[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Looks like the Sol 12 images are coming down
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?...3286&cID=50

Motion in the scoop for sure, so hopefully a full delivery will be imaged...in full.

[Reed]

and dumped http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_3304.jpg !

[Tman]

Hmm, it's a problem that the door not fully opened. Looks like they need first some cleaning movements with the scoop to be able to open the adjacent door then (if it's feasible at all).

[djellison]

The partially open door hasn't been a problem at all - there's load of material in and around the mesh, which means the oven will have got a sample. The opening of the next door will almost certainly flick the soil out of the way for the next sample.

Using the arm to clear soil from around the TEGA inlets is a bit like clearing dust from the MER solar arrays with the RAT. Wrong tool to do a bad job.

Doug

[ugordan]

Sol 12 images of the digging area:

[elakdawalla]

Sol 12 images now on my raw site. Also a lot more downlinked from sol 11.

--Emily

[kungpostyle]

So the scoop that got dumped came from the dig to the right of the original dig?

That's quite a mess on the ovens, I hope the doors on the adjacent oven can clear it without contamination of the later samples by soil falling back in, I'm sure they've thought of these things. I didn't realize they'd be dumping that much on the oven!

Kung

[MahFL]

Seems to me they needed a narrower scoop.

[BrianL]

The partially opened door has clearly resulted in a less than ideal post-dump situation. I guess we will have to wait for the next press conference to see whether that much spillage will be considered a problem for either getting the doors fully open (the left one shouldn't be a problem) or for dirt from the first sample falling into the hopper and messing up the results. Perhaps they will decide to skip that chamber and only use it as a last resort if they require that many samples.

Brian

[ugordan]

Animated GIF (1.3 MB) showing the deck before (11:30 AM) and after the dump (about 14:00):



EDIT: Updated with full resolution version.

[PDP8E]

Sol 12 images now on my raw site. Also a lot more downlinked from sol 11.

--Emily

Emily,

I love the use of the color labels!

[Airbag]

Seems to me they needed a narrower scoop.

The scoop does have a "funnel" mechanism built in but too much soil will overwhelm it.

Airbag

[djellison]

Seems to me they needed a narrower scoop.

But then it would take 12 months to dig a good trench

Doug

[MahFL]

I suspect the soil does not flow into the funnel at all, and the soil all sticks together and slides out in one lump.

[MahFL]

But then it would take 12 months to dig a good trench

Doug

The trench will only be as deep as the topsoil, and that seems about 5 cm. A narrow tench is also a good trench. Seems to me the scoop is four times as wide as the oven doors which makes no sense to me. Surly the accuracy of the RA can deliver soil to any 1 cm spot it can reach ?

[tuvas]

The trench will only be as deep as the topsoil, and that seems about 5 cm. A narrow tench is also a good trench. Seems to me the scoop is four times as wide as the oven doors which makes no sense to me. Surly the accuracy of the RA can deliver soil to any 1 cm spot it can reach ?

You might consider the fact that the programs to run the robotic arm were developed in Earth Gravity, with an attempt to lower it's gravity to Mars. Still, it's quite difficult to do so, and I'm sure it wasn't perfect... 1 cm is alot to ask of it all things considered. I think they'll manage to improve it over time, but still, we can only expect so much.

[Steve G]

I'm certain this isn't somethng they haven't seen in the testing phase and have contingencies planned. They will look at this in their usual, methodical way and fix it.

[akuo]

Sol 13 images have arrived on the UA site.

Looks to me that the "white layer" has changed its appearance from earlier sols:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?...3455&cID=51

[djellison]

Looks about the same to me, you may well be comparing unlike filters.

Doug

[akuo]

These two are from the same filter (RC, right blue) from sols 9 and 13:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_2984.jpg
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_3455.jpg

The local solar time is about 1.5h later in the sol 9 image.

Exposure settings could explain the difference too.

[ugordan]

I don't see any difference that isn't explained by phase angle effects. Here's a flicker gif between sol 12 (lower sun elevation) and sol 13 (more overhead). The regolith is strongly backscattering, while the mystery stuff is less phase angle dependant, suggesting non-powdery (crystalline?) makeup.

