[Space] NASA - Mars Exploration Rover MER-A "Spirit" - Update Thread

[GioFX]

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2004
1820 GMT (1:20 p.m. EST)

Spirit's five-minute brushing of the rock Adirondack has yielded interesting results. The brush can be seen here.

A before-brushing image of the rock is here and this is the post-brushing view.

A microscopic view of the brushed area is also available.

Meanwhile, Opportunity completed another drive today. It didn't quite reach the rock outcrop, so a 30-40 centimeter drive is scheduled for tomorrow before science investigations can begin this weekend, mission manager Matt Wallace says.

[GioFX]

Spirit readies for long drive after rock cleaning, grinding

BY SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 6, 2004

Whipping half-inch stainless steel bristles against a pyramid-shaped rock, the Spirit rover has performed "the greatest interplanetary brushing of all time," a scientist joked Friday with the unveiling the latest images from Mars.


The brush on Spirit's instrument arm is shown in this image with Adirondack as backdrop. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

The rock, nicknamed Adirondack, is the first rock that Spirit has examined since landing on Mars a month ago. Sidelined by computer memory trouble that is now fully resolved, the rover has resumed its science activities.

"I think I can say this morning, with as much certainty as we can say anything here, that our patient is healed. We are very excited about that!" mission manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters at Friday's rover status briefing.

On Wednesday, controllers spent about three hours erasing the flash memory and an hour reformatting and resetting the vehicle.

"All indications were that worked extremely well. Of course it was nerve-racking...In the end, the spacecraft did what we wanted it to do and it performed perfectly. It's in great health right now," Trosper said.


This image taken by the panoramic camera shows the post-brushing view of Adirondack. The cleaned patch is clearly visible. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

The brush in the rover's Rock Abrasion Tool, or RAT, was used for five minutes Thursday to remove dust from the outer surface of Adirondack.

Scientists weren't expecting to see much change in the rock's appearance since it seemed clean. Instead, the brushing created a dark blotch on Adirondack.

"I didn't expect much of a difference. This is a big surprise," said Stephen Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics, lead scientist for the RATs. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the greatest interplanetary brushing of all time."

"To our surprise, there was quite a bit of dust on the surface," said Ken Herkenhoff, lead scientist for the rovers' Microscopic Imagers. "Remember, we selected this rock target because it looked relatively dust-free."

"The material on the surface posed literally no resistance," Gorevan said. "We saw almost no effort in the motor telemetry that said this material offered any resistance whatsoever."

The close-up images show "a bunch of details in here we are just beginning to understand," Herkenhoff said.

"We are seeing...mineral crystals on the rock surface. Of course as we continue to abrade the surface with the RAT, we are very excited to see what that will show us."


This microscopic image shows a cleaned off portion of the rock dubbed Adirondack. The observed area is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS

Late Friday, Spirit was expected to use the RAT to grind into Adirondack, which is a hard, volcanic rock. The device's diamond teeth will carve out a hole so the rover's science instruments can examine the minerals and elemental composition of the rock's interior.

Once finished with Adirondack, Spirit could begin driving Saturday, bound for a large crater in the distance.

"We are kind of on the west-southwest side of the lander. We are going to drive around the lander and head northeast for Bonneville Crater. We do believe we will be able to get there," Trosper said.

"We're having strategy discussions now on how we would use the capabilities of the vehicle in terms of traversing and auto-navigation in order to get us there.

"Our initial thinking is we will start with being able to just designate traverses from the imaging. So we will tell the rover exactly were to drive, but at the end of that traverse we will turn on our auto-navigation software and allow the rover, for a meter or so just to check out the auto-navigation software, to determine how to get to the next way point."

As Spirit continues to journey across Gusev Crater, controllers expect to expand the distance it can travel in each increment.

"We will start in those baby steps and each sol (day) that we are driving, we will probably expand the numbers," Trosper said. "There is going to be a lot of driving on Spirit."

Over the course of the long trip, the rover will make a few extended stops to perform science investigations along the route.

"We have worked with the science team and we've talked about four or five different places that we might stop and do some specific science with the (arm) as we go. That's our plan, long-term."

