Just finished reading the excellent Sojourner book - and it mentioned the rover taking images of its laser stripes - which I'd never seen - so I went and hunted for them

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mpfr-m-rvr...ft/r7377913.htm



How cool

Doug

Oo - more cool images - the only colour image taken of the lander..




http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mpfr-m-rvr...lr/r1557518.htm



I might play 'mosaic-o-rama' with some of the stuff in here

Doug

Is this the one by Mishkin?

Doug, I once posted that Sojourner captured images of the 'blueberries' but you stated emphatically it didn't have the resolution to do so...

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mpfr-m-rvr...ft/r7554357.htm

Check out the undisturbed sand in the lower right side of the image in the link. There are several round things there that I would bet are the infamous blueberries. I agree the resolution isn't sufficient to have been able to discover them back then, but knowing what we know now...they sure to look to be in the image.

Eric P / MizarKey

We just cant say what they are Could just as well be bits of dirt that have fallen off the wheels etc.

Doug

What caused the lander to stop operating eventually? Wasn't the Sojourner rover still operating at the time?

I remember watching the landing live on CNN

Most likely a dead lander battery.

Yup - Sojourner was still working perfectly well - and they had plans to send if off on quite a long drive.

Sojourner would, after a few sols of no comms, gone back to its previous position to see if it had gone somewhere that blocked the radio waves and waited for instructions there.

If that hadnt worked - it would then have started attempting to circle the lander at about a 5m radius.

How or when Sojourner died is probably never going to be known, unless someone can actually pick the thing up, and inspect the contents of the memory

If and how-much it started to circle Pathfinder might POSSIBLY be visible by MRO in 18 months time.

To me - Sojourner still is the most amazing little contraption that man has ever made. Given the scales of time/money/volume/mass - it's a greater feat than the MER's imho.

There's something about being able to see it in motion that makes it more emotive than MER....



Doug

Doug, I would like to see more of your Pathfinder/Sojourner pictures online, and I think I'm not the only one.

Is there a chance that you make some available?

Tom

PS: Do you know the movie "Red Planet" with Val Kilmer? Quite shocking, how those guys treated Sojourner ...

Oh - that picture isnt mine It's from the PDS. Justin Maki et.al made some 'real colour' pics using the 'insurance pan' that was taken before IMP Mast deployment using quite low compression.

But yeah - I think Sojourners picture resources are under-used LOTS of pictures in there A lot of mosaics that never made it into the public domain to be made I think

Doug

Doug, I'm not trying to be obstinate here, but I really think Sojourner landed in a very watery area (well, past watery area) and the rocks are chock full of blueberries.

Break out the red/blue glasses for this Matterhorn image

I've attached a 'marked up' version showing what I feel could be blueberries.

MizarKey

You can speculate that there is a feature that might be blueberries - but you can not say that that is what they are for sure.

Go and use similar filters as with MER - and in MER images, they come out a bright bright blue - is the same true of MPF stuff?

Doug

(Edit - I've tracked down pathfinder .img's - and browse jpgs - and found the closest filters to L2, 5, and 7 in MER terms In MER - these are at 753, 535 and 432 nm respectively, with 20, 20 and 32 bandpass. With MPF - R6 is 750, R9 is 530 and R0 is 440 - fairly similar - and you just dont get the shocking blue that we see with Oppy - sure - maybe similar geological processes creating similar objects, but they're not the same thing we're seing @ Meridiani )

From the Sol 2 insurance pan This is a four frame part of a larger mosaic that Maki et al paper - and featured at the PDS somewhere - but I think this was the only really stitched section of the insurance pan - so I may do lots more as it was very low compression

Doug

Doug, please do ! I am really enjoying your work, and so do many more here, I 'm sure

Apparently this music collection was inspired by the musician's interest in Sojourner:

http://www.scifiweekly.com/issue455/sound.html