[Stu]

"Flat"? I don't think so...



Looks a bit hillocky-hummocky over there...

[Stu]

... and here too...

[ugordan]

I think you got the left-right wrong in the second anaglyph, Stu. The terrain in the first anaglyph is by my calculations about 6.7 meters from the lander, almost exactly due east. HiRISE images of the lander show nothing exceptionally rough in that direction, in fact, it looks even less rugged than in other directions.

[Stu]

Thanks, I'll check on that second one when I have time. As for the first one, I think that's a very small area we're looking at, not a wide swathe of the landscape. More like a "crossover" area between polygons, perhaps..?

Edit: I've found where that first 3D view is centred on... 85-90deg azimuth...

[imipak]

I've found where that first 3D view is centred on... 85-90deg azimuth...

Wow, that's a great anaglyph of impressive-looking relief; at a guess, 30cm vertical relief with a slope of 30-40 degrees. Not a comfortable place to land I guess... imagine if the robot arm was left flailing in the air unable to contact the ground....

[Stu]

Just re-done that second anaglyph and I'm pretty sure the L/R are the right way round.

[fredk]

Remember that the separation of the SSI cameras is more than double your eye's separation, which should exagerate the 3D effect. (Of course the size/distance of the image on your display matters too, as we've discussed here before.) Incidentally that camera separation is still only about half of that on the rover pancams.

Still, I was surprized too by the relief in that first anaglyph, Stu!

[elakdawalla]

My pages are now updated to sol 13. This'll be the last update until June 16.

--Emily

[Stu]

Thanks for the feedback on the 3Ds Fred, much appreciated. I had, to be perfectly honest, forgotten about the separation issue, so I guess that does make things look a bit more dramatic than they really are, but still, it shows there is some relief in the landscape.. can't wait to see the proper hi-resolution versions of these...

[fredk]

I don't see any difference that isn't explained by phase angle effects. The regolith is strongly backscattering, while the mystery stuff is less phase angle dependant, suggesting non-powdery (crystalline?) makeup.

Indeed, there's no evidence for a temporal change in the white material (sublimation or whatever), but those phase effects are certainly interesting! I don't think we saw this kind of behaviour for any white material dug up by Spirit! Thanks for this image, Gordan.

[Bill Harris]

. Here's a flicker gif between sol 12 (lower sun elevation) and sol 13 (more overhead). The regolith is strongly backscattering, while the mystery stuff is less phase angle dependant, suggesting non-powdery (crystalline?) makeup.

That makes sense. The regolith is very fine and cohesive, which gives the visual texture of a granular material. I'd suspect that the particle size distribution peaks at the fine end with aeolian "clay-sized" particles and at th ecoarse end with sand to cobble-sized particles derived from ejecta, consolidated sediments/volcanics/etc and the weathering products thereof. The properties of the fines remind me a lot of "fly ash" from a coal-fired steam plant.

I'm not going to stick my neck out too far, but the white material in the bottom of trhe trench initially impressed me as translucent in appearance, and still does at second look.

--Bill

[imipak]

Suggestive "staining" in the scoop;


It can't be what it looks like, so what is it? (blue filter) Interesting distribution in the bottom of the "funnel", and on the downslope sides of the edge of the bevel at the front of the shovel, and of the sides of the "funnel" in the floor of the scoop. What's different at those locations? I don't think it can be where the metal's been scraped clean of dust by the motion of the sample sliding onto TEGA, because it's a different colour than the pristine upper portions of the scoop.

[djellison]

Not a blue filter - blue LED's turned on. All I'm seeing is places where the scoop is clean, and places where it is not.

Doug

[nprev]

Yeah, I agree.

This may also partially obviate the cross-sample contamination problem from the spillage. Clearly the scoop's not gonna be perfectly clean each time, so any fall-ins are just a bit more in the load; unavoidable.

