Senior Member
So you made an assumption, that turned out not to be true....nothing "wrong" with that.Originally Posted by Zvezdichko
Then I guess I'm not reading all posts in full
I never thought that they're going to keep them forever, but at the moment I thought they may accept the MRO policy about the 1-month embargo period.
Although it would have clarified things, if you had said this earlier.
edit....my apologies as I posted this at the same time as Swift's post.
Established Member
EDIT at 18:03 - also posted after I saw Swift's post.
And actually, not every time it's my fault.
Whenever I (or somebody else) suggests something about data being delayed, there are always 3 of 4 of you jumping on me (respectively us) about how wrong we are, as the facts are - there was a delay in Raw picture's release and people wonder why. And I was not even the first one who suggested something, yet everyone quoted my post.
According to you having doubts and fears is so sinful that I'm really starting to question your motives about why you behave so, I mean if you're driven by science or by some quazi-religious beliefs aka Richard Dawkins-like.
I have no interest in debating a thread like the ones we debated before.
What the other person said before me was entirely normal after having a delay and the fact that I agreed with him somehow is entirely normal.
If you really wish to debate with people who're doing harm to the project or to science on general, I would suggest you go to Youtube - there are a lot of videos and comments who create a bad image of the project as people constantly find UFOs, artifacts, Little green men on Curiosity's photos. Those people really need debunking and correcting. Not those of us who express entirely innocent doubts.
Administrator
Let me be blunt.
I'll let R.A.F.'s and Zvezdichko's posts go, as being "in-process" when I posted my warning; though even without my warning it should have been obvious to experienced members that such posts, particular Zvezdichko's last one, were severely off-topic.
The next person who posts on this data-delay topic, or anything else off-topic for this thread, gets infracted.
Member
LOL I think we have killed the JPL website
Established Member
I have a question,
Is there any way I can download all (new) MSL images at once?
Downloading them one at a time takes a LOT of time...
Thanks in advance.
-- Dennis
Vulcan Administrator
Just got back from taking our interns out to lunch on their last day, so missed everything so far. Will try to post items of note the rest of the way.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Vulcan Administrator
Currently explaining why they want to upgrade the flight software from R9.3 to R10: includes software to drive efficiently, control instruments, operate drill, etc. Autonomous driving or blind driving.
R9 optimized for EDL. R10 optimized for surface operations. Four day process:
Sol 5 - toe-dip into R10
Sol 6 - commit to R10
Sol 7 - toe-dip into R10 on backup computer
Sol 8 - commit to R10 on backup computer
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Vulcan Administrator
NPR - Radar capturing wide swath of Mars, differentiating between rough and smooth place? If re-run, could you make ellipse smaller?
Radar fixed to descent stage, swings with it. Picked landing ellipse because altitude didn't vary much, knew we'd separate from backshell at right point.
Have a few ideas that can probably shave a couple miles off the landing ellipse.
Aerospace America - Was altitude accordion capability going to come into play?
Allowed for estimate to be wrong by 100 meters, actually more like 3 meters.
Who's going to be looking for another job?
Haven't started thinking about that yet. Thinking about future projects.
CBC - How did you decide to call Curiosity landing site Yellowknife? (Actually calling from Yellowknife, Canada)
Have to ask surface team.
Deputy project scientist: picked geologically significant names. Both ancient rocks (2.7 billion years old on Earth).
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Order of Kilopi
Nope - it's just no designed and maintained properly. IT's hosted on an enormous cloud hosting service that could handle a lot of traffic. The back end is the problem at the moment.
Vulcan Administrator
BBC - Did Mars Express see all the way down to the ground?
Lost coverage prior to landing, as expected.
Looked at debris field from descent stage?
Waiting for Day 6 image from HiRISE, which will be nadir image and therefore better detail.
Washington Post - Capabilities relative to cellphone? How so much capabilities will less power than cellphone?
Processor runs at 133 MHz (cellphone 1GHz, PC 2-3 GHz). But two computers. Rover 4G storage. Custom software, can optimize for particular application. World-class software team, they'll find a way to do it. [If you don't have to support a GUI, it makes it a whole lot easier.] Ditto for optimizing surface software.
Processors much faster than MER processors.
Is precision for Curiosity going to make the cut in the future? Can improve by a few miles?
Demonstrated guided entry, incredible tool for future missions. Depends on future missions. Are we going to aim for a target?
