Posted on 02/16/2004 1:37:55 PM PST by Phil V.
Daily Updates - February 16, 2004
Opportunity Status for sol 22 Check Before Digging posted Feb. 16, 12:30 pm PST
Opportunity spent much of sol 22, which ended at 9:39 p.m. Sunday, PST, making a thorough "before" examination of the spot selected for digging a ditch the next sol.
Also, Opportunity completed upward-looking observations before, during and after Mars Global Surveyor flew overhead looking down. Opportunity and Global Surveyor have similar infrared sensing instruments: the miniature thermal emission spectrometer on the rover and the (full-size) thermal emission spectrometer on the orbiter. Coordinated observations of looking up through the atmosphere with one while looking down through the atmosphere with the other were designed to provide a more complete atmospheric profile than either could do alone.
Sol 22's wake-up music was "Invisible Touch" by Genesis. In preparation for digging, Opportunity examined the trenching site with its microscopic imager, its Moessbauer spectrometer and, overnight, its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.
The plan for sol 23, which will end at 10:19 p.m. Monday, PST, is to dig a trench with alternating forward and backward spinning of Opportunity's right front wheel in order to see what's below the surface. Inspections of the resulting hole are planned for sol 24 and the morning of sol 25.
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Spirit Status for sol 43 Mega Drive posted Feb. 16, 12:30 pm PST
Spirit spent the wee morning hours of sol 43 gathering data about a wheel-track target with the Moessbauer spectrometer, then tucked its arm and drove. It used a two-session method engineers call a "mega drive" in order to make good progress toward the crater nicknamed "Bonneville." The first driving session covered 19 meters (62.3 feet) after long-running morning activities shortened the time for driving. After a rest, Spirit continued another 8.5 meters (27.9 feet) in the afternoon, resulting in a total drive of 27.5 meters (90.2 feet), a new one-sol record. Sol 43 ended at 9:58 a.m. Monday, PST. The remaining distance to "Bonneville" is about 245 meters (about 800 feet) from Spirit's new location.
For sol 44, which will end at 10:38 a.m. Tuesday, PST, controllers plan "touch-and-go" activities: deploying the arm on a target called "Ramp Flats" before continuing toward Bonneville.
Looks a little like what Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile tracks might have done right before sliding into the drink...
You're stretching it for a Texan - "caliche" is three sylables!
Yep, it's striking how much simple compression -- especially with a smooth-surfaced compactor -- can change a soil's albedo. We see it all the time in photos of archaeological excavations (as in bootprints). And, yes, the illumination incidence/reflectance angle relative to the lens axis has an 'amplifying' impact on this effect, as well...
Here on Earth, we would expect those walls to crumble and collapse somewhat as the exposed soil dries out. Wonder how those walls will change over time on Mars -- and what those changes (if any) will tell the soil guys...
Very interesting stuff!!
If I weren't way out in the TX boonies at the end of a 24K (max) limp string, I would be downloading the raw Mars rover data and massaging it with NIH Image and Deneba/ACD's "Canvas", which is my real graphics workhorse (on both the Mac & PC). I was interested (but not surprised) to learn that the folks at JPL rely on Canvas (with its powerful transparent layering capabilities) for some of their compositing, etc.
BTW, I have been following the "how to view stereo pairs" discussion closely. I usually can anti-cross merge stereo pairs with ease. Those of yours that give me difficulty are usually so because the image centers are significantly wider apart than my (6.3 cm?) interpupillary distance. Downloading and downscaling them a bit usually fixes the problem... Or, I can resort to cross-merging -- which is a bit uncomfortable.
Of course, if you examine the trench image pair, you will see that only a small area is common to both images -- hence, all I see in stereo is just the center section of the trench.
Thanks again!
If I weren't way out in the TX boonies at the end of a 24K (max) limp string, I would be downloading the raw Mars rover data and massaging it with NIH Image and Deneba/ACD's "Canvas", which is my real graphics workhorse (on both the Mac & PC). I was interested (but not surprised) to learn that the folks at JPL rely on Canvas (with its powerful transparent layering capabilities) for some of their compositing, etc.
BTW, I have been following the "how to view stereo pairs" discussion closely. I usually can anti-cross merge stereo pairs with ease. Those of yours that give me difficulty are usually so because the image centers are significantly wider apart than my (6.3 cm?) interpupillary distance. Downloading and downscaling them a bit usually fixes the problem... Or, I can resort to cross-merging -- which is a bit uncomfortable.
Of course, if you examine the trench image pair, you will see that only a small area is common to both images -- hence, all I see in stereo is just the center section of the trench.
Thanks again!
They're crafty that way at mission control. :-)
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