[X] My Assistant

[dot.dk]

A snip from this article
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...MNGBNC2S9B1.DTL

"The RAT on each rover was designed to work for only three grindings, and on Spirit we've used it for 15 grinds already, so no wonder it's balky," he said. "It's hard to tell whether all the diamonds are worn away, or whether some are left, so we're keeping it for only the next high-priority targets.

Not that it is serious, but just a sign of wear and tear

[djellison]

Well - imagine a 1hr UHF pass at 128kbps whilst MRO is in an elliptical orbit.

Thats 460 Mbits right there If 256kbps is possible at that sort of range - you can double it

They have a ceiling of 600Mbits in flash I believe - but you could do something like navcam-movies in that period - take, process, transmit, delete. Would take some clever sequencing - but it's tehcnically possible (they lifted the 'ban' on taking images during UHF passes a while back after running some tests with Opportunity during a UHF pass back in Endurence crater )

Doug