Spirit & Opportunity *7* - ...continuing...

Stu · 2004-09-01 11:06:43

It's about time you joined us here Doug, I've been telling everyone about your work for ages!

Welcome to New Mars!

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-02 07:35:30

Many thanks for your thoughts, Doug!
I agree with Stu - it's a pleasure to have your company here at New Mars.

djellison · 2004-09-02 10:03:11

It's a pleasure to be considered a pleasure

I'm MIGHTY busy at the moment ( I've got a 1/10th RC touring car to start racing, a scale model of Thrust 2 based on a ducted fan to scratch build, and a DVD of some micro-onboard footage of some RC scale models of Bluebird K7 to put together ) - BUT - I'm beginning to put together small panoramas based on the proper raw data and they are far and away the best images I've seen yet - including those out of Nasa. These are essentially destined to be put into a portfolio and taken to a publisher to see if they'll publish a book I'd like to write - but small version will be going on line as and when I do them.

It'll be a 12 month process at least - because it's always 6 months till the proper data arrives - but I hope to replicate the coffee-table-wonderment of Full Moon by Michael Light!

Doug

Stephen · 2004-09-05 17:57:28

Just saw this microscopic image from Spirit's sol 240. I do hope that's not a http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … .JPG]piece of the rover lying there in the Martian dirt!

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-05 19:36:24

No, Stephen, I think it's just a circular impression in the soil.

djellison · 2004-09-06 03:25:05

I think thats an APXS impression - it's made several before.

APXS works only over a TINY distance of a few mm ( it doesnt work at all in an Earth atmosphere - as that's too dense )

Doug

Rxke · 2004-09-06 06:01:51

Djellison, my question is about the super hires heatshield (BTW congrats with the congrats!)

How did you do that one, simple stacking or....

djellison · 2004-09-06 07:22:39

Djellison, my question is about the super hires heatshield (BTW congrats with the congrats!)
How did you do that one, simple stacking or....

Basically - yeah.

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/sci … 8/1536.pdf

Follow the words of Dr Parker - for he is imaging god

I did the enlarge and unsharp mask - then stacked using Astrostack which is more usually used for stacking telescope webcam images of planets - but I thought I was essentially trying to do the same thing, so what the hell

I also tried Opportunities Backshell and Chute with what I consider to be poor results -

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?show … wtopic=175

Of course - once the proper raw imagery is out - I'll be able to do a much better job of both as they wont be saturated to white quite so badly. As they're both done within the first 90 sols, they should be in the next batch of imagery.

Doug

Rxke · 2004-09-06 10:23:26

Grrrreat!
Thank you for the links. I can use this stuff, verily! (heh.)
BTW: in the abstract, the footnotes, they refer to:

"Cheeseman, P. et al., “Subpixel Resolution from Multiple Images,” in LPSC XXV, pp 241-242, 1994."

Did you happen to find that one on-line? Been looking for it, but seems elusive, most of the other LPSC stuff is fairly easy to find, but the 1994 stuff not. Weird. (Cue wild-eyed conspiracy theory! )

djellison · 2004-09-06 15:28:01

Grrrreat!
Thank you for the links. I can use this stuff, verily! (heh.)
BTW: in the abstract, the footnotes, they refer to:
"Cheeseman, P. et al., “Subpixel Resolution from Multiple Images,” in LPSC XXV, pp 241-242, 1994."
Did you happen to find that one on-line? Been looking for it, but seems elusive, most of the other LPSC stuff is fairly easy to find, but the 1994 stuff not. Weird. (Cue wild-eyed conspiracy theory! )

Never seen it ( never looked for it to be honest )

Doug

Rxke · 2004-09-06 16:20:37

You think I could bother Dr. Parker with that? You had contact with him, but he probably is a busy man, what with all the imagery coming down, lately...

djellison · 2004-09-07 03:16:46

Well - I got a lovely email back from him after I tried the super-res stuff - but he's not replied to emails since.

