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Unmanned Spaceflight.com > Mars & Missions > Past and Future > MER > Spirit
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Shaka
Thanks, Astro0! I don't know if the wind howls on mars, but it ought to!
eoincampbell
For those on older Macs(flip4mac not starting), I found renaming the extension to just .wmv
and opening in WMP 9; allows you to enjoy this really cool sequence.
Thanks for posting.
Eoin
alan
uh oh

http://207.7.139.5/mars/spirit/micro_image...DQP2906M2M1.JPG

ETA:

here is a quick stitch
Click to view attachment
alan
Did the microimager move enough when panning to produce stereo images?
Here is an attempt at stereo, perhaps it would work better on deconvoluted images
Click to view attachment
climber
Very sharp and informative view indeed.
Remind me of this movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxB9tXDZ8zY
With Louis de Funes and Geraldine Chaplin. You'll get the point at 1mn52 of the 2mn11.
Hope it's not a rock that seams to be in contact. In another hand, it'll may be avoid more sinking.
Astro0
The new set of MIs don't stitch together well.
The IDD movement makes the angles slightly different and as Alan showed, could produce an anyglyph.
This is the best fudged stitch I could do and an enhanced version.
These are both at full-size.

Straight mosaic...
Click to view attachment

Deconvoluted/sharpened version.
Click to view attachment

If 'Pointy Rock' is touching the WEB, I think it's only just touching.

EDIT: Made some last minute adjustments to the exposure. wink.gif
djellison
What might work as an anaglyph is the two mosaics together - as if your head was rotated 90 degrees.
Astro0
Click to view attachment
I don't get it?

laugh.gif
SpaceListener
The touching point on the WEB is a little left side of the center. Hence, if the wheels rotates many revolutions, the left side will be inclined. I seems that the left side (East) has better compact surface than on the right side (West) of the picture. Indeed that this a slight a good news for the rover. wink.gif
fredk
QUOTE (Astro0 @ Jun 3 2009, 12:45 PM) *
If 'Pointy Rock' is touching the WEB, I think it's only just touching.

Unfortunately that's all it takes...

Thanks for the mosaics. If they are suspended on that pointy rock, it would be useful to know where front-to-back the suspension point is. I wonder if there's enough room for the IDD to maneuver farther to the left or the right and capture a proper anaglyph of pointy rock that would pinpoint its position?

Even if we are in contact with pointy rock, presumably not all of our weight may be on it - some can still be on the wheels. And pointy rock may not be fixed rigidly in place. Maybe if we try to move in the correct direction, pointy rock will drop down and we'll have our weight back on the wheels.
eoincampbell
Does anyone have a good underbelly reference shot for comparison?
Is anything near the (touch) point or inside the WEB at risk from pointy rock?
Thanks in advance.
Eoin
fredk
QUOTE (eoincampbell @ Jun 3 2009, 04:59 PM) *
Is anything near the (touch) point or inside the WEB at risk from pointy rock?

See this post.
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Astro0 @ Jun 3 2009, 05:21 AM) *



Neither do I. The two MI mosaics were taken by shifting the IDD closer to the rover, not side to side. But the secon mosaic (sol 1925) was taken by rotating the turret by small amounts and since the pivot point is behind the CCD, the rotation also corresponds to a small position change as well. We are in the process of seeing if we can triangulate the position of pointy rock. Also, keep in mind that the rover has about -12 degrees of roll, so the mosaic really is rotated ~12 degrees CW.

Paolo
Burmese
I suspect we'll see a raft of additional images, from several positions, maybe even trying to edge the IDD further under the rover to help refine our understanding of the situation here. Are the people at JPL at least of the belief that this is a substantial rock and not a soft mound with perhaps a sharp stone poised at the top?
Tesheiner
I suspect (hope) it's the latter.

OT: I was right now reading Scott's blog about Spirit's early sols and found this: http://marsandme.blogspot.com/2009/06/spirit-sol-148.html

Spirit Sol 148
...
I have a brief chat with Chris Lewicki, who says they're estimating the rovers' motors are at maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of their maximum possible lifetime (8-10 million revs out of a lifetime of 20-25 million). By that estimate, they'll live at most two or three times as long as they have to this point.


smile.gif
alan
I think the pointy rock has been shifted from its original position. I don't see a pointy rock in the right spot in the 1870 navcam.

Click to view attachment

Hopefully that means if its in contact with the the WEB it isn't able to support much weight.