Rob Manning guessed landing site right? What sort of reward?
Not a real answer.
?? - Any more information about image of rover taken from HiRISE?
Provided first timing back in April. Focused on if things didn't go well. Try to see if any issues with parachute. Harder for Curiosity than for Phoenix. Had to be withing middle 5.5-6 kilometers of picture, guided entry helped a lot. Precision of landing helped a lot.
Altitude 3000 meters, descending 80 meters/second. Pre-landing day, thought 50/50 chance of getting image.
When does software upgrade begin and end Earth time?
Repeated about Sol 5-8.
1.5 deviation from ideal landing?
Didn't quite catch it, but some late issue they didn't have a chance to correct for. Tailwind may have been a factor.
Aerospace America - Something to be done to prevent so much junk being blown on top of rover?
Longer tether a possibility. Analyzed this very heavily, tried to keep bridles short enough to be manageable vs. amount of debris blown up. Consulted with instrument teams about debris issue. All as expected.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Vulcan Administrator
Space.com - New FSW beamed during cruise phase? Doing any science during transition?
Yes, stored in file system. Can upload FSW while on surface. Didn't have to do during cruise but had the opportunity and took it.
Primarily an engineering activity, mostly standing down on science.
Planetary Society (not Emily!?) - Any surprises during EDL?
A few surprises, landing with more fuel than expected. A couple of tone indications sent direct-to-Earth that seemed unlikely. Currently working with 1 megabyte of the 100+ megabytes we hope to get, need to wait until we have full picture.
Worked on MER, how does this compare in terms of life experience?
It's certainly well up there.
Irish TV - Anything you'd do differently now? Overengineered?
Minor things we'd change if we did it again. Way to save costs is to stick with what works. Not overengineered, designed to let scientists land wherever they want. Just fortunate they decided to pick a parking lot.
Spaceflight Magazine - Would you be able to apply guided entry techniques to airbag system?
Yes, but you'd have to use RCS jets just like Curiosity. Would be a design change.
BBC - missed question
There is instrumentation in heat shield that will tell us what's going on. Triggered several tones during EDL that told us things were going as expected. No data yet on peak heating.
Washington Post/National Geographic - If we did it again, how much saved?
"Not falling into that trap!" Would have to look at.
Naming of landing site?
Grotzinger: Not name of landing site, name of quadrangle. Yellowknife is where you leave to go investigate oldest rocks in North America.
KBCC - Does public embrace surprise you? What interesting things have you seen from the public sphere?
Overwhelmed by social media interaction: Twitter, email, Facebook. Great to be completely in touch with public on this. After all, they paid for it. Hard to follow all outside activities when in control room. It's going to take me weeks to get caught up.
Shows that America and the world are interested in math and science. Hope social media keeps it going along.
"Got recognized in the pizza parlor."
Enormous feeling of accomplishment associated with a successful landing, awesome bunch of coworkers. Makes it all the sweeter to share triumph with such a fantastic group of people.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Vulcan Administrator
Aerospace America - How important was two-year delay to success of mission?
It was important. We weren't ready. Gave us opportunity to make sure everything was going to work right.
Final news conference for the week. More news next week.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Established Member
Great Coverage. Thank you ToSeek, Thank you very much.
-- Dennis
Administrator
Yes, thanks ToSeek.
Is it just me, or are most of these questions just kind of stupid and in some cases nitpicky?
I hate these kinds of questions and they've been repeated for 30 years. Your cellphone also doesn't need to be radiation hardened and if it stops working you just go to the store and get another. Reliability is much more important than processing power.
Order of Kilopi
It really is a dumb comparison. MSL doesn't have to run Flash or deal with the bloated morass of conflicting and poorly implemented standards that is the web, decode HD video in real time without stuttering, constantly load up new apps and games, present a responsive GUI interface to a human user, etc...it runs a very trim and specialized set of software. The two rover computers also aren't the total computational power on the rover...the various instruments and other systems have their own specialized electronics. The MastCam, MAHLI, and MARDI cameras each have 8 GB of flash and enough processing power to capture and compress video at 10 fps, for example.
Established Member
Yes, I can predict the paragraph now;
Or some such...blecchh.Curiosity has less processing power and memory than your cellphone but can do all these great things.
I love purpose-built engineering.
