Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)

aldo12xu · 2005-07-30 10:46:36

I just posted my 19 most favourite Spirit stereo photos, but they're also quite unique in that I colourized and enhanced the original black and white images. I have it set up so that everyone can view them, whether you use the cross-eyed method or parallel method. (Most people are used to the cross-eyed method.)

Hope you like them,

Cheers,
Aldo

Palomar · 2005-07-30 11:01:45

*Update on the MERs: Spirit has been successfully driving every planned cycle. Has gained a distance of 70+ feet closer to the summit of Husband Hill. They've selected a nearby outcrop for inspection.

Rocks and cobbles for Oppy:

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rocks and Cobbles on the Way to 'Erebus' - sol 524-530, July 25, 2005:
The Opportunity team's current strategy for driving alternates segments of using visual odometry to check for slippage with segments of blind driving for less than 5 meters (16 feet). The strategy and hard work designing and commanding drives through troughs between ripples contributed to the rover making 89 meters (292 feet) of progress over three drive plans.
Rocks and cobbles have begun appearing in images of Opportunity's new surroundings, for the first time in many weeks of traversing through rippled terrain.
Sol 524 (July 15, 2005): The uplink team planned and executed a successful 27-meter (89-foot) drive. This signified the first use of a combination of short segments of blind driving followed by small slip-check drive segments. One small rock was seen in imaging.
Sol 526: Rover planners used the drive technique established on sol 524 to complete a successful 32-meter (105-foot) drive. Small cobbles were seen in imaging.
Sol 528: The uplink team planned a drive of 30 meters (98 feet), continuing in the troughs and crossing one ripple crest. The crest was estimated at 8.5 percent slope. However, the drive did not succeed because of a timeout on the first turn command. The duration was set to 15 seconds for a 15-degree turn. The rover made 14.9 degrees of progress before using up the allotted time.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-08-02 07:53:26

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/05 … tml]Spirit nears summit of Husband Hill

*Great. Squyres says they're starting to name rocks in the vicinity after famous mountaineers (for pep). He says chances are very good Spirit will reach the summit. However:

“We should get a good view to the horizon in all directions, which should be pretty spectacular. I think, however, that it might be hard to get a really good look in all directions at the lower flanks of Husband Hill itself,” Squyres said.
Not only is the summit pretty rounded, Spirit itself isn’t very tall.
“So we may have to proceed down the south side of the hill a little way before we’ll be able to say much about what’s on the other side,” Squyres said

I've been looking forward to that upcoming new vista for a long time.

-also-

On the other hand, scaling Husband Hill has been slow going, primarily due to the rich bounty of observations on the way.
“We’d go a lot faster if the science weren’t so good! The upper reaches of Husband Hill are turning out to be a remarkably target-rich environment,” Squyres added. As example, a “fabulous new outcrop” dubbed “Voltaire”, he said, “doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before.”

I'm starting to get into the mind-set of these MERs continuing on and on for YEARS more. It's getting to the point where actually eventually losing them is going to be something of a shock.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-02 09:52:36

With Spirit’s imminent arrival at the select pinnacle, rover scientists will probably want to take a fairly substantial panorama there, then wheel down onto the lower flanks of Husband Hill, Squyres said.

Can't wait! Another Royal Pan, *Salivates*

Boyboyboy... Who'd ever thought Spirit would get this far? And further in the article, they alk about descending the slope, in a way like they plan to drive this rover for another couple of months!

Unbe friggin lievable!

Time can put them up at their cover: 'Rovers of the year'

The imagery, the science,... These rovers bring Mars a lot closer.

So close, yet so far...

Palomar · 2005-08-04 09:37:19

*MER update. Spirit is checking out lots of rocks. They attempted to brush a target named "Chic" with the RAT, but "due to geometry" were unable to.

As for Oppy:

Opportunity continued its trek south toward "Erebus Crater," making 61 meters (200 feet) of progress over two sols of driving. The rover is approaching greater quantities of outcrop as it heads south, and the team is excited at the possibility of using the robotic arm before reaching Erebus.
This week, restricted sols allowed the team to drive only every other sol. Next week, however, there will be a shift back to an early planning cycle that will allow driving every sol if desired.
Sol 531 (July 22, 2005): Opportunity pointed its navigation camera rearward to shoot images for a seven-frame by one-frame mosaic. The miniature thermal emission spectrometer systematically observed the foreground. The panoramic camera took thumbnail images of the sky.
Sol 532: This sol's remote-sensing work included a pre-sunset observation.
Sol 533: The rover completed a successful drive of 34 meters (112 feet), including an attitude update.
Sol 536: Opportunity drove 27 meters (89 feet), with approximately 10 percent slip. The drive duration was two hours, with a final heading of 155 degrees.