The rock in front of the left middle wheel looks like a problem though.
Can Spirit climb over a rock nearly the height of its wheel when the other wheels are dug in?
Astro0
As RoverDriver noted, Spirit is sitting at an angle of 12degrees.
Here's the two MIs in that orientation.
Pointy Rock now becomes 'Flat Rock with Pointy End'.
Click to view attachment

I think we need a few of our rockhounds to take the available navcams and identifiy each rock. Any takers?
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Astro0 @ Jun 3 2009, 04:45 AM) *
The new set of MIs don't stitch together well.
...


That was intentional. The MIs are 10 deg apart except in the center where the images are 5 deg apart. The rationale was to have images with more overlap and do stereo on them. The pivot point is behind the CCD and therefore there is a translation of the optical center corresponding to each rotation. A colleague of mine did triangulation and determined the position and size of the rock.

Paolo
RoverDriver
QUOTE (Burmese @ Jun 3 2009, 12:10 PM) *
I suspect we'll see a raft of additional images, from several positions, maybe even trying to edge the IDD further under the rover to help refine our understanding of the situation here. Are the people at JPL at least of the belief that this is a substantial rock and not a soft mound with perhaps a sharp stone poised at the top?


Don't know. Since we drove straight over it I think it is quite firmly set in the soil.

Paolo
fredk
I think I've got many of the rocks identified, including the "pointy rock" that we may be high-centred on. First of all, I agree with Alan's identification in his most recent post. To get there I followed a trail of rocks, comparing the sol 1870 navcam with the 1897 hazcam. In this composite, the white lines are identifications, and black lines identifications between rocks that have been moved somewhat by the rover wheels:
Click to view attachment
Next, to identify the high-centre rock, it helped a lot to look at stereo imagery. Here is a comparison between the sol 1367 pancam view from HP and the 1870 navcam, both in stereo, with some rocks identified:
Click to view attachment
The white ellipse indicates the rock we're high-centred on. Notice that it doesn't stand out very well in the single-frame navcam from sol 1870. The anaglyph really brings it out. The 1367 view shows it to be a pretty substantial rock. sad.gif

Finally, compare the circled rock in the 1870 navcam with the rock we appear to be high-centred on in the MI view (cropped from Astro0's mosaic):
Click to view attachment
The shape is quite similar, including the notch on the right side (although it may have shifted if the wheels disturbed it).
alan
I agree with your identifications. Its surprising how insignificant the pointy rock looks in the 1870 navcam compared to how large it looks in the 1367 pancam

edit: I see now why I was having trouble matching the two views before, I was seeing two small rocks in the individual 1870 navcam images instead of one large one with a notch on the right side.
RoverDriver
QUOTE (fredk @ Jun 3 2009, 06:38 PM) *
I think I've got many of the rocks identified, including the "pointy rock" that we may be high-centred on. ...


Thank you! That really helps. I was planning to do the same analysis, but this is really great!

Paolo
RoverDriver
In a private message I was asked the following question, which I think might be interesting to some of you as well.

QUOTE
I have been wondering for several years now what you guys do to compensate in the test bed for .38 g on Mars.

I assume it's easy to lower the mass of the test rover, but what about the soil mechanics? Does the sand and soil not behave differently in that lower g environment? When you take an MI pan of the soil particle to reconstruct a similar mixture in Pasadena, how do you compensate for the soil particles' behavior in the lower gravity? Do you have a study of sands and their particle density characteristics that allows you to come up with an inventory of choices that behaves the same as the martian soil behaves in .38g? or is the gravity effect on the soil mechanics insignificant under these conditions? It's clear to me from old Apollo videos that lunar soil behaves far differently so there must be some threshold where you need to take the gravity into account.


This is an excellent question! We have two vehicles we can use for testing: SSTB1 a full size replica of the MER vehicles, minor some minor differences (no solar panels, some temperature probes are missing...) which of course has the same mass as MER and higher weight on Earth than MER has on Mars; and SSTB Lite, a stripped down vehicle with same wheel size, actuators and suspension system, same WEB size but major components like the IDD and others are missing. This vehicle has a weight on Earth that is similar to the weight of MER on Mars. For Purgatory and for this event we are going to use the SSTB1, not the SSTB Lite.

We are still in the process of soil simulant selection and we are following the same principle we followed during Purgatory: we try to replicate the vehicle performance during the embedding event. In Purgatory no matter what we tried, we could not get the SSTB Lite to embed in the soil. The soil we used was too heavy. Fortunately we were able to replicate the embedding event with the SSTB1, not perfectly, but close.

We really can't try to replicate the exact soil characteristics we measure with spectrometers and MIs but try to replicate how the vehicle behaves during the embedding event and hope it will be representative enough for testing the extrication maneuvers. We use some of the information we get on particle size, but ultimately the vehicle is the best instrument we have to select the soil simulant.