What interests me is just why the soil is both cohesive and "sticky". Gotta be pure electrostatics from the dry, dry environment combined with the extremely fine nature of the material. I wonder how many DC volts you might measure between two copper posts about 100m apart. (Probably not much due to the random distribution of charges in the soil, but more then you'd see even in Death Valley on Earth, I bet.)

[Greg Hullender]

I'm not seeing much discussion of the possibility that the failure is in the sensor that's supposed to detect that material is in the oven. Not sure why that should fail, but it's worth mentioning.

--Greg

[CosmicRocker]

Indeed. That possibility cannot be ignored.

I apologize if this concept has already been suggested. I am on the road and finding it difficult to keep up with all messages in these threads. Is it possible that the apparent particle-clumping is caused by hygroscopic salts depressing the freezing point of water in this environment? Is that even possible at these temperatures and pressures?

[Ant103]

Sol 12 pictures colored by myself

The robotic arm :


And two frames stitched together who showing the two trenches and a part of the lander deck :

[Stu]

Couple more 3Ds for ya'll... regardless of any distortion due to the separation of the cameras, etc, I still think these show the landing site is pretty cool!

[MahFL]

Keep the good work up Stu, we all appreciate it. I tried making my own but could not find the matching pairs on the UA website.

[climber]

Thanks Stu, looking forward to at 360° 3D pano
I feel we are lucky Phoenix landed leveled

[MahFL]

Level ? It's off by 1/3 of a degree, they should have included screw adjustments on the legs........

[ugordan]

There's an intriguing bright (specular?) spot unearthed after the latest dig in the Dodo trench (the false color image on the right is overexposed in the green and blue channels):



It's so bright that in certain filters (notably green and blue, but also in red) it saturates the CCD causing "bleed". The exposures do seem a bit on the high side in this sequence, but this speck is obviously bright. A big salt crystal?

[Stu]

... on the subject of "bright", there's an interesting looking bright patch over there...



... which looks like this when anaglyphalised (made up word, I know)

[eeergo]

Sorry if this has been covered before, I've been trying to catch up and I've read this and the previous imaging thread. However, I can't find the answer to this:

Why is the "bright patch" inside the first scoop trench not so bright in the latest images? Is it because the images have been taken through different filters than before, and now the spectrum is much more closer to 'natural' color? Or has it somehow changed over time? I read something about phase changes in the patch, but I assume those are caused by the different light exposure rather than by changes in the material itself?

And if it turns out this material has changed, what are the hypothesis about its nature?

[imipak]

... which looks like this when anaglyphalised (made up word, I know)

hey Stu, you've become an accomplished anaglyphographer!

[ahecht]

Any idea what this is a picture of?
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_3786.jpg

[jmjawors]

That's an engineering model of TEGA.

[LINK]

[ahecht]

Wow, I think that's the first time I've seen NASA use the term "whirligig" in an official document

[Del Palmer]

They also mention that it has a "black hole." Perhaps they need to increase the Schwarzschild radius to allow particles to pass into the oven?

[dburt]

...Is it possible that the apparent particle-clumping is caused by hygroscopic salts depressing the freezing point of water in this environment? Is that even possible at these temperatures and pressures?

Probably not, but salts don't need to turn to liquid to be somewhat sticky. Incidentally, hydroscopic simply means that they absorb moisture (true of most salts) and doesn't refer to freezing point depression; deliquescent means that they absorb enough moisture to turn to liquid - only possible at temperatures above their eutectic temperature with water. I think that's what you meant.

-- HDP Don

[4th rock from th...]

Here's an animation of the digs, using images from sols 12 and 14.

[dvandorn]

Can anyone venture a guess as to why anyone, anywhere would even *bother* to transmit an image product like this all the way from Mars to Earth?



I mean, quite frankly, there was just as much useful information in that Mars 3 surface image...

-the other Doug

[djellison]

I mean, quite frankly, there was just as much useful information in that Mars 3 surface image...

