HiBlog: HiRISE Team Blog » Opportunity

DPS 2008 Meeting

Ingrid Daubar — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:56:57 +0000

I had the opportunity to attend the 40th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. It’s being held here in Ithaca, NY at Cornell University. Along with some beautiful fall weather, I’ve also enjoyed some fantastic science. The meeting started with the Mars sessions on the first day. I think every single talk about the planet’s surface used HiRISE data! An entire session was devoted to the Martian atmosphere, which was interesting because I’m not as familiar with that. It’s also been great to see what’s going on in the rest of the solar system – I’ve been pretty Mars-oriented since starting with HiRISE, so I’ve loved hearing about things like the lakes on Titan, progress in exoplanet studies, and changes in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

As usual, other blogs are covering the meeting well (Planetary Society and the Martian Chronicles, for example). In addition, the sessions are all being web-streamed live (links to streaming video here; full program here). I think this afternoon’s special sessions are going to be really interesting, so I recommend watching them. I’m especially interested in the mission highlights from the rovers, Phoenix, MESSENGER, Cassini, and Kaguya. We’ve already seen some results from Kaguya and MESSENGER in the individual sessions – exciting stuff!

Hardware

GuyMac — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:26:05 +0000

There are a few PSP image releases for everyone today.

Also, a couple of special products:

Enjoy!

Opportunity!

GuyMac — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:09:58 +0000

Perhaps the most amazing event last week was that we were able to help the Cornell/JPL team plan a rover drive. The Victoria Crater image was coming in, though with data transmission gaps that meant manual processing was needed. At the same time, the load on our partially-upgraded internal network and servers was approaching a crisis-level condition. The image—if we got it—was expected to be released less than 18 hours later, at a joint Rover/HiRISE press briefing, which didn’t allow much time for analysis and color processing.

Finally, it was at this moment that Steve Squyres (Principal Investigator, Mars Exploration Rovers) called our Chris Okubo and asked for whatever we had in helping plan a rover drive “right now.” Chris O. is normally the most laid back person on the team, which kind of masks the fact that he is a very sharp, hard-working geologist, and somehow also found the time to plan more HiRISE observations than anyone else, by a substantial margin. Chris was at this moment as close to agitated as I’ve ever seen him.

But with some quick work by the Downlink Operations crew (Tahirih in particular), the rover drivers were able to get what they needed, and transmit instructions that would place Opportunity closer to the edge of Victoria Crater.

It seemed to be the dramatic climax to an incredible week.

The color image of Victoria Crater, our first color image from science orbit, is stunning, check it out if you haven’t already!

Shown below is HiRISE’s eagle-eyed view of Opportunity from 168 miles above.

Stuck rovers

Tuvas — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:56:40 +0000

Jason Perry and I have been looking a bit at the HiRISE image of Victoria Crater, trying to figure out where Opportunity got stuck in April of last year. We found a map at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA07922_modest.jpg and compared it with the HiRISE image, and finally found it. I’ve attached a screenshot showing the location. It is interesting to see that the area where the rover was stuck is considerably lighter than most of the area around it, possibly from dust the rover kicked up.