to download so many MIs for so long. How can MIs be so low in priority? How can there be no download opportunities over 6+ months? It's almost like somebody (or some computer) forgot they were there, yet I can't conceive how that could happen. How many other views might still be lingering up there?
You can tell I'm no engineer, can't you.

It's not a case of memory to burn, it's simply what's important. These images are not important. They were the extreme ends of a focus-pull for the MI etc. Spirit's been very busy in the last few months, and so has had lots of high priority imagery ( for driving, new panoramas etc ).

How many other images are up there? According to the pancam tracking page,

There are 3633 individual imaging products onboard totallying 700.3 Mbits on Spirit, 3946 products totalling 923 Mbits on Opportunity. Some of these will simply be images that have been downloaded but not deleted, some of them will be one's that have not been deleted. Huge numbers (the vast majority) of them are likely to be tiny reference files, downsampled autonav imagery etc - things that hardly even count as images.

Doug