Monday,
January 03, 2005
Happy Anniversary Spirit!
It is hard to believe that it was a year ago tonight that I was
out at
JPL waiting with baited breath to learn if Spirit would survive the
entry,
descent, and landing on Mars. That was
quite a night. I recall it as being a
pretty windy night. There were press
people
all over JPL. We needed special badges
to get into Bldg. 264. There was also
some kind of reception for the high muckity mucks in one of the other
buildings, but I wasn’t invited for that.
Ah well. I had a good time
hanging out with the rest of the science team in the SOWG room in Bldg.
264. I hadn’t even been able to get into
my apartment at the Accapella Apartments beforehand.
After we had gotten our first images and
people were starting to head home, I got Mike Wolff to let me in.
So, we’ve had
a whole Earth year on Mars with Spirit. It
is still uncovering some amazing stuff in
the Columbia Hills. It is all that I can
do to keep up with what is going on with
================================================================================
Friday, December 17, 2004
For those of you, that might have found
out about this site through my "Ad Astra" article, welcome.
Let me say however that I didn't
know that Ad Astra was going to put the URL for this
page at the end of that article! All the things said in that
article and on these web pages come from me not from NASA or JPL or
SSI. So I'll just say
that I hope to update this log with some of the notes I've made
in the past several months, but that might have to wait a
bit, so check back if you like.
=================================================================================
Friday
January 2, 2004
Well here I am one day before the landing of MER-A, aka, Spirit.
Wow. It is hard to believe that it is about to happen. I
haven't
been involved with the project as long as a lot of the people. I
only
came on-board in the middle of 2002 after my selection as a
Participating
Scientist. Still, with all the meetings and training exercises
and
associated travel, it seems like I have been involved with the project
for a
long time, and to have the actual first landing just a day away really
seems
incredible.
Saturday,
January 03, 2004
I’m sitting here in the 6th floor SOWG meeting room of
building 264
at JPL. I am starting this with about 9 minutes to go to
atmospheric entry,
the “6 minutes of terror” that some of the team have been referring to
in media
interviews. We have most of the MER science team assembled here
tonight
in this room. It is really something. We’ve had NASA TV
showing on
the big panel screens in this room and, of course, we have been having
our own
discussions. Right now we are listening to the “VOCA” box on the
sound
system providing kind of a running commentary on mission critical
events as
they happen.
A side note: apparently there is a tradition of passing around
peanuts at
a critical point in the mission. Up here, Peter Smith of the
A few minutes later now… over the VOCA box we get notices of each of
the
critical events as Spirit makes its perilous descent through the
Martian
atmosphere. It really went fast!!!
Waiting…
Waiting…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Late
Saturday night
It is after
When those images started coming in everyone went bonkers so I didn’t
have time
to get back to this log until now. We got the first images
between
It looks like we landed in a tremendous spot. Before the landing
we would
often look at the image of the landing ellipse and say, “wouldn’t it be
great
if we could land in one of the dark streak areas?” (one of the spots
where dust
devils had scoured dust from the surface). Well, it looks like we
actually landed in one of those regions!!!
Sunday,
January 04, 2004
Here we are on Sol 2 with Spirit sitting in the middle of Gusev
Crater.
We got a little more data overnight, both from the Navcam and from
Pancam. We got L2, L5 and L6 thumbnails for one frame. It
was
calibrated at Cornell so I was able to produce some three point
spectra.
It looks to me like the “playa-like” area has a convex (green band
relatively
high) three point spectrum while the spectra of a boulder and red soil
(mixed
red soil/small rocks) are concave (green band relatively low).
Mike Carr (USGS Menlo Park) called an impromptu science discussion in
advance
of the formal science assessment meeting. We gathered around a
table on
which a large format image mosaic of Gusev Crater and the landing
ellipse was
laid out. There was some discussion about where we had exactly
landed. I guess there is a little more uncertainty than what it
seemed
like last night after the initial looks at the descent camera
images.
There seemed to be two main viewpoints but a little later, we had
another
discussion, gathered about that same table and it seems that there is a
lot of
convergence and the remaining disagreement is pretty minor. At
the later
discussion, Matt Golombek (JPL) pointed out that there was a “wish”
landing
location within the ellipse and we landed pretty darn close to
it!
