At this point, the storm is considered a “hemispherical event,” meaning it’s mainly affecting “only” half of the planet (the southern hemisphere, in this case). We have our fingers crossed that this will not expand and become a global event like the 2001 dust storm.

These storms, like weather on Earth, are difficult to predict, especially because they are relatively rare and we have much less information about them than we do about terrestrial weather. This is an opportunity to learn more about how the storms start and spread by gathering more data on the Martian dust and atmosphere. The CRISM instrument can measure the composition of the dust, for example, so we’ve helped them acquire extra images by canceling a number of our own images that would have been obstructed by the dust anyway. MARCI continues to take daily images of the globe, monitoring the storm’s activity.

While we wait to see what the dust does, our Targeting Specialists are scrambling to cancel observations and figure out where to take a chance and try imaging. Some areas are still relatively clear. We also have to deal with additional complications in our camera settings: even in areas where we can see the surface, the atmosphere is still dusty, so more light is reflected into the camera. We are learning how to adjust our instrument parameters to accommodate this, but without being able to predict where the dust will be, it’s very difficult!

Hopefully out of the chaos we’ll still get some good images. We will certainly learn more about operating our camera, and about Mars itself.

(Title is a quotation from Louisa May Alcott)

Also, our team is really growing!

You’ll notice a lot of new faces compared to a few years ago!

We spent the first day updating the team on our operations here at HiROC. Then for two days, almost everyone on the science team presented new results from recent HiRISE data, and explained their plans for future observing and analysis. We saw some really great images! A lot of people are doing “quick & dirty” three-dimensional analgyphs with our stereo data (like these), so we got to wear our red/blue glasses a lot. (We don’t have things calibrated & automated to the point where we can do this “correctly” yet, so these are still mostly preliminary, hand-processed products.)

Today, most of the team is participating in software training. Since we only have a day, we’re just doing short demos of the planning tools (HiPlan – see previous HiBlog entry for a recent update) and some of the analysis tools (like ISIS and IDL/ENVI)

For operations, it’s been wonderful to see the fruits of our efforts — we go to a lot of trouble to acquire an image, but once it’s acquired, we tend to lose track of it, because we’re planning the next images! Seeing the science that comes out of the data not only helps us understand strategies and be more intelligent in our targeting and planning, it’s also just really cool! I think keeping the “big picture” in mind is important in keeping us motivated and excited about what we’re doing.

To tell the truth, some of us are experiencing a little bit of a lull. We’re in conjunction right now — this means that the Sun is directly between Earth and Mars, so we can’t communicate with the spacecraft. (Here’s a link with a few diagrams to illustrate this.)

The HiRISE instrument is turned off, and we’re not taking any images. However, there are other activities going on at HiROC….

We start imaging again on November 8, and a few of us are already planning for that. PSP, the Primary Science Phase, is divided into two-week cycles. The first cycle is rm001, the second rm002, etc. Each cycle has a Targeting Specialist assigned to it (this one isn’t me, or I wouldn’t have time to write this!). The Targeting Specialist works with a member of the science team, the “Co-Investigator of the Pay Period,” (”pay period” because of the two-week cycle) or CIPP. The CIPP helps to choose scientifically important targets, and the Targeting Specialist does the scheduling and commanding. They work together on coordinating with other teams, choosing camera parameters, etc. There are a lot of details that need to be worked out!

We’re also building commands for a few special calibrations that will occur during the first cycle. On November 9th, we’re going to take a series of flat field images for calibration purposes. For these, the spacecraft will yaw (rotate around the normal axis) 90 degrees. Then when we take an image, it will smear across the whole field of view, giving us as close as we can get to a uniformly bright image. Once we average this over a lot of observations, we will divide our images of Mars by this as one of the calibration processing steps.

We will also be participating in a Deimos observation on November 13th. The calibration is actually set up for CRISM, and we’re just riding along, so the viewing conditions are not ideal for HiRISE. So don’t expect a fantastic HiRISE observation of Deimos! Instead, we’re taking this opportunity to measure stray light. Stray light is the extra scattered light that gets into the camera’s optics. We’re pretty confident that not much stray light gets into the excellent optics of the HiRISE camera, but we want to make sure.

Of course, the work never really stops, so we’re all busy with other things, as well — updating procedures and software, training new people, and trying to get ourselves organized and prepared. We want to be ready for the onslaught of images that will start in a few weeks and continue for (at least) the next two years!

NASA story: During Solar Conjunction, Mars Spacecraft Will Be on Autopilot

A couple of weeks a go, we started the planning process by defining scientifically interesting areas on Mars to image. At this point, we didn’t know exactly where the MRO spacecraft would be in its orbit around Mars when the imaging sequence would begin (two weeks later). Consequently, we chose large regions of interest, rather than pinpointing the exact locations of each image that we wanted to acquire. Once MRO’s orbit pattern during the imaging sequence was predicted, we then carefully decided where within each region of interest HiRISE should acquire image. With this preliminary plan in hand, we then discussed our imaging desires with the teams for the other MRO science instruments, such as CTX (the context imager) and CRISM (the multispectral imager).

After a week of iterations and teleconferences, we had a working schedule of observations that incorporated the imaging desires of all the MRO science instruments. We then undertook the process of carefully designing each scheduled HiRISE observation (image). Planning a HiRISE image involves setting the proper camera parameters so that we take a good image. We need to set parameters such as exposure duration, the aerial extent of the image, the image resolution and data compression. Each parameter needs to be carefully weighed against factors such as the brightness of the surface of Mars, the clarity of the Martian atmosphere, the scientific objective of the image and the amount of data storage space available on the spacecraft.

After an intense week of designing our HiRISE observations, we sent these camera commands to JPL. At JPL, the commands were tested on a computer simulator (the OTB or ‘Orbiter Test Bed’). The purpose of this test was to ensure that each command would execute flawlessly on the spacecraft (and they did). These commands were transmitted to MRO earlier this morning (Thursday 9/28/06). Mars is currently about 309 million kilometers (about 192 million miles) from the Earth. At this distance, it took about 22 minutes for our commands to travel from Earth to Mars. These commands will automatically run on the spacecraft tomorrow and begin returning fantastic images of Mars. Tomorrow should be an exciting day!