Will look forward to those pics of the sky. And what about that pre-sunset observation? Maybe we'll get some light pillars? Thin, high clouds?

--Cindy

C M Edwards · 2005-08-04 14:34:14

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … 1.JPG]Nice Picture.

Rxke · 2005-08-04 15:24:26

Ooooh yesss...

I'm collecting stuff like that, going to tweak them a bit, then print them out as negatives, then make a true B&W print of it (photographically) Some of those pics are just screaming for silver-prints, IMO...

I mean, real shiny photgraphs, though from digital originals, framed on a wall... People asking, "hey where was that one taken, and by whom?" and then answering: "On Mars, by an unmanned rover!"

Priceless.

Rxke · 2005-08-05 03:43:33

http://midnightmarsbrowser.blogspot.com/

Not sure this one came up yet...
It's about a 'stitching' program, but just have a look at the featured screenshots... Awesome scenery..

Nice set of links, too... A Walk On Mars is a good place, if you haven't been there before, lots of mosaics!

(EDIT:)

Make sure you visit the movies section ! ! !

Absolutely awesome... esp the navcam stuff.... *Droooool*
Best stuff I've seen re: movies so far, even beats NASAstuff by far...

Hmmm... Tantalizing to d/l the program... Be sure to read the specs, though. You could end up downloading 7 gigs of data before you know it :shock:

Rxke · 2005-08-05 05:58:11

Sorry, just can't stop praising Midnight Mars Browser...

Cindy, have a go at the dustdevil movie, a real treat... There are at least 50 of them in that movie, sometimes very visible, sometimes eerily, sometimes en masse... A real eye-opener, that one!

Sigh... If only I had 7 gigs of free space.... Or a computer >350MHz!

Palomar · 2005-08-05 06:04:09

Sorry, just can't stop praising Midnight Mars Browser...
Cindy, have a go at the dustdevil movie, a real treat... There are at least 50 of them in that movie, sometimes very visible, sometimes eerily, sometimes en masse... A real eye-opener, that one!

*I will do that. Hopefully can get it to work on this computer; if not, I'll try it on my other computer. Sounds great (the more the merrier). Gotta love those dust devils. Thanks for pointing that out, Rik.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-05 06:59:21

mKay... Bespite the writer saying you need a pretty clippy computer, with at least 500Mb, I ran the program, did a partial download of the data...

And it works just fine, on a more than six (6) years olden computer! (384Mb G3@350MHz)

Absolute thumbs-up... Creates false colors on the fly, sldeshows, anaglyphs the lot!

Going to buy me a bigger HD, just for this program, not kidding!
Off to our friend djellison's homeâge, where they have a dedicated thread to this program.

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2005-08-05 07:50:42

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ … HTML]Check out the salt crust.

that's a very nice picture

Rxke · 2005-08-05 08:12:29

While we're at it... The Cornell Uni pans are great!
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/panc … ramas.html

Weird: look at the hitcounter... that's low :shock:

The site itself, is of coure all about the Pan Cam: http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/panc … index.html

Worth a visit, by all means.

Rxke · 2005-08-05 09:30:55

Sorry for coming back to this -again, but...

MidnightMarsbrowser is awesome!

download it, go to 'advanced update' and select say day 1-5, and then do fast update....

and see the magic unfold...

I'm going to d/l the complete set, in bits and pieces that way, a couple of Mb every day...

Palomar · 2005-08-05 09:58:46

Sorry, just can't stop praising Midnight Mars Browser...
Cindy, have a go at the dustdevil movie, a real treat... There are at least 50 of them in that movie, sometimes very visible, sometimes eerily, sometimes en masse... A real eye-opener, that one!
I will do that. Hopefully can get it to work on this computer; if not, I'll try it on my other computer.