According to Matt, many scientists had wanted the landing to be among
some
hills to the south of the landing ellipse, but it was deemed too
rough by
the engineers. Still within the landing ellipse there is some of
that
higher (and presumably stratigraphically distinct) material and it is
(potentially) within driving distance of where we landed! We
might be
“heading for the hills” in this mission!
It is a little later and we got some more three color Pancam
thumbnails.
There is one scene in the P2302 octant that has a bigger rock and a
patch of
“brown” soil in it and those two material and the more ubiquitous red
soil all
have distinct spectra. The rock really stands out as dark in a
L2/L6 (753
nm / 483 nm) band ratio image. We have some definite spectral
heterogeneity in this region!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday
January
Some
interesting results from the Science assessment meeting
--
we landed in the one area that has a discernable spectral signature
(that of
surface type 1)
--
the "hollows" have morphologies that are consistent with their being
secondary craters
--
the hills to the SE are approximately 2 km away
Monday,
January 5/Tuesday, January 6, 2004
We got some more of the 3
color Pancam "postcard" last night,
but today the engineers canceled the Mars Odyssey (MO) uplink so we're
not
getting any new data on this sol. In the science theme groups we
spent
our time working with the Pancam data that came in between yesterday
and
today. The Pancam team put together a beautiful mosaic of the 3
color,
downsampled (512 x 512) data that came in for one octant. I
did SMA
(spectral mixture analysis) on that and extracted some 3 point spectra
for some
of the interesting units. I got to present that work at the
science
assessment meeting. I can’t wait until we get some more spectral
bands! Then we should start to get a really good idea of what
kind of
spectrally distinct rocks and soils there are there.
Within 5 m of the lander
there are no rocks bigger than 20 cm.
Tuesday, January 6, 2004
JPL media relations called me up and asked me if I could do an
interview with
Japanese television. So I am going to do that at
Things are kind of slow. We got some more thumbnail images and a
couple
of full frame images that allowed us to complete the “postcard” mosaic
that we
were working with yesterday and which was released to the general
public today.
Starting at
Ray Arvidson
says
"things are getting back to normal" with the engineers getting a
handle on the temperature anomalies of yesterday.
We got a boatload of Pancam data. The rover is collecting the
mission
success panorama now and we got an amazing anaglyph looking towards the
hills. Things aren't as flat as we thought they were between us
and the
hills! There are a number of swales and a lot of rocks
in the way.
Mat Golombek presented the Geology STG's work on areal rock percentage
and they
found it is between 3 and 8% which is less than at the MPF site.
In the Min/Geochem group, Phi Christensen presented the initial results
from
the Mini-TES instrument. Might be a bound water feature in the soil.
Temperatures range from about 260 to 270 K.
Doug Ming represented the soils group and talked about the weird brown
soil
exposed by the airbag retraction. It is interesting that
the
media has picked up on the brown soil. It is something
unusual
though, not necessarily too dissimilar from similar brown
soil/duricrust
seen at the Pathfinder and Viking landing sites.
Matt Golombek talked about localization and the ideas on where we are
are
converging. While the hills off to the east look substantial, in
reality
they are only about 2 km away and about 50 m high. Looking from
the rover
we kind of have the perspective of a Lilliputian! Everything
looks bigger
than it really is. There are rocks all around the lander,
but most
of them are really only the size of cobbles.
A discussion of the nature & history of the materials seen
ensued.
Some of it took off from a memo that Larry Crumpler e-mailed earlier
today.
Wednesday
January 7/Thursday January 8 / Sol 5
We had a meeting at
Science Assessment meeting
Steve Squyres had some
announcements. Jennifer Trosper from the
SRET gave the engineering viewpoint. There are some issues
regarding the
retraction of the airbags, but nothing that should seriously impact
egress.
Larry Soderblom is SOWG chair and he announced that all 8 octants of
the
mission success pan have been acquired and are on the spacecraft! That
announcement got a round of applause.
Jim Bell put up a thumbnail mosaic of the complete panorama. At
least I
think it was the complete panorama, someone later told me it was just
270
degrees.