But you don't know that till you download it ( and Phoenix doesn't have the capacity luxury of saving all the images over several days for thumbnail downloading and selective downlinking thereafter )

It's classified as Sky survey tests, it's taken with a solar filter, thus it would be a very very very long exposure, thus it has a lot of noise in it. Given that there's no night-time to get noise readout images, it's probably the best they can do. Flatfield, bias, noise, are all important contributors to making sure you get the very best calibrated imagery that you can. So yeah - you may be thinking 'what the hell sort of a picture is that' - but it will make sure all the other pictures are as clean and calibrated as they can be

Doug

[dvandorn]

Well, yeah -- but this is a downsampled image, and so heavily jpegged that there is literally no usable information, at least in this raw form.

I guess I would have thought that the SSI team would have been able to predict that the combination of a very poor-resolution image and the heavy jpegging from the downsampling process would render such an image scientifically marginal. Then again, I really have no idea whether the very heavy artifacting is also present in the actual raw data, or if it's as much a result of the stretching for presentation on the web as it is due to anything that happened aboard Phoenix.

I was just struck by the apparent utter uselessness of the image, I guess...

-the other Doug

[slinted]

Can anyone venture a guess as to why anyone, anywhere would even *bother* to download an image product like this?

Looks like a calibration image ( 11F6-5: Survey sky test ). It's using the dark solar filters to look at the horizon using an crazy long exposure time to (I'm guessing) characterize the background noise.

[djellison]

no usable information

For you.

For Mark it's probably quite usefull in establishing the noise level of long exposures when the camera is getting hot at mid-day after lots of imaging.

Pancam has done plenty of similar things.

Doug

[ahecht]

The MET site called those images "Tactical water sky test". What they heck is a "Tactical water sky test"?

[peter59]

The Peter Pan - sol 14

[MahFL]

The MET site called those images "Tactical water sky test". What they heck is a "Tactical water sky test"?

Hope it doesn't rain or snow.......ha ha ha.............

[MahFL]

The Peter Pan - sol 14

Its not as flat as a pancake is it ? Quite interesting in fact, can't wait for the full res colour...........

[peter59]

The Peter Pan - sol 15

[Stu]

Thanks!

One of today's image pairs is just crying out for the 3D treatment...

[climber]

Where we can confirm that the 3 rocks (1 meter) per hectar seen from MRO pictures is correct. Impressive
I tell you, the Peter Pan full colour will be something as dramatic as Victoria's or Everest's pan.

Edited : Very nice Stu

[Stu]

... and another...

[fredk]

I can't see any sign of the parachute in this new image. According to the hirise imagery it should be immediately to the right of the backshell. Another sign that this landscape isn't flat as a pancake!

[ugordan]

Backshell in approx. natural color:




This is still half the maximum SSI resolution. Is the backshell really coppery-red from the inside? There's a dark object way out in the distance beyond the smaller rock in the foreground. A large boulder?

Fred, the HiRISE team says the parachute is lying in a small depression so that's why it's not visible to Phoenix.

[Deimos]

I was just struck by the apparent utter uselessness of the image, I guess...

"Apparent" being the operative word. ;^) The useful information content per bit downlinked is probably competitive with the median Phoenix image. Not in the JPEG, of course--that's clearly not useful. The sequence is actually a test of a plan-B observation, since the plan-A one is temporarily off the table (no, it's not pretty either, but not as bad). After sol 16 and before sol ?? it'll change some--but it still won't be pretty.

[dvandorn]

Kewl -- thanks, Mark!

I surely wasn't trying to be nasty or anything. I just took a look at the image product and nothing in my mind could figure out of what use it might be. I'm glad to hear it's not nearly so badly artifacted in the raw data.

-the other Doug

[ugordan]

Plan-B? Plan-A? What won't be pretty - these sky shots or something else?

[Doc]

Backshell in approx. natural color:




There's a dark object way out in the distance beyond the smaller rock in the foreground. A large boulder?

Most likely yes. Probably blasted from the nearby crater (wats its name?).
The terrain is actually very interesting (the polygons are awesome) especially the rocks (to bad they dont have rock analyzing instruments )
The original surface rocks that we see as light_coloured seem to have suffered significant weathering (glacial?).
The more angular darker basalts are probably from recent impacts.

Anyone want to comment?

[ugordan]

Yes, that dark object appears to be a big rock in the distance when seen in higher resolution.

It probably should be visible in the pre-Phoenix HiRISE image based on the lander location. Here's the color shot merged with a full-res red frame in an attempt to get best of both worlds. Not terribly accurate.

[tedstryk]

I can't wait until the full set from this mission is on the ground and I can start building some super-res shots of the stuff on the horizon. BTW, this still feels like an MER mission. As long as it is digging the hole and we don't have full resolution color coverage for the whole 360 degrees, it seems like new goodies just keep showing up. By the way, perhaps I have missed something obvious, but why can't Phoenix downsample images and then transmit selected full resolution shots later a la MER? Is it a memory issue? I imagine it has to do with the fact that while SSI has a pancam CCD and it is the "new" mission to Mars, this is in many ways a mid-nineties spacecraft.

[djellison]

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/14803.gif - all goldish MLI on the inside

V1, V2, MPF and MERA backshells all landed right-side up. MERB's didn't, and the 'chute is very tangled, I put that down to the chute not re-inflating after the end of the RAD firing. This one looks intact, but with the 20 kph winds, could well have come in at an angle and pitched over on impact.

Doug

[djellison]

Is it a memory issue?

Yeah - Phoenix is pretty sucky for flash storage. They can't take half a full 360 in four filters at full res in a single sol and downlink over a week like MER can - there isn't room.

Doug

[ugordan]

I only found out today that the lossy compression used on SSI is not the wavelet-based ICER algoritam used on the rovers, but ordinary JPEG. A step backward, no doubt it's Pathfinder heritage. I'm fascinated by the engineering aspects of these things. The imagers on the MERs were very well documented (and accessible to ordinary folks). I wonder if more details about the detector bit depths, downsampling method to 8 bits (LUTs?) etc could be found.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/14803.gif - all goldish MLI on the inside

Ah, so it's not a processing artifact after all!

[vikingmars]

Here is my own color interpretation + merging low-res color data w/hi-res red pics. Enjoy !

[James Sorenson]

And here's my version. I have completed two sections of the "Peter Pan", but during stitching of the other section, I found there was a little bit of color correction to do .

[jamescanvin]

Looking the other way from that sol 15 Peter Pan sequence. The runouts + Peter Pan from sols 13+14



Click image

About 150 degrees across, mixture of R(ABC) and R(1BC), still a work in progress.

James

[tedstryk]

Oh my gosh. The RAM and flash memory combine to a whopping 74 megabytes. By comparison, the MER rovers have 256 megabytes of flash memory. Still small by today's standards, but a whole lot better. Of course, had it had its original CCDs, that would have been just fine. This is bringing back memories of my computer equipment in the late '90s.

[jmknapp]

Oh my gosh. The RAM and flash memory combine to a whopping 74 megabytes. By comparison, the MER rovers have 256 megabytes of flash memory.

On the other hand, being in the extreme north PHX has more exposure to the relay satellites MRO and ODY than does MER. The MERs get about 5 passes per sol with at least 10 degree elevation (MRO+ODY) while PHX gets about 16.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

74MB...

I was wondering why there are so many downsampled images. Phoenix is quite an old spacecraft.

[tedstryk]

74MB...

I was wondering why there are so many downsampled images. Phoenix is quite an old spacecraft.

Yes, and 74 megabytes includes memory for other data and RAM used for operating the spacecraft. Granted, it isn't just age...like I said earlier, had SSI flown as a virtual clone of Pathfinders' IMP, memory wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.

[James Sorenson]

They sure had enough time before launch to upgrade the flash, and I assume this could have been done at minimal cost.

[nprev]

Not necessarily. Systems engineering, integration & testing (usually abbreviated as SEIT) is a time-consuming and tortuous process for spacecraft, and changing baseline configurations is not lightly done. You don't get a second chance, so you'd better minimize risk whenever possible. In this case, the Phoenix designers apparently traded off onboard memory capability for the known reliability of the tested design.