Imagery indicates that there will be a path for the rover to actually reach the crater rim.

"Of course we will know that better as we move closer," Trosper said.

[GioFX]

Un'interessante articolo del JPL sulle immagini di Spirit e Opportunity:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotl..._20040128.html

[GioFX]

Wallpapers:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/mer/

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Wallpapers:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/mer/

Hm, no, queste non mi piacciono.
Io cerco qualcosa come questa (che era quella che avevo cercato di colorare):



dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder, le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...

[GioFX]

Originariamente inviato da gpc
dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder

sarebbe stato molto più complesso e costoso, e una ridondanza senza molto senso... altri pannelli solari, un altro computer, pancam, radio, ecc...

le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...

tipo questa?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/rover.cfm


Wallpapers:

JPL

ESA Science

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
sarebbe stato molto più complesso e costoso, e una ridondanza senza molto senso... altri pannelli solari, un altro computer, pancam, radio, ecc...

Sì sì, dicevo per dire...

tipo questa?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/rover.cfm

Fuochino
La mia preferita era questa, che era tra l'altro il mio sfondo...

[Frank1962]

si... veramente carina!

[ninja750]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2004
1605 GMT (11:05 a.m. EST)

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that yesterday's erasing and reformatting of Spirit's flash file system was successfully completed. The rover will get back into its science game plan today, brushing the dust off its first rock and using the science instruments for further investigation.

Aaahh lo dico sempre io che per rimuovere tutti i mali da un sistema non c'è metodo migliore che un bel formattone !!

[jumpermax]

Originariamente inviato da gpc
Hm, no, queste non mi piacciono.
Io cerco qualcosa come questa (che era quella che avevo cercato di colorare):



dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder, le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...

devi andare nella sezione RAW images
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
devi andare nella sezione RAW images
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/

Si' si', ma non ci sono le tre immagini di quella che cerco io.
Ho fatto la prova del procedimento con le tre foto invece, ed e' venuto bene. Strano, ma bene
Adesso non sono col mio computer e non posso mandarla, lo faccio domani, ma probabilmente non ho preso i colori giusti... cioe', la sabbia e' del colore di sempre, ma la roccia ha una sfumatura violetta e ci sono un sacco di sassolini gialli. Boh
Comunque domani vedrete...

[gpc]

Come promesso:



Che ve ne pare?
Secondo voi i colori sono sbagliati?

[gpc]

'sto sasso comunque mi piace

[GioFX]

Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov

Uh? Non ho letto niente riguardo a questo nè sul sito della nasa nè su space.com...
Adesso guardo il video...


..... imbroglione

[alex10]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:

http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov

[GioFX]

PS: E' sempre del tipo che cura le animazioni della missione MER per la NASA... chissà quanti soldi ha fatto!

[ni.jo]

Originariamente inviato da gpc
Come promesso:
Che ve ne pare?
Secondo voi i colori sono sbagliati?

'mazza, han rovato l'oro?
evvai, marte come il klondike...
...strano giallo...

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da ni.jo
'mazza, han rovato l'oro?
evvai, marte come il klondike...
...strano giallo...

Ho visto una foto a colori della zona in c'e' il sasso che ho "colorato" io... ehm... devo aver sbagliato qualcosina...

[GioFX]

How 3-D Works: Mars Revealed by Human-Like Eyes

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
10 February 2004

When geologists first saw pictures of rock outcroppings at the Opportunity landing site on Mars, they thought the mini-cliff was perhaps as tall as a person. Some started calling it the "Great Wall." Then the robot's 3-D cameras, a pair of eyes standing as tall as a person, showed it was all a bluff.

Seen in stereo, the stack of rocks shrunk to the height of a house cat and the public never heard the catchy nickname.

At a time when digital cameras are fueling a renaissance of three-dimensional picture taking on Earth, scientists are using the technology to estimate distances to Martian science targets and size them up from afar. The capability is crucial to making decisions on what objects the rover should visit, how long each would take to reach, and whether the path contains oversized obstacles to avoid.

With two eyes atop its camera mast, the rover's 3-D vision overcomes limits of depth perception that would plague a single-camera setup

No secret

"There’s no secret about making 3-D photographs," wrote Joe Farace in the December issue of Shutterbug magazine. "You make an image as seen by the left eye, then one by the right eye, and then -- here’s the hard part -- use some kind of system to put them together."