Today I am the min/geochem STG lead and we had some things to
say. Alian
Wang of Washington U showed some Powerpoint slides on her work looking
at the
scattered occurences of white/coated rocks. I showed SMA results
for the
p2218 octant.
Matt Golombek gave a presentation on the level of agreement between
pre-landing
remote sensing observations and post-landing observations. The
bottom
line is that the level of agreement is quite high!
Tomorrow I am Pancam Payload Downlink Lead! That will be pretty
stressful. I probably won't have too much time to write tomorrow.
Thursday January 8, 2004
/
11:03 PST/13:46
LST
We just got
confirmation
that the rover did a successful stand-up! We heard a lot of
cheering over
the VOCA box from the engineering control room.
Each morning when the engineers “wake up” the rover they are playing a
different song. Today they played Bob Marley’s “Get up. Stand
up.”.
Ughh! I hate reggae. It was bad enough that they played it
over the
VOCA box once at wake-up (and in the Pancam room, we have that thing
turned up
all the time), but then I had to suffer through it a second time when
they
decided to play it again after the stand-up
Before the
science
assessment meeting we had a surprise birthday party for MER science
payload PI
Steve Squyres (he's 48). We had 3 cakes to carve up between the
science
and engineering teams.
In the science
assessment meeting proper, it was announced that "stand-up part 1"
went perfectly. Three more stand-up parts to go!
Mini-TES PEL
Phil
Christensen gave a report on the Mini-TES data collected to date.
Of
course, this was actually a pretty big deal since it was also the very
first
Mini-TES data collection. Christensen had good agreement between most
of the
mini-TES spectra and the orbital TES surface dust spectrum. Phil
showed
an overlay of mini-TES temperature data on Pancam data. That was
pretty
interesting. As you might expect, for mid-day data, the rocks
were cool
and the bright dust/dirt in the center of “Sleepy Hollow” was
warm.
Interestingly, the dark-coated dunes had temperatures consistent with
their
being relatively coarse grained.
Science theme
group
reports:Atmosphere group was able to measure atmospheric opacity and it
is
higher than expected, up close to 1.0 (~0.95). From physical
properties,
Ron Li of OSU mosaicked the DIMES with MOC NA images. Earlier, in
the
Pancam room, I had downloaded those images. Matt Golombek's
localization
estimate has us further to the west, now 2.5 km from the eastern hills.
Friday after sleeping.
My Pancam PDL duties
went
pretty well I guess. It is just such a long shift.
I didn't
get back to the apartment until nearly 6:00 am Pacific time (after
getting to
JPL at about 4:30 pm Pacific time). It is going to be brutal
during dual
rover operations when I have to go two or three days in a row either as
PDL or as
a PDA.
Friday
Jan 9/Thursday Jan 10: Sol 007
Hypothesis
testing discussion
Larry
Soderblom
talked about localization and related issues. It turns out the
highest
peak of the southeastern hills is actually now estimated to be 90 m
above the
surrounding plains. He showed some MOC stereo of the southeastern
hills
... Pretty cool!!
Steve S started things off by sharing that he's been getting flooded
with
e-mails from Coast to coast AM listeners. Apparently, Richard
Hoagland
was on last night and was saying that he is seeing all sorts of
fragments of
artifacts in the Pancam mosaics! Steve threatened (jokingly I
hope) to
have all those notes forwarded to all of us!
Jennifer Trosper of the engineering team updated us on the health of
the rover
and current plans for egress.
Sol 8 / Sunday January 11
I've been working on that "magic carpet" pan in the min/geochem STG
tonight. I was able to generate some really beautiful Spectral
Angle
Mapper images. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to show them to the
group
because we spent most of the science assessment meeting talking about
the
remote sensing observations we'd be making over the next sol.
When we started building sequences, I went to work with the Geology
STG.
