At the request of a few people, I put together a page with the highest resolution SFX images that I've created for Spirit's journey to HP.

Link

Thanks to everyone at UMSF who had a hand in their creation.
Hope you enjoy them.
Use them wisely.

Astro0

I'm not quite sure wherefrom you've got the Rovers...you should credit additionally to "BR-ONLINE/Arnulf Oppl". Then we got the permission to use it with this condition from BR-Online.

[W]ith the Martian winter looming and dust accumulating on Spirit's solar arrays, the team is preparing to drive Spirit to a safe haven.

The Martian winter does not officially begin until August, but Byron Jones, rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, US, says the team would like to get Spirit situated on a slope called McCool Hill, with its solar arrays tilted northward, in plenty of time.

That tilt maximises the sunlight falling on the arrays and worked well for the rovers during their first Martian winter, which peaked in September 2004.

Wednesday was Spirit's 754th Martian day (sol) in operation - a sol is 24 hours and 40 minutes. The team estimates it will take about 40 sols for Spirit to trek from Home Plate to McCool Hill and they want to arrive by their 800th sol.

"We're steadily approaching a point where if we don't reach a northern facing slope, we won't be as productive as we'd like," Jones told New Scientist. ... Spirit is currently operating with about 450 watt-hours per sol, but the available power has dropped by about 100 watt-hours over the past 50 sols, Jones says.

...

Spirit has reached its long-targeted Home Plate outcrop [where] the team is "collecting data at a furious rate".

The extensively layered, semi-circular outcrop is coarsely grained at the bottom with finer grained material higher up. Several theories could explain such layering, Squyres says - it could be a volcanic ash deposit, layers of ejecta from impact cratering or material laid down by wind or water. But he says, "If you took a poll of the team right now, I think you would find the favoured hypothesis is that it's some kind of volcanic ash deposit."

The team is looking for chunks of embedded material, or "volcanic bombs", which would provide hints of a volcanic origin. He says before Spirit has to head off towards it[s] winter quarters, the planners hope to manoeuvre the rover on top of Home Plate to gather more data.

Have you been following the current wind direction, based on dust tails behind rocks and pebbles? On the slope at Gibson the wind seemed to be coming _from_ the northwest, perpendicular to the slope. On top of Homeplate, it seems to be blowing _toward_ the northwest (a 180 degree difference) or along the slope (a 90 degree difference). I imagine that the change in topography has caused this difference, but the change seems rather extreme.

--Bill

To Astro0.....

I did find a free Rover model at ...

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/

Click on the Spacecraft listing there and you will see a bunch of digital spacecraft models
for download.



The model in 3DS format and this is how it looks when I loaded it into Vue d'esprit.

Dont know if its adequate for what you had in mind or not.

Spirit has already climbed without much trouble of slipage into HP. The surface is a mix of rock and sand which provide a good traction plust a somewhat agressive slope of around 20 degree. A truck is capable to climb greater than 30 degree slope if the surface is alike to the picture.

Front view
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...2P1201L0M1.HTML

Border of HP
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...C2P1301L0M1.JPG
Why the border of HP is of lighter color than the rest?

Rodolfo

Jamescanvin: "All the Gibson pan images taken on Sol 748 are all down"

I grabbed the image and tried to do a contrast-stretch and color enhancement on it to bring out the color variety between bands. A lot of the brightest rock surfaces are saturated white and have lost detail in the green band. Red and blue channels are ok.

"‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^›" that's excellent. I'm sure I can adapt the 3DS model to improve the realism a bit and then add that to some future images.
Thanks, thanks, thanks!

Astro0

I've now finished a major update to my processing software which deals with the very bright and dark regions much better. There is much more detail in the image now. I'm only just learning how to adjust the colours using the new method though, comments welcome...

James

inspired by Michael's MMB screenshot; a navcam-pancam-L2 trial...
Nico

That's odd......... I wonder if the images go straight to the JPL pages like they do at exploratorium, but for some reason the page doesnt update to show them?

Although for some reason the JPL raw image index page does not show sol 760, 10 navcams and some pancams subframes from that sol are there.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit_n760.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit_p760.html

Well, MidnightMarsBrowser found the images with no problem, but if you want to "hack it," all you have to do is open a thumbnail page for sol 759 images and change the number in the URL from 759 ro 760.

but if you want to "hack it," all you have to do is open a thumbnail page for sol 759 images and change the number in the URL from 759 to 760.

That's odd......... I wonder if the images go straight to the JPL pages like they do at exploratorium, but for some reason the page doesnt update to show them?

Very nice! So it turns out there are TWO MER sites, the above and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit.html and they have different things on them!?

(insert emoticon for hysterical outrage)
sob

Now the traffic numbers justify the money spent on the NASA websites.

There are multiple NASA sites for everything, seemingly, but this seems to be a mirror site... weird.

Here is a nice soothing image of Husband Hill and El Dorado viewed from Home Plate:

I see a pair of color closeups in the latest pointed to pancan directory.
Bands 2,5,7 for the left cam and bands 2,(2+1)/2,1 for the right cam.

I believe that is the 'James_Papa_Cool_Bell' observation.

Jim's out the office for a week or two and that looks like his colleagues at Cornell are having a joke at his expense

Spirit looking around on Home Plate.

A complete 360 degree panoramic view.

Taken with the L0 navcam on Sol 759 and Sol 760.

jvandriel