[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

We haven't had a press briefing or conference in months... anyone else think Opportunities eventual (hopefully) arrival and exporation at Victoria Crater deserves one? If oppy makes it ok, it would, in my opinion at least, make it one of the greatest achievements in the history of planetary exploration and certainly deserves some public/press recognition. Doug, maybe you could ask if the rover team are planning anything?

[djellison]

Malmar - all the things you mention cost money. Where's it going to come from? I'd rather they made sure they could afford another mission extension..save every dime they can to run these things longer etc etc.

HOWEVER...

Some of the things you mention are already out there...

http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...true_color.html
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...alse_color.html

not to mention MMB putting together all the mosaics and colour images. Calibration takes a lot of time and effort - to throw those images straight onto the web would be unrealistic, and not to mention jumping the gun w.r..t scientific process and the perogative of the PI's to do science with the data before anyone else.

Much of what you describe was also covered in the Maestro package which was a public version of the planning software used by JPL - but to highlight my point, they stopped releasing new data for it at the end of the primary mission because of the money.

For those of us who care about these things - the data is out there to make the things you talk of and between us we're just about getting there. For those that don't care.....well....they don't care - no ammount o f added goodies would change that imho.

Doug

[Malmer]

Malmar - all the things you mention cost money. Where's it going to come from? I'd rather they made sure they could afford another mission extension..save every dime they can to run these things longer etc etc.

Yes it costs money. Taxpayer money. So by having a larger amount of the population being positive to the spaceprogram we can ensure a larger budget or at least maintain the budget that we have now.

Basic advertising... You spend some money to raise more money.

That being said I know that what Im asking for is probably too much. But it would be fantastic if all the stuff on this forum where picked up by nasa. (it wouldnt cost them much to link to the places you suggest.)


/Mattias