Justin Maki and Jim Bell are great on email as well - willing to talk at length,.

Doug

Rxke · 2004-09-07 04:09:12

Thanks.

BTW, your http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?showtopic=334]5x3 pan is awesome!
I know your plan is to make a 'coffee-table' book, but i think you could sell this stuff separately as posters, too... I'm thinking to print it out on glossy paper (by a friend with big printer, heehee...) Is that allright with you, or would you consider that copyright infringement? It would be to hang in my workroom, which is painted in oranges and reds, I know I'm crazy, but i did that with Mars in mind...

djellison · 2004-09-07 05:35:09

Hadnt thought of posters. Good call.

All in good time.

Doug

Palomar · 2004-09-07 09:54:12

*Mentioned before, but as it is rapidly approaching (this from Astronomy magazine's "September astro bytes"):

"When Mars passes close to the Sun September 16, the energized environment surrounding our star may impede radio communication between mission planners and the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. For several days on either side of this orbital alignment, called a conjunction, scientists on the ground will receive a respite from sending daily plans to the two spacecraft. Instead, the rovers will be preprogrammed to collect data.

Spirit and Opportunity will continue to communicate with the Mars Odyssey orbiter daily as well as try to communicate with Earth directly. Complete science teams will be listening in case they need to intervene in an emergency. To be on the safe side, plans have the rovers remaining stationary during the blackout, possibly moving the camera masts but neither the wheels nor robotic arms."

Found here: http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.as … id=2432]Is last article

--Cindy

djellison · 2004-09-07 14:10:08

This also marks the end of the official extended mission - so we'll hopefully return from solar conjunction and begin the super-extended mission!

Doug

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-08 19:10:06

Some researchers are saying the Opportunity landing site may have been at the bottom of a large sea. They believe the sediments in the area are probably about 1/3rd of a mile deep, ~0.5 km, and that this indicates a very large body of water may have persisted there for a long time.
They're comparing the area of the water with that of Earth's Baltic Sea, and speculating it could have been much bigger!
For the full story, http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2 … html]CLICK HERE.
:up:

Palomar · 2004-09-09 10:10:34

Some researchers are saying the Opportunity landing site may have been at the bottom of a large sea. They believe the sediments in the area are probably about 1/3rd of a mile deep, ~0.5 km, and that this indicates a very large body of water may have persisted there for a long time.
They're comparing the area of the water with that of Earth's Baltic Sea, and speculating it could have been much bigger!
For the full story, http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2 … html]CLICK HERE.
:up:

*Hello Doug! Welcome to New Mars.

Shaun: Yes, I saw that at...(um, I visit so many astronomy sites can't recall which one)...anyway, yes -- saw that article.

C'mon, there's got to have been rudimentary life at some point!

I want a manned fossil expedition. NOW. :laugh:

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-09 19:46:56

Just looking at Opportunity's position on my topographic globe of Mars, I'm struck by the elevation of the site in comparison to nearby regions.
The landing site is now thought, at least by some, to be in the location of a large body of water - perhaps as large as Earth's Baltic Sea. But, looking at the local topography, it's clear there is no continuously higher land between this purported ancient sea-bed and the lower plains of Chryse Planitia and Acidalia Planitia. In other words, if there were once a sea at Opportunity's landing site, there's nothing that could have prevented the water from promptly draining into the depths of the much lower northern plains.
Assuming no intervening massive remodelling of martian topography, the inescapable conclusion we must draw from this is that a sea at the Opportunity landing site can only have been a part of a very much greater ocean to the north.
If not, then we must assume that water on Mars flows uphill!!

This must have occurred to Brian Hynek at the University of Colorado, too, but he chose not to pursue the logic too far in the article I linked to above. Scientists sure are loath to speculate, aren't they? Even when it is plainly obvious that what they are presenting in a paper leads inexorably to a further conclusion.
Is it proper scientific reserve or are they really scared of the establishment ridiculing and/or ostracising them?
???