Vulcan Administrator
Watching the recording of today's press conference:
Panelists:
Allen Chen - Flight Dynamics & Operations Lead/JPL
Gavin Mendeck - EDL Guidance/JSC
Devin Kipp - EDL-Parachute Descent/JPL
Steve Sell - EDL-Powered Flight/JPL
Jody Davis - EDL Trajectory/LaRC
Ben Cichy - Chief Software Engineer/JPL
"Tip of the iceberg of a set of very very talented folks". It's a big iceberg.
Chen:
Incredibly clean ride from cruise team. Missed target by only a mile. Estimated entry point when 1.25 million miles out, off by only 800 feet.
Atmosphere very much as expected (all-planet image). Got there ahead of the dust.
EDL performance as expected. EDL communications very good, current knowledge based on data received that night. Data from all three orbiters and direct-to-Earth. Got all the data we expected. 100 megabytes more of data still on Curiosity, only have 1 megabyte right now. DTE received 67 heartbeat tones and 28 informational tones. That many heartbeat tones tells us everything was going well. Last tone received was heatshield separation, completely as expected. Lost signal about five minutes after entry, within seconds of predictions.
From MRO, more than expected, about 19 minutes worth. Locked up about 8 minutes before entry, 5 minutes earlier than predicted. Had coverage through landing+6 minutes. Plasma blackout for 43 seconds, were prepared for up to 75 seconds. Have data sent after blackout to shed light on status during blackout.
From Odyssey, about 12 minutes. Started 2:19 after entry, 20 seconds later than expected.
Mendeck:
Enter atmosphere at Mach 24, flew parallel to ground, entry to just under Mach 2, just about 3.5 minutes. Pulled max of a little over 11 g's. Comparative landing ellipses: Viking 2x width of Gale Crater, Pathfinder slightly larger, MER about same, Phoenix a little smaller, Curiosity minuscule by comparison.
Tungsten ballast trims vehicle, give it a little bit of lift.
The 1.5 miles off-target comes from the way we flew. Use bank reversals to adjust trajectory. Third bank reversal right at the end of range control, climbed a little bit in the atmosphere, but then were done with range control. Close to a mile of error at that point. Tailwinds may have contributed, will be looking at that. Guided entry based on Gemini and Apollo concepts.
At end of entry guidance phase, do rotation, get rid of ballast.
Kipp:
Brief sampling of what we currently know about parachute descent and how well it did. Only cursory right now. Very important, not a lot of experience with parachutes in Martian atmosphere.
MRO parachute image: At 3 am Monday morning this was the most beautiful picture I'd seen in my life. Can tell a lot about how parachute performed just from this photo. Inflated perfectly, vent is open, shape is exactly what we expected to see. No damage, no tearing. Well into parachute deployment: 40-50 seconds in.
Parachute deployed about 259 seconds after entry, prediction 241-263. Right in range, a little later than center, suggesting we had less drag than expected. Parachute opened in conditions where we thought it would open and under which we tested it.
Heat shield deploys based on a sensed velocity. Under parachute, go from Mach 1.7 to Mach 0.7 very quickly. Took 20 seconds, prediction 16-26. Performed beautifully, just what we expected.
Back shield separation 95 seconds after heat shield separation, right in line with expectations of 60-150. Uncertain about altitude parachute was going to deploy at and how much subsonic drag. Suggests parachute deploy altitude was as expected. All of these are implications, can't be sure.
Behavior of capsule under parachute - wrist mode. Want capsule not to wobble a whole lot. Want separation events to have fairly benign motions. Want radar beams to measure distance to ground.
MARDI movie: some evidence of wrist mode motion but very benign. Concerned because MER wrist mode behavior was higher than expected. Needed to figure out how to model better, looks as if we succeeded. Ground spinning, capsule rotating 1-2 degrees/second. Consistent with predicts, okay with up to 3 deg/sec.
Verification of an EDL requirement: 3 seconds after heat shield separation, heat shield 15 meters away from capsule. Concerned about radar picking up heat shield, requirement was that heat shield be 15 meters away within 5 seconds, so met that.
Sell:
1 mile altitude, free fall out of backshell for one second, fire engines, divert to one side, then vertical flight to the ground. Showing movie, can see diversion to the side as tilted 20 degrees. Plumes impacting ground, start sky crane, see wheel deploy, gets dark.
Flew it right down the middle. Amazing to work on plan for years and then see everything happen according to plan. All these contingency plans we'd put together were being shedded on the way down.