Paolo
Fred B
Here's my deconvolution, optimized for distances near the "fulcrum". Almost looks as if the rock scraped some dust off the bottom of the rover!
ElkGroveDan
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ Jun 3 2009, 10:00 PM) *
In Purgatory no matter what we tried, we could not get the SSTB Lite to embed in the soil. The soil we used was too heavy.


I know that now I'm going to spend the next few days day dreaming trying to think of light soil mixtures. Things like ground pumice, mica, asbestos, balsa wood chips, styrofoam balls etc. Its a good thing I'm not retired yet or I probably would have built my own rover test bed in the garage by now.
centsworth_II
I wonder if there is much difference between the mechanics of an Earth-weight rover tested in Earth-weight soil as opposed to a Mars-weight (lite) rover tested in Mars-weight soil. Is it possible that the Earth-weight rover and soil may even give a better idea of how the rover will react on Mars?
Burmese
Can we get some nice pics of the exposed surface of the WEB as seen while still on earth, so as to be aware of how smooth it is and whether there are any spots where a sharp rock dragging across the bottom might snag or even cause damage.
fredk
Some interesting comments in a New Scientist story:
QUOTE
"It certainly doesn't look like the rover is bearing its weight on a mound of rocks, which was one of our early concerns," Callas told New Scientist.

The images did reveal one possible obstruction – a rock or mound of dirt near the middle of the rover. But it is not clear whether the object is actually touching the rover's belly. "We can't tell if it's underneath the lowest part of the belly pan or in front of it," Callas says. The team plans to take pictures at different angles to get a better sense of the shape and location of the obstruction.


Also, in case anyone has missed it, they're calling our location Troy.
SpaceListener
During her intent to pull out, it is very probably that the rover will continue slipping the wheels. The belly surface height will lower and will eventually rest on a rock. Then, depending upon to the center of gravity of contact point, any of the surface sides (I think on the right side) will have more contact pressure. Hence, these spinning wheels will deep into the surface and hope that it will pick up any hidden stone or more compact soil. These change of soil consistency or any small stone will eventually help to improve the wheels traction to pull out.

In order to avoid in making a hole by the wheels spin is that the wheel spin must be spinning alternating forward and backward and increasing the distance between sides: Example

1st intent : 5 rev backward and 5 revs forward.
2nd intent: 10 rev backward and 10 revs forward.
3rd ....

Cross fingers
RoverDriver
QUOTE (fredk @ Jun 4 2009, 07:57 AM) *
...
Also, in case anyone has missed it, they're calling our location Troy.


Yep. Of all the names! I will blush each time I will talk in Italian about this anomaly.

Paolo
centsworth_II
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ Jun 4 2009, 03:42 PM) *
...Of all the names!... I

At least they didn't call it Waterloo.

Alcatraz would have been neat, as in "escape from..."
BrianL
QUOTE (RoverDriver @ Jun 4 2009, 02:42 PM) *
Yep. Of all the names! I will blush each time I will talk in Italian about this anomaly.


OK, I don't get it, someone please explain.
centsworth_II
The Italians don't hold a grudge over the Trojan war do they? laugh.gif
Do Italians even identify with the Trojans?
stevesliva
QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Jun 4 2009, 05:49 PM) *
The Italians don't hold a grudge over the Trojan war do they? laugh.gif
Do Italians even identify with the Trojans?


Well enough for it to mean "ho" in italian. wink.gif

But a pejorative name is appropriate, I think.
centsworth_II
QUOTE (stevesliva @ Jun 4 2009, 05:55 PM) *
Well enough for it to mean "ho" in italian. wink.gif

Oh! ohmy.gif
And I forgot about the Trojan condom.
Oersted
Yes, not a nice word in Italian, but one that *could* be exclaimed in the worst moments of this rather frustrating situation Spirit finds itself in...

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=troia
alan
Here is roughly half of the Calypso panorama

Click to view attachment
fredk
From the latest Spirit update:
QUOTE
The project was successful in restoring files to a computer server so that the surface system testbed (SSTB) rover at JPL could be operated... As of Sol 1926, solar array energy production was generous at 884 watt-hours with atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.458 and a dust factor of 0.772.
884 Whrs, with only just over 3/4 of the light getting through to the cells! The increase over last week is entirely due to decreasing tau. My those skies are clear for summer.

If she had an intense wind gust right now that took essentially all the remaining dust off, she'd be getting 1145 Whrs! ohmy.gif blink.gif
fredk
QUOTE (alan @ Jun 5 2009, 03:41 AM) *
Here is roughly half of the Calypso panorama

It's coming down just a bit quicker than the Bonestell pan, huh? smile.gif
climber
QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Jun 4 2009, 10:54 PM) *
At least they didn't call it Waterloo.

