Atop/Around the Greenheugh Pediment, Site 79-, sol 2695-3199, 3 Mar 2020-6 Aug 2021 Options

[jvandriel]

The Chemcam view on Sol 3124.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

and the 2nd view on Sol 3124.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

The Mastcam L panoramic view on Sol 3125.

Jan van Driel

[charborob]

Sol 3125 Lmastcam partial pan:

[Ant103]

Sol 3215 Mastcam34 panoramic. It's just SPLENDID.

[vikingmars]

Sol 3215 Mastcam34 panoramic. It's just SPLENDID.

Your works are very, very nice, indeed Damia, Charborob and Jvandriel

=>> However and as usual, the imaging strategy forgets the 2 (or 6) images at the rear end of the rover, that would have made this image truly spectacular, without having a black gap remaining in the panoramic picture
As a TPS member (and as a stakeholder also for EPO in France), I'm just wondering why there is no possibility to take those few additional images, knowing that there is a lot of bandwith capacity that is already devoted, for instance, to retrieve NavCam images showing the rover moves

[Explorer1]

Probably because those images are of the rover, and not Mars, and so are not of the same scientific value (unfortunately!)

[vikingmars]

Probably because those images are of the rover, and not Mars, and so are not of the same scientific value (unfortunately!)

Yes indeed : your argument is well quoted, but it could be applied also to engineering images taken by the NavCams and HazCams, which are taken sometimes numerously with less scientific value than regular MastCam images.
As you understand well, it's more a matter of enhancing Curiosity's EPO strategy People are now focusing their interest on the Perseverance rover, at the very moment when Curiosity's mission reaches brand new and spectacular grounds that could reveal us a lot about the past habitability of the planet Mars

[Toma B]

...enhancing Curiosity's EPO strategy People are now focusing their interest on the Perseverance rover, at the very moment when Curiosity's mission reaches brand new and spectacular grounds...

However, there is no press conference or any major news update for any of the "OLD" missions, which is very sad in my opinion. Those 2 or 3 times a week updates on the Curiosity site are quite vague at most. Sometimes it looks to me like we are entering some cold war-like information embargo. NASA/JPL is still doing a mostly fine job with Raw Images periodic updates but there is much more that can be done.
I don't wanna mention Chinas Zhurong rover here and updates once a week but it feels to me like so many lost opportunities to engage the public in scientific matters. I mean what good can this Mars exploration do for humanity if we can't follow and be informed in any given time interval.
Planet Earth has 3 functioning rovers and one helicopter on the Martian surface but it doesn't feel like it...sometimes it feels to me like we used to have much more fun and info with 2 MER rovers.

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[stevesliva]

Press conferences are for those who would not otherwise be paying attention. AW&ST probably used to do more drop-in/phone-in to the mission leaders that bridged some of the status-log vs narrative gaps. I'm not really sure that the online space media has filled that gap. For me, even the places that do the occasional original reporting also re-report every press release, so it's hard to find uniquely sourced secondhand information... anywhere. It's firsthand on twitter etc, or nothing. Maybe the occasional Tuesday NYTimes story. Planetary Society has in some cases filled that void. But it's still a void, until it's filled by the science team writing actual books for press. Turning things into that sort of a narrative takes awhile, though.

Honestly, it's a firehose of data vs 30 years ago, but yeah, I see the 'narrative' void a bit, too. I am happy to be pointed to good online sources doing original reporting.

[Explorer1]

Without taking the thread any further off-topic: PR ops are not free! Press conferences, even remote, require planning and time. Team members cannot answering questions from the press at the same time they are operating. Social media people prefer to be paid, and the more they need to do, the more it costs. Automated raw image galleries return a large bang for the buck when it comes to people like us, but when there are routine operations, especially on extended missions, those in charge may feel it is not worth doing more, which is why press conferences are saved for major mission milestones, new scientific discoveries, and the like.

[stevesliva]

Oh yeah, and everyone is working at home, so as "needs" get tougher to deliver, "wants" can fall to the side... WFH will be an interesting backstory to all of this. Good thing all the rovers are socially distanced.

[djellison]

However, there is no press conference or any major news update for any of the "OLD" missions

Actually - there are. When there are big science papers released, press releases go out, press conferences happen at the major science conferences. It's true for Curiosity, for Voyager, for Juno etc etc.

More than that would be to saturate the mouthpiece of the agency. With things like the raw image feed, the mission updates, the GIS map, the post drive imaging pipeline page I think Curiosity shares more than almost any other mission. It's simply not reasonable to expect a mission that launched >9 years ago to be banging out big press releases and press conferences on a frequent basis.

However and as usual, the imaging strategy forgets the 2 (or 6) images at the rear end of the rover,

They're not forgotten. This is not a decision made by the project nor is this a resource constraint. The PI of the instrument gets to decided what images get taken - this is his choice. You would have to ask him why he makes that choice.

WFH will be an interesting backstory to all of this.

We did our best to document that transition in a paper at IEEE this year.

[Phil Stooke]

After a few halted attempts we just had a drive on sol 3136, looks like a nice long one to the southwest.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Approximate location from reprojected Hazcams:



Phil