Hard or simple, a lot of people don't understand 3-D. Back in June of 2002, Sam Ramada didn't have an answer when his 8-year-old son asked how it worked.

"I'm supposed to have all the answers," Ramada said in a telephone interview last week. "I'm Dad, you know. But I really had no idea."

Two months of research later, he'd figured it out and started Mission 3D (www.mission3-d.com), which makes its own version of glasses as well as kits designed to help any owner of a digital camera do 3-D magic at home.

Ramada's timing could not have been better. Several industry analysts say amateur 3-D photography experienced a comeback last year, spurred both by the availability of inexpensive digital cameras and the summer blockbuster Spy Kids 3-D , said to be the first popular 3-D feature film in decades.

There are various methods for making and viewing 3-D images. In essence, it takes advantage of the separation between two cameras, or one camera that has been moved to take a second picture of a given scene. A triangle of determinable size can be gleaned using as points the two cameras and an object in the distance. When the cameras are our eyes, our brains use the geometry of these triangles to calculate depth, height, or both.

Ramada said human eyes can't judge depth accurately beyond about 30 to 50 feet (9-15 meters) without familiar cues -- objects of known size.

No cues on Mars

"If you are looking at a person in the distance, you can judge how far they are by their size in your field of view," explained Cornell University's Jonathan Joseph, leader of a team that developed the software that interprets 3-D images from the Mars rover's panoramic cameras.

The brain can pick up another clue when some head movement reveals the extent to which an object in the field of view moves -- things farther away move less.

Geologists don't have the innate sense of heights for anything at a Martian landing site they're seeing for the first time. There are no houses, cars or trees. "If we're looking at rocks on Mars, we can't judge," Joseph said.

That led to some misinterpretation when Opportunity first photographed the intriguing rock outcropping at its landing site. At first, scientists thought it was 3 to 6 feet (1-2 meters) tall.

Then with the help of 3-D data they were able to better determine the distance from the rover to the ledge, and the feature's true height became clear. "Instead of a meter or two, it's 10 or 20 centimeters," he said. That's just 4 to 8 inches.

How it works

The panoramic camera, or Pancam, is two devices in one. A pair of digital eyes sits atop a mast that's about the height of a human. Only the left camera is equipped with the filters required to make true-color, "normal" photographs in visible light. (The right camera has the filters needed for multi-color infrared imaging, but it can't make true-color pictures in visible light.)

Both cameras are employed for 3-D images, which are gathered in black-and-white. Joseph explained what's then done back here on Earth to produce the 3-D photos, also called stereoscopic images or anaglyphs.

The image from the left camera is put into the red channel of a software program like Photoshop, which can read the standard red-green-blue (RGB) color scheme known to digital photography experts and printing companies. An image of the same scene from the right camera is put into both the blue and green channels, which together make cyan (a light blue). The two images -- left and right -- are then blended together into one.

The result is a picture that looks largely gray and rather fuzzy, often with a few obvious red and cyan patches jutting this way and that.

A viewer must wear special 3-D glasses to see the glory of the image's depth.

A red filter on the left eye lets only the red light in, absorbing all the other colors of the spectrum. A cyan filter on the right eye lets the cyan in. Two views of one scene are sent to the brain, which processes the result as though it has been viewing the scene with two eyes.

"The brain mixes all the colors," said Ramada of Mission 3D. "It's one of the wonders of the brain."

There's a big difference, though.

A giant's perspective

Instead of the human-eye separation of about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) center-to-center, the Pancam's digital wonders are 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) apart.

Joseph explained that the separation allows researchers to examine the images and, importantly, do simple geometry with the image data, to calculate the distance to objects and their heights, such as the rock ledge studied by Opportunity.

"Just making a stereo anaglyph and looking at it with 3-D glasses, you can still be fooled about the actual size and distance," he said.

In fact because the cameras are farther apart than the human eye, the brain can be quite deceived.

"It either makes you feel like you are a giant person on Mars," Ramada said, "or it makes Mars seem like a small model."