No life on Mars · 2004-09-10 09:02:49

Is there a bigger chance that life once evolve on Mars if body of water at opportunity landing place was big as the Baltic sea or Atlantic ocean?

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-10 18:14:56

Hi No life on Mars!
If you're talking about entirely indigenous life on Mars, then I think the longer Mars had a clement environment in its earlier days, the better the chance that life had time to evolve.
If it can be shown that Mars had large bodies of water which persisted for hundreds of millions of years, then that opens wider the window of opportunity during which temperatures and other conditions were conducive to the development of life.

If you're talking about terrestrial life arriving at Mars via impact transfer of crustal material, then the chances of that life flourishing there, again, must be affected positively by the existence of conditions allowing oceans to persist on the surface for long periods.

My feeling is that Mars must have had a very large northern ocean and probably other large bodies of water - in the highlands south of Gusev crater, for example, and perhaps in Hellas Basin. That much standing water would explain how enough moisture existed in the atmosphere to result in rainfall on Mars in earlier epochs. The idea that rain must have fallen is supported by innumerable dendritic drainage networks all over the southern highlands which seem to defy alternative explanations.
Of course, there are problems with such a hypothesis! Nobody seems able to explain how early Mars could have been warm enough, long enough, for liquid water to persist at the surface - particularly when you take into consideration the current wisdom that our Sun was only about 70% as hot in its youth as it is now. (Even modelling which invokes 5 bars of CO2 in the primeval martian atmosphere fails to explain how Mars could have kept average temperatures above freezing under such circumstances.) How come there are widespread deposits of olivine on Mars - a mineral known to break down into other materials very quickly in the presence of even small amounts of water? If there was a lot of water on Mars, where is it now? This last question is puzzling when you consider that most scientists think it unlikely that Mars has had time to lose more than a small percentage of its original amount of water to space.

Mars is an absolute conundrum which cries out for human exploration! There's just so much to learn and we need scientists there, on the ground, to answer these questions.

Palomar · 2004-09-11 13:40:45

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mer … tml]Spirit on Autopilot...

...while Oppy gets busy with the RAT.

These two rovers have so outlived their initial life expectancy I'm beginning to automatically expect somehow they'll live for years! Would be nice, huh? Guess I'd better brace myself for robot death, though. The old 1-2 punch can come from a blindside.

--Cindy

REB · 2004-09-13 07:03:28

Endurance]http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20040910a.html]'Endurance Crater' Overview

I like maps.

Rxke · 2004-09-13 07:20:53

Shaun, re your question about water flowing uphil:

http://www.markcarey.com/mars/discuss-1 … .html]Here someone took an elevation map and filled in the area lower or equal than Opp's elevation...

(You have to scroll down to get to the map and then click it)

result: "Each pixel in the map above represents approximately 718 square kilometers, which means the white area represents approximately 10.5 million square kilometers (just under 10% of the total surface area of mars). If we take the depth range in kilometers as an average for the region (4 kilometers, a bad assumption) then the total volume of water required to cover this region is approximately 40 million cubic kilometers of water.
Check my math."

And a bit further in the topic there's a link to a Science article that has done the same, but reaches 1/4 th that number (volume)... for a bigger surface.

Interesting read, that blog... I couldn't get the Science article, but I could get the Science picture.

Oh, and check out the ...movie.gif, posted by the admin. I's a copy and paste in your adress bar thing, no live link... but interesting. Shows the seas 'evaporating'

Palomar · 2004-09-15 10:11:05

*Okay, I am getting really peeved.

I've not yet seen 1 photo from either MER with a dust devil in it. I'm not joking. It seems dust devils are all over Mars, according to MOC images, ME, etc. Not -one- has zipped past either of the MERs?? After all these months?? I'm hoping for a close, on-the-ground encounter!

I've gone through quite a few pages of raw images.

Sorry...I just find it odd. I've been following S & O closely.

--Cindy

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