[X] My Assistant

[algorimancer]

Looking ahead to MSL (2010 isn't that far away), it occurs to me that it would be of mutual benefit to try to establish some sort of formal involvement between UMSF (or an interested pool of UMSF members, possibly coordinating through a private sub-forum) and the MSL PI's and associated teams. We've certainly got the talent pool, professional and otherwise, particularly considering the cartography, software development, and analysis which appears here. They could get the benefit of some competent assistance in a variety of forms (gratis), and we could acquire an inside line to the data products we care about. Anyone else think this would be a good idea? I'm not entirely sure how best to go about establishing this relationship, but we already have some members of the MSL team onboard here.

From my own perspective, I would like to be able to hit the ground running from the software perspective from the moment of landing. This means knowledge of such things as vehicle and instrument models (camera models) as well as locations and formats of data products - images, color calibration, and something to the effect of the pancam tracking database. Some aspects of data analysis might also be handled here, and I'm sure we'd all enjoy sharing opinions about mission planning

[djellison]

Let's have a dose of realism here. There's no way that mission critical issues such as hazard detection, software etc are going to be an amateur contribution - that's highly unrealistic. That stuff is developed by peope within the ITAR legal 'firewall' - and unless you're inside it - you're not going to be a part of it.

The best way forward is to extoll the virtues of the amateur community, highlight what has been achieved ( specifically things such as APOD 'hits', mag covers, or work such as MMB ), and then make the case that putting raw images online as quickly as possible with enough information to make them as usefull as possible - without the help of something like the PCTDB which makes MMB possible today.

MER and NH have set a new standard for outreach w.r.t. people like us. Let's work to make sure MSL can match that - and then work to see other missions (and agencies) begin to match it before pushing the standard higher, or suggesting it be in a place that is not only overly optimistic, but also a legal and flights ops impossibility.

Doug