After we were done with that, I went back to work with that
"magic
carpet" scene. I looked at my PDA and the calendar thing is
showing "tomorrow: Frontier flight". My first
"tour of duty" is just about over. Of course, I am looking
forward to getting home and seeing my dog Rosie, but we have so much
neat data
coming in that it will be kind of a drag to miss out on that. Oh
well. I have other responsibilities and it looks like this
mission should
be going for the full 90 sols (at least), so there will lots
more
opportunities to work with neat data sets.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
I am currently between "tours of duty" for
MER. I flew back to
Still it has been kind of odd being away from JPL at
this
time. I feel like I'm missing out and to a large extent I guess I
am. Still, it is going to be a full mission I think so I have to
carry on
with other aspects of my life and other work projects. However,
it is
even more of a bummer that I am away at this particular moment since
Spirit got
six wheels on the ground on this past sol! I was just looking at
the
picture:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040115a/2R127428271EFF0300P1004L0M1_str1_br.jpg
and it is awesome! Well, I'll be back by the time we are getting
to the
nearby crater which is to be our first objective.
I also wanted to comment on yesterday's announcement
by
President Bush about going back to the Moon. All I can say is
that it is
about time!!! About thirty years past time in my opinion.
Moreover,
his current plan is too slow by a factor of two or three! I think I
understand
why he is slow rolling it. If he goes full steam ahead that will
spike
next year's NASA budget and the Dems and the hard wing fiscal
conservatives
won't go for it. Still I hope that after the presidential
election as W
starts his second term, and as tax revenues increase thanks to
the booming economy (spurred by tax cuts!) that he might be able to
pick up the
pace. By the way, for those who are interested, the Weekly
Standard has
re-printed a great Charles Krauthammer opinion piece that he wrote
after we
lost the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter. It is at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
Friday
January 24, 2004 / Sol 20
I am back "on duty" in
On Friday, I got up early and took Rosie walking and
then
came in to the lab pretty early, about 5:30 Pacific time. I got
in and
some of the long term planning guys were there in the STG room, but
otherwise
things were pretty quiet. I got to work downloading some of the
recently
(pre-anomaly) collected Pancam scenes and spend most of my time that
day
working on those scenes.
We got periodic updates from Steve Squyres on what
was going
on with the engineers attempts to talk with Spirit. The first
attempt of
the day was to command beeps from it and this was unsuccessful.
In
another comm window, we surprisingly heard from the rover. It
turned out
that Spirit was in a repetitive reboot cycle. It had rebooted
approximately 68 times (!) since the (still to be determined) anomaly
that
started the problems. Steve also told us that Spirit had
apparently been
"awake" during most of the past two nights causing its battery to
drain to a perilously low state. To try to get the battery to
re-charge,
the engineers sent a "shut down 'damn it'" command to the
rover. They had just sent or were going to send this at the time
of
Steve's last briefing to us in the STG room (man, Steve looked really
tired).
Later in the sol, we turned on NASA TV and watched
the press
briefing that was going on over in Von Karman. The 9:00 am
briefing was
on
After the press conference, had a Science
Downlink
Assessment meeting. Of course, we didn't have downlinked data to
assess,
but we did get a briefing from Rob Manning of the engineering
team. He
told us that the "shut down 'damn it'" command didn't
work. Spirit apparently faulted out during mini-TES and UHF high
gain antenna
operations. So they were looking at what might have occurred in
relation to
those operations. After Rob's briefing, we had some brief reports
from
science theme groups. Tomorrow we will probably try to have a
somewhat
longer science discussion of hypotheses regarding what we have seen so
far at
Gusev Crater.
People are, I think, cautiously optimistic about
Spirit's
chances for coming "back to life", but as Steve cautioned us earlier
in the day "we still have a real long haul ahead of us".
January
24, 2004 / Sol 21
I'm serving as Pancam PDL today. Obviously,
given the
troubles we've been having with Spirit, that is a pretty easy job
today!
I just came from an assembly in the Science Theme Group room where
Steve
Squyres gave us a run-down of the current thinking of what has been
going on
with the engineers attempts to talk with Spirit and trouble shoot what
went
wrong. The bottom line is that things are looking better today
than they
looked yesterday. As I mentioned in yesterday's log, Spirit had
been
going through a repetitive re-boot cycle (re-booted something like 68
times
since the causative anomaly) and had been up through most of the past
two
nights causing the battery to drain to a perilously low state.
They had
given the rover a "shut down 'damn it'" command and it had not shut
down. Apparently overnight the engineers had come to the
conclusion that
the problems could have been caused by corruption in the "flash"
memory- either a corrupt file or physical corruption of the flash
memory.