Next thing after landing was flyaway maneuver. Lucky enough to catch descent stage impact on Martian surface. Rear hazcam image taken 40 seconds after touchdown. Artifact shows up in initial image, not 45 minutes later. Showed up in multiple images, pretty confident is impact plume. Hits ground about 100 mph so kicks up quite a plume. Amazing coincidence we were able to catch impact.
Can see two divots in the ground, we blasted those with our rockets. Makes me extremely happy. Off-roading for the next two years, expecting debris. Wanted to start off day one with a bit of dirt - never want brand-new sneakers - can see debris on top of rover.
Davis:
Go through latest predicted trajectory via Google Mars. Real simulation data. Actually use Google Mars to see 3D trajectory. Nominal trajectory based on latest data right prior to landing. Parachute deploy 10:15:05, 20 seconds later heat shield sep, 18 seconds later radar lock up about a kilometer higher than expected. Backshell sep 77 seconds after that. Touchdown 55 seconds after backshell sep. All as expected. American flag at landing site down to Google Mars.
Where is the rover? Touchdown information from Curiosity, account for navigation errors, come up with best estimate. Missed center of target by about 1.5 miles.
Estimate expected to be within a kilometer, actual within 200 meters.
Showing predictions for where ballast would land, dark blue ellipse on diagram, dark blue circles. Actual well within error ellipse. A huge effort, going to be exciting to be able to tell full story when we get all the data back.
Cichy:
They're talking about jettisoning EDL hardware, I'm going to be talking about jettisoning EDL software. Move on to surface version of software. Phone has 10x power, 16x storage of Curiosity computer. But my phone wouldn't survive journey to Mars.
Flight software R9.3: Launch/Cruise, EDL, Surface, SW Update.
Updated EDL software enroute: EDL 2.0, Surface v1.1. Couldn't fit all of surface software in along with EDL stuff.
Uploaded in cruise FSW R10, Surface 2.0: not actually installed. Gives us ability to do sampling, drive rover. Advanced software for controlling sample acquisition, controlling robot arm, control drill, all the exciting stuff you're going to see us do over the upcoming months and years.
"Born to drive."
Rest I've covered in earlier, real-time posts.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Established Member
Actually, after some searching, I believe that to be one of the bridle attachments.
Established Member
I got myself all confused again now.. isnt the top of landing site picture more EAST?. To head northeast is where the skycrane landed so far as i thought
Order of Kilopi
THat is one of the three bridle attach points.
Member
So how can we find out what date and time it in for the rover
Established Member
Are you asking what is the date and time for Curiosity in Martian sols? If so you can download an applet to your PC or Apple: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/
Note: Requires Java.
Vulcan Administrator
The skycrane landed to the northwest. The standard photo with the assorted debris is aligned so north is at the top: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ms.../PIA16001.html
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Order of Kilopi
No - there are ways thru that are due-south of the rover. I doubt they would take that much of an excursion.
Member
Nearly a week since landing, it's gone by so fast.
Any info anywhere on the computer upgrade?
Order of Kilopi
From Universe Today:
With all the initial post landing objectives accomplished, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., are spending 4 Sols, or Martian days, bracketing this weekend to upload a new software package named “R10” that is optimized for surface operations and will replace the current “R9” package.
Ben Cichy, chief software engineer: “The flight software version Curiosity currently is using [R9] was really focused on landing the vehicle. It includes many capabilities we just don’t need any more."
“Right now, we have the capability in our basic surface software to check out the health of the instruments, but we don’t really have the capability to go and make the full use of all this great hardware we shipped to Mars.”
STARGAZING: All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go. --Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary
Established Member
Is any data from the REMS package available yet? I found information on REMS itself, but no data. I'm curious as to the relative air pressure difference inside Gale Crater vs. dataum elevation as well as other weather forces.
Established Member
The last public reference to REMS was that the anomalous data issue has been cleared up, which at least makes me think that they may have new data from those sensors. I'm guessing they are waiting till after the software upgrade and later in the commissioning process to release anything. They did release some preliminary RAD data, but I'm guessing they felt more comfortable with it.
Was RAD active in the cruise phase?
Vulcan Administrator
Based on what was said during one of the press conferences, my impression is that it was. But it was also well-shielded, so the data isn't completely accurate.
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Vulcan Administrator
Curiosity traverse proposed during landing site discussions (large PDF file):
http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landing..._final_opt.pdf
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote