Heatshield Options

[mhoward]

Pancam closeup anaglyph:

[remcook]

belated happy birthday doug!

by the way:

new route map available:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/04...heatshield.html

[mhoward]

Whoah! Color.

[alan]

The ablative material looks like scorched carpet

[Pando]

Latest: There are indications that there is a possible dust storm developing. The power levels have dropped quite dramatically at around Sol 330 for Opportunity and is somewhat worrisome. At Gusev things are trending similarly although it's a Sol or so later. This is getting interesting as it may even mean a global dust storm.

[dot.dk]

Latest: There are indications that there is a possible dust storm developing. The power levels have dropped quite dramatically at around Sol 330 for Opportunity and is somewhat worrisome. At Gusev things are trending similarly although it's a Sol or so later. This is getting interesting as it may even mean a global dust storm.

Uh ohhh

How much are the drop in power?

[ilbasso]

Interesting mosaic of the heatshield impact crater on the JPL MER site (excerpted below). It certainly looks as though the heatshield hit almost completely flat. I did some very rough calculations on the terminal velocity of the heatshield in Mars' atmosphere (assuming a rough surface area of 10.5 m^2 and a mass of 78 kg)...it looks like the terminal velocity at Mars surface for such an object would be on the order of 120 mph. Didn't make much of a dent, did it? -- but the energy sure bent the hell out of the heatshield!!

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

It's hardly surprising that it came down upright -- it was, after all, shaped so that the airflow itself would stabilize the lander during entry. As for its barely penetrating the surface: I repeat that this entire plain, for hundreds of km, is apparently just a layer of basalt sand a few cm thick covering a flat surface of soft rock that's being gradually eroded away by the sand blowing across it.

[dot.dk]

Up close and personal

[mhoward]

Real up close and personal!

[MizarKey]

Real up close and personal!

MHoward, one of the first things I read when I wanted try an make 3d anaglyphs is that you need to crop the parts of the images that don't overlap as it distracts the eyes and makes it harder to see the 3d effect.

I'm not sure which software package you're using, but here's a link to the tutorial I used for Adobe...Making Anaglyph Images in Adobe Photoshop

I love the fact that we can make anaglyphs from the rover images...here's one from Spirit on Sol 288

Eric P / MizarKey

[mhoward]

MHoward,  one of the first things I read when I wanted try an make 3d anaglyphs is that you need to crop the parts of the images that don't overlap as it distracts the eyes and makes it harder to see the 3d effect.

I'm not sure which software package you're using, but here's a link to the tutorial I used for Adobe...Making Anaglyph Images in Adobe Photoshop

I love the fact that we can make anaglyphs from the rover images...here's one from Spirit on Sol 288

Eric P / MizarKey

It's a long story on why I do the anaglyphs that way... suffice it to say I was not doing any image editing but was only trying to present a "first look" as the images became availabe. I will discontinue posting these here. Thanks for the feedback.

Edit: To be clear, I automate anaglyph generation, that's why I wasn't doing any "image editing". I will incorporate your suggestion in future versions, though, if practical, so thanks.

[MizarKey]

Hey, does it look like some wetness precipitated off the shield onto the sand below causing it to compact...towards the upper left side of the image?

It reminds me of the 'mud' around both landers, though, with the landers it was the airbags being drug across that left the wet like residue.

It could be that frost has formed from time to time and if the conditions are right melts down the shield to drip onto the dust below???

Eric P / MizarKey

[ilbasso]

Interesting! I thought that actively blowing dust might also be an explanation, but the pattern is same in both the left and right images.

When the shield fragment plopped down, might it have blown some of the dust out of the way? Even so, it would be hard to explain the boundary that's so clear in the lower part of the image. There are some streaks in the upper part of the image that seem to streak away from the middle of the image.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I suspect that the "muddy"-looking surface we're seeing there (there's an identical area on the near edge of the landing impact crater in its photos) is really just an area where the shield's impact crushed and powderized the Blueberries into fine hematite dust -- which would, by the way, also have turned red. (The color photos of the shield site show just such red coloration in the areas where the shield hit the surface -- just as we see when the RAT grinds up Blueberries into red powder.)