The rover accesses flash when it is rebooting and if it is a corrupt
file that
could cause the reboot to fail and try to reboot again as it has been
doing. They were able to get it to reboot, by sending an "init
cripple" command that forces it to bypass flash (but not completely?)
and
after doing that, the rover was acting, more or less, normally; albeit
with a
very low battery. Not too long ago they re-sent the "shut down
'damn
it'" command and this time it did shut down. So for the rest of
the
afternoon the battery will re-charge from the solar panels and it
should wake
up tomorrow morning with a better power state. As a side note, I
got here
to the Pancam room just after they sent the "shut down 'damn it'"
command and in the reverse of the wake-up song tradition they played a
"rocking lullaby" which was the song "Satellite" by the
Hooters. I have that cassette, but haven't listened to it in ages!
So, I think people are feeling more optimistic than
they
were yesterday. I believe the next step is to try to test the
flash
memory and see if they can find the fault and then proceed from
there.
Hopefully, we'll be getting back to roving and exploring before too
terribly
long.
.
.
.
16:00 LST: We're having our Science Downlink
Assessment
meeting. Mark Adler is giving us the engineers' perspective on
what is
going on. They'll be waking the rover up the next couple of days
using the
"init cripple" command and progressively mine the material from flash
to figure out where the error is. He says that Spirit is still on
the
"Intensive Care" floor, but is now in the observation room rather
than in the operating room :-). With
The meeting went on hiatus so we could turn on the
Noon
press conference. After that, Matt Golombek showed us the latest
version
of the landing ellipse. The TCMs (trajectory correction
manuevers) have
shifted the center of the ellipse over to the east.
Unfortunately, this
is away from more interesting craters and albedo features and towards a
flatter, more featureless plain. We'll see though. Matt
said that
the one thing we could be sure of is that we probably wouldn't land at
the
center of the ellipse!
January 24, 2004 /
I'm up in the SOWG room of building 264 for the landing of
I've heard that Gov. Schwarzneggar is supposed to be here
tonight. It
would be cool to meet him, but he's probably going to be in the actual
mission
control room.
A bit later now (along with most of the other science team members) I
left the
6th floor SOWG room to go down to the 4th floor STG room. All the
grad
students, collaborators & staff were down there & now most of
the
formal science team is too. Things are much more lively down
here.
As the atmospheric entry approaches, things are getting more subdued /
anxious...
January 25, 2004 / Spirit
sol 22
I'm sitting here in the MER-A STG room, but I think a lot of people are
thinking of
The most awesome thing is that it looks like there is bedrock exposed
in the
walls of the crater! Even more awesome, it looks like it is
sedimentary
rock... Really!! There do seem to be actual layers exposed.
The undisturbed soil is really interesting too. It is very dark
(which
makes sense since Meridiani is a dark region). It will be
interesting to
get 11 color Pancam images & mTES spectra of it.
---
Jennifer Trosper of the engineering team gave us a briefing on the
status of
Spirit. They were able to duplicate the error on the
testbed
rover(!). The actual problem sounds pretty complicated and
apparently has
something to do with how the rover handles files. Something like
it had
so many files in flash that it was trying to allocate space it didn't
have
& that caused it to error out. She says we could be getting
the
science files currently in flash on sol 26 or 27. None of the sol 18
sequences
ran. We'll have a resumption of the standard schedule on Wednesday (sol
25).
John Grant reported on the discussion from last night's MER-B
science
discussion. DIMES images indicate crater that we're in has lower albedo
than
surrounding plains. So we might be seeing anomalous material
inside the crater
that is distinct from that on the surrounding plains.