They could have loaded it up with 10 gigs of memory, but if some unexpected interface or configuration problem were to crop up that could not be fixed via creative software patching even before launch, then it's game over--launch opportunity missed would be the best outcome, but also quite possibly the kiss of death for the entire project due to schedule and cost constraints.

These guys walk a very fine line; it's more of an art than a science to achieve mission success with a planetary exploration spacecraft.

[tedstryk]

nprev is right. Switching out memory would require all sorts of new testing. Weird problems can crop up, and the results can be really bad...remember Spirit's scare a few days into the mission?

[Reed]

nprev is right. Switching out memory would require all sorts of new testing.

This post http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=117197 from Mark goes into it a little bit.

[jmknapp]

Interesting to look at the Phoenix Data Archive Plan:

For planning purposes, the expected downlinked data volume from Phoenix is at least 50
megabits per sol via UHF during the primary mission, and about 25 megabits per sol during the
extended mission. Under the best circumstances the UHF link could provide a data rate between
100 and 150 megabits per sol. At 50 Mb/sol, the total downlink volume for the 90-sol primary
mission would be 3,950.88 megabits (493.86 megabytes or about half a gigabyte) of compressed
data.

At a nominal 50Mb/sol (~6MB/sol), or even three times that under the "best circumstances," if it had a 1GB memory, what would it do with it?

The MERs were planned for about 4 times more downlinked data each for the primary mission (also 90 sols):

For planning purposes, the total downlinked data volume from both rovers is estimated at approximately 4 Gigabytes for the primary mission, based on sample mission scenarios.

[Skyrunner]

The MERs were planned for about 4 times more downlinked data each for the primary mission (also 90 sols):

Now that we get MPL and Exomars in a few years this get's me thinking in what timeframe we have use for a dedicated telecom orbiter or a science orbiter with higher bandwidth. Especially since the three we have are somewhat aged by that time.

[jmknapp]

Now that we get MPL and Exomars in a few years this get's me thinking in what timeframe we have use for a dedicated telecom orbiter or a science orbiter with higher bandwidth. Especially since the three we have are somewhat aged by that time.

Check out Relay Communications Strategies for Mars Exploration Through 2020.

The bottom line in that paper is that with the cancellation of the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, "second decade" Mars communications will rely on combination science/relay oribters like MRO, using the same radio as the latter, the Electra software-defined UHF radio. That radio supports up to 1 Mbps from landers. MRO can transmit back to Earth at 600Kbps-5Mbps depending on Earth-Mars distance, DSN facility used, etc.

[tedstryk]

The advantage would be in being able to take a full panorama in a short number of sols to minimize the effects of changing sun angles and any surface changes between frames. Not huge, and not worth risking the mission with unproven memory, but still an issue. With regard to MER panoramas, the obvious advantage would be to take the whole pan at once and roll away, transmitting it as time permits.

[Stu]

LOTS of sol 16 images now available...

[ahecht]

Any clue what this is? They keep imaging it:

[Del Palmer]

That's the Organic-Free Blank.

[Airbag]

Cool - so that is where it is! Well, apparently it is still there

Will be interesting when they start milling that blank to feed TEGA. I wonder if that involves a dedicated use of one of the ovens or is combined with another sample's processing?

Airbag

[peter59]

The Peter Pan - sol 16

[centsworth_II]

I wonder if that involves a dedicated use of one of the ovens or is combined with another sample's processing?

It looks to me like it would involve dedicated use of an oven. But the blank will not be analyzed unless organics are detected in one of the Mars samples. Then the blank will be analyzed followed by a repeat analysis of the Mars sample. So, detection of organics in one Mars sample (samples from one stratum of a dig) will use three TEGA ovens!

I don't quite understand how the blank works. How is it representative of all sources of contamination that might come from Phoenix? Also, since it's been uncovered, isn't it being contaminated by Mars?

[ahecht]

New color image of the trenches:

[jmjawors]

That is one of the images for today's briefing, which starts at 1pm central (top of the hour) and can be listened to here.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Anyone tuning into the briefing?