Well, it depends on which side you are!
As a french, I've been always surprised when I go to London to see they named the streets and squares using Defeat refrences instead of Victories wink.gif
MERovingien
I hope this is the right place to post this.While everybody's watching underneath Spirit's belly, I noticed something on the horizon. Please check these Sol 1919 pics of Spirit's navigation camera: what's that white pixel in the distance?

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/n...DQP1561L0M2.JPG

I thought first that it was some kind of missing data or whatever, but it keeps coming up one pic after the other.
Is this Spirit's lander? Its chute or its heat shell? This view is West isn't it?

Admins, feel free to remove that post if the subject has already been discussed. Thanks.
fredk
It's a hot pixel. Compare your frame with this one:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...CAP1561L0M1.JPG
You can see the bright pixel at exactly the same position in the frame, but the background has shifted. You can usually tell because hot pixels etc are usually extremely sharp since they occur on the CCD, whereas an actual source of light would be more blurry since it would be imaged by the optical system.
MERovingien
These hot pixels! I get done for by them every time! Over the last five years, since the rovers arrivals, I have spotted so many objects in the Martian sky and ground! These mirages are the reason why I never contribute much on this forum: not much of an input! rolleyes.gif
Thanks for correcting me Fredk! Very much appreciated!
ilbasso
Does anyone else feel the same sense of "Do I dare look at the Spirit thread?" that I do? Kinda like trying to work up the courage to check the balance of your retirement account every couple of months.
Hungry4info
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jun 5 2009, 07:11 PM) *
Does anyone else feel the same sense of "Do I dare look at the Spirit thread?" that I do? Kinda like trying to work up the courage to check the balance of your retirement account every couple of months.


Yep. I have the very same thing. The "Do I dare look at the Spirit thread" feeling I get is almost canceled out by the "is it out yet?" feeling.
RoverDriver
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jun 5 2009, 04:11 PM) *
Does anyone else feel the same sense of "Do I dare look at the Spirit thread?" that I do? Kinda like trying to work up the courage to check the balance of your retirement account every couple of months.


Sorry that I have not contributed in a while. Progress on this anomaly is slow but we are making progress. The server which prevented us from using the SSTB has now been partially restored and we have been using the testbed all week. Unfortunately the resources are much more limited this time around and things that got done quickly for Purgatory are moving much more slowly. We do not have the full size testing setup assembled yet, but we have begun verification of the soil simulant and some testing for extrication maneuvers. I think that the rover reports that JPL posts are very accurate and only a few days behind.

Probably the most difficult part for me is not getting frustrated by the pace of the activities and comparing it with what was done for Purgatory. I cannot thank the UMSF community enough for all the incredible products, mosaics, rock tracking and general support. I'm sure we will get there, but be prepared for the scene not to change for quite a while. :-(

Paolo
nprev
Jeez, Paolo, thank you for your generosity in sharing things with us when you can! We know your time is limited, and we appreciate your updates whenever they occur. Keep fighting the good fight, bud, & keep your chin up; we're behind you all the way! smile.gif
HughFromAlice
QUOTE (nprev @ Jun 6 2009, 10:04 AM) *
thank you for your generosity in sharing things with us when you can! smile.gif


I second that - a lot of us really smile.gif really smile.gif appreciate your posts Paolo. Being an optimist I think how lucky it is we now have a 900W/h Rover because otherwise the time pressure to find a good overwintering spot could have meant a failed timed pressured attempt at extrication and lingering winter death. If we lose 8 more weeks of this summer at least we'll have the whole of next summer!

I read somewhere that a fair amount of data was lost because the test bed server wasn't backed up that frequently. I wonder if lack of data is contributing to the delay in testing? Now, something as basic as that would be doubly frustrating.

An aside - has anyone ever come up with Martian (8 week?) months and names for them? Perhaps the New Year should start with Spirit!!
ilbasso
Paolo, you have nothing to apologize for! I was merely expressing the feeling that sometimes with Spirit, we get a feeling of "Oh God, what is it this time?" But every time I think that she can't possibly be saved, you guys bring her back with patience, know-how, and perseverance.

I know that all of you wonder-workers at JPL operate first and foremost under the rule, "Whatever you do, don't make things worse by guessing." We wouldn't want it any other way, no matter how impatient we get.

I think that it's wonderful that you are reaching out to all of the back-seat drivers in the space community, those of us who would gladly pay $$$$$$$$ to be in your chair for even one minute - but NONE of whom would want the kind of responsibility that rests on your shoulders!!

Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing the behind-the-scenes story with us.
briv1016
I'm content waiting for the Calypso Pan to be finished. Does anyone know how many part there are going to be total?
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