January
27, 2004 / Spirit Sol 24
Mark Adler came in to give a briefing to us in our
combined
science context and downlink assessment meeting on the state of affairs
with
Spirit. He says that on Sol 27 we might do a PMA health check and
might
take some pictures. Sol 28 would be the first day we could get
back to
normal science operations. He says that it might take two weeks
to
download what's currently in Flash vs. just reformatting it. I'm
not sure
about why that is so, I think it might depend on how some of the
current
recovery options go. In the portion of the meeting where some of
us have
been giving science presentations with relevance to the mission, I gave
a
presentation on basaltic tuffs associated with tuff rings and tuff
cones and base
surge deposits. For the Spirit team, the point was to show what
these
types of indurated basaltic tephras look like and their state of
induration (or
lack thereof). Of course, I did my PhD dissertation on the
visible and
near infrared reflectance of tuff rings and tuff cones so it is topic I
know a
thing or two about! It was pretty well received and Joy Crisp,
the JPL
Science lead said I should give it to the crew on Opportunity since
during this
ITE (Impact through Egress) phase of
(early
AM) January 28, 2004 / Opportunity Sol 4
I gave a talk at the Spirit science assessment
meeting and
was encouraged to give it to the Opportunity folks (since that's where
most of
the people are right now). So I took an early evening nap and
then came
back here to JPL. So now I'm up on the 5th floor of building 264
in the
January 28/29, 2004;
Spirit sol 25
I am serving
as Pancam PDL again today. There has been a tad bit more activity
today. Mark Powell was SDC (Science Downlink Coordinator) for
today and
came by to tell us that we should have a new Pancam observation for
tomorrow
(Sol 26)! A new Hazcam image came down today. Also, I got a
call
from the JPL press office and people from another Japanese TV network
wanted to
interview a MER scientist. Initially, it sounded like they were
only
interested in talking about how the rocks “Suishi” and “Sashimi” got
named. I hadn’t been involved in that process so I went around
hunting
for folks who might have been, but didn’t find anyone. So I
called back
the JPL press rep, Lisa, and said that I couldn’t talk about
that. She called
back and said, well how about talking about the naming process in
general. Well, that I could do, so I went over there. This
crew was
from
In the science
assessment meeting, Mark Adler briefed us on some more Spirit
stuff. They
got the High Gain Antenna working so now we'll have high data volume
transmissions again. It sounds like the only thing they haven't
been able
to do is to successfully run a "task trace". Not sure what that
is, I think it is Sol 27 we'll be moving back to the "standard"
tactical timeline. For our Sol 26 observations, the current plan
is to
use some previously planned 12 filter observations of the "white
rocks" Cake (aka, Catskill) and Blanco.
Spirit sol 27
Spirit has been slowly but surely coming back to life over the last
several
days. Apparently today was the first day since the "incident"
that they were able to wake up the rover without first issuing the
"init cripple"
command. So that's good news! Yestersol they were able to
collect a
couple of Pancam sequences. I was working on those today.
The plan
was that
we'd be able to resume normal science operations tomorrow, but the
engineers
encountered some more problems so it looks like that isn't going to
happen. It
has something to do with their efforts to retrieve data from, and then
reformat
the rover's flash memory.
In
the
science assessment meeting, we got several briefings including
preliminary APXS
results from
Steve Ruff
presented some miniTES (pre-problems) data of
Early AM hours of
I took a day off from MER-A activities and got stuff done (including
swimming
laps at the Rose Bowl Aquatic center pool :-) I took an early
evening nap
and came in here for
At about 2 in the AM, a bunch of us headed over to ISIL (the "In Situ
Instrument Laboratory") where the engineers had set up the testbed
rover
in an orientation that mimics, more or less, the way
The
mini-TES
guys got data & found the coarse grained hematite spectrum. It
looks like
it is combined with a basalt, spectrum.
It
looks
like
Saturday January 31,
2004;
Spirit sol 28
The engineers are still wrestling with the flash memory problems with
Spirit. The reformat of flash has been delayed another day. So we
have
limited science opportunities today.
I'm
acting as
Min/Geochem science theme lead (STL) today. We only have two
(potential)
observation sequences for tomorrow. Alian Wang had those mostly
built
already so it wasn't a big deal to get them set up for the SOWG meeting.
January 31, 2004
I came in
to work
with some of the full filter set Pancam looking down at the ground near
the
rover (now egressed onto the floor of the crater). I came in on
the
morning of February 1 for MER-A stuff and met up with Emily Haynes from
Centaurus HS & students Mark & Miranda. We ran into Steve
Squyres. He was spun up by the Pancam images of the ground that
had just
come down. The "pebble-y" texture that had previously been recognized,
was revealed as consisting of round nodules. Very strange stuff!