*Hmmmm. Can't get it to work. I clicked on this link:

Spirit Dust Devils
Spirit Dust Devils Extended Movie Quicktime 28MB Updated 6/5/2005

It does nothing, simply stays at the original page. The link changes color to shown it's been clicked on; that's all. I'll try on my other computer later.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-05 10:13:54

hmmm... it's a quicktime movie, and you're probably at work, playing tsktsk...

right-click save as... and then trying to open it... but you probably have to have some quicktime soft installed to get it going.

Palomar · 2005-08-05 10:16:15

hmmm... it's a quicktime movie, and you're probably at work, playing tsktsk...
right-click save as... and then trying to open it... but you probably have to have some quicktime soft installed to get it going.

*I'm at home. Have two computers.

Will follow your instructions, thanks.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-09 05:43:04

Once again about Midnight Mars Browser....

Anyone with a broadband connection HAS to check it out!

It changed the way I browse the S&O pictures forever.

Some features:

-Automatically checks JPL and Exploratorium websites for newly posted images and metadata. It then (If you so wish) downloads the images into dedicated folders, for easy browsing

-Generates false-color and anglyphs out of raw data;

-(Best of all:) auto-stitching of images, and (even better!) presents them in a 3D environment, in which you can scroll, zoom, pan, ... with your muse or keyboard, uses B/W pics, combined with false color, anaglyphs,... You just got to try this to believe it!

-slideshows, where you can choose which kind of images you (don't) want to see: pancam, hazcam, color, sols....

if you want to try it out, I suggest downloading a subset, say Spirit imagery sol 67-71, using the advanced update images, do an 'update-metadata' then in advanced update: regenerate imagerychoose false color pancam, and when the program finishes updating (I suggest you let it do it's number crunching in the background...) choose 'view panorama' Spirit 67-71

Then make sure you're seated....

Palomar · 2005-08-10 05:51:20

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mer … .html]Oppy update

*Still trekkin' south towards Erebus crater. Oppy is carefully traipsing through the ripple troughs (don't get stuck again please!). It's driven another 262 feet, for a grand total of 3.54 miles. Way to go.

Opportunity is still about about 50 meters (164 feet) north of the "Erebus highway" - an area the team suspects to be highly populated with outcrop and perhaps easier to navigate.

There's a mention of a bit of power decrease since the latest "cleaning event."

Check out the reference to an "ice cream cone shaped plot of outcrop," Sol 543. They had good success with that maneuver.

To paraphrase Scott Maxwell while describing the drive: "We will cross over 'fudge ripple,' move along the 'Rocky Road,' and park right at the scoop." This is exactly what happened.

Sounds yummy. Yummy mission, etc.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-11 04:35:21

:shock: :shock: :shock:

Biggest tornado-twister-whatever!.... Ever!

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer_ … d_568a.gif

biggish animated gif-file, takes awhile to load)

Palomar · 2005-08-11 05:12:27

:shock: :shock: :shock:
Biggest tornado-twister-whatever!.... Ever!
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~lemmon/mer_ … d_568a.gif
biggish animated gif-file, takes awhile to load)

*Dust devil alert!! :shock: Lol!

Terrific. I guess if it'd been a color pic, the bottom portion of it would be noticeably darker due to the density of dust/sand within it, nearest the ground.

--Cindy

Rxke · 2005-08-11 08:19:53

Hmmm.

You raise an interesting point: the used filtersets... Would it be possible to generate 'reallife' colorrenderings of those? Going to ask that at Doug's site, they're bound to know the answer

Rxke · 2005-08-11 12:37:45

Those chaps at Unmanned Spaceflight.com (Doug Jellison's board) are soooo cool.
I asked them about the possibility of rendering a 'true color' dustdevil, and before you know...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/inde … 1175&st=30

Some of those people there are great, great, great!

Palomar · 2005-08-11 12:58:13

Those chaps at Unmanned Spaceflight.com (Doug Jellison's board) are soooo cool.
I asked them about the color of dustdevils, and before you know...
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/inde … 1175&st=30
Some of those people there are great, great, great!

*Awesome! That's what I imagined they'd look like. Saw your post at Doug's site, registered, commented. Yep, I'm a dust devil fan -- whoooooot!

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2005-08-11 13:17:50

Yup great looking but I would rather feel the pelting of those grains of sand against a thickly armored Mars suit and to feel the force of the wind as it washes over me trying to push me along with it.

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