So I was Pancam PDA on Spirit, but while we got some data, it wasn't a
lot. I had time to do a bit more with the full filter set views
of the
crater wall outcrop. I didn't have to be around for the SOWG
meeting, so
I went back to the apartment, took Rosie on a quick walk and got a few
hours of
sleep.
I drove in after
There were full filter set Pancam scenes looking down at the
soil. It is
pretty weird stuff.
I got roped into being Min/Geochem STL for the that
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday February 2, 2004
I
went in
yesterday and today for the latter half of the
Spirit Sol 32
I am
Pancam
PDL today, but we don't have any data since today is the day they are
reformatting flash memory on the Spirit rover. Just heard a
little while
ago that everything went well so hopefully Spirit is back in business!
Spirit Sol 37;
I'm doing Pancam PDA duty today. I had to get in at LST 0900
which was
Today Spirit is doing its first really long drive,
perhaps as long
as 30 m. We're really in kind of a new world now in terms of what
we're
doing & planning. We're doing a dedicated drive to Bonneville
crater
(~ 330 m away from the lander) so the emphasis has shifted from in
situ
science to driving with periodic remote sensing measurements.
A bit later now, it turns out the rover drove about 20 m. It
looks like
it stopped right next to some small dunes. We might do a "touch
& go" on the dunes (where the in situ instruments are put
down,
but with short integration times). The last 7 or 8 m of the drive
was
done autonmously (with the rover using on-board hazard
avoidance). One of
the rover planner guys commented that this was the longest autonomous
drive
ever done on another planet!
Apparently Hap McSween gave a presentation to the MER-B group on
the petrology
of
Opportunity Sol 17;
February 10, 2004
I came in
for the
They did a touch & go with the MB and apparently they got a
spectrum
looking like jarosite. Neat stuff!
It
turns out
we have a busted sol due to a blown comm session first thing in the sol
&
none of the science sequences ran. We're having an extended science
context
meeting. Hap McSween gave the presentation which he originally
gave to
the MER-B group on the petrology of
Spirit sol 39
We had a successful drive today to the cluster of rocks tagged "Stone
Council". I'm the min/geochem STL today. I've been
designing
some Pancam observations in SAP, which is a new thing for me.
I'll need
some help from the Pancam PUL I am sure!
I'm up in the SOWG meeting room. This should be
interesting...
Engineers are working on a plan for dedicated driving sols that could
yield on
the order of 50 m of driving per sol. Hey, that's a long way for
these
rovers on this terrain!
I did some work with the p2261 series of images. The area they're
call
"El Capitain" has some of the best examples of my "bright
red" vs. "dark red" spectral classes. The dark
pebble/cobble fraction image resulting from SMA is pretty interesting
and
really highlights the "ribbed" morphologic class that John Grotzinger
had noted (it really stands out in the fraction image). I showed
some of
this stuff at the end of sol science.
Mike Malin is showing high resolution MOC images. We can see
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 12, 2004; Spirit
sol 40
I'm Pancam PDL tonight. I'm sitting here in the science context
meeting.
We have kind of a low turnout tonight. We just got some Pancam
images
back, including some great full frames of the rock "Mimi". It
looks really weird! Looks like it has some type of planar fabric-
layering or foliation or something.
Later now at the science downlink assessment meeting, a discussion is
going on
about what we're going to do tomorrow- whether we're going to long
spectroscopy
on the dunes (now within our work volume) or do the overnight
spectroscopy on
Mimi. It looks like we are probably going to do the latter.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m done with my tour of duty on Spirit. I’ll probably go back
there for
the occasional sol and Jim Bell might still re-schedule me there for
Pancam
duty but for the next several weeks (excepting my trip back to
I
was doing
work on Spirit and Gusev Crater last night. The “mega drive”
turned into
a regular drive albeit still pretty long by rover standards. I
didn’t
have to stay around for the SOWG meeting and left in time to get some
sleep
before it got light out.
This is my first sol back after my break. I woke up this morning
in
Today was the day of the big NASA HQ press conference announcing the
discovery
of jarosite in the crater wall outcrop and the likliness that it formed
through
the action of water. I was contacted for comments by reporters
from the
Boulder Daily Camera and the Denver Post.
It sounds like the Moessbauer and APXS results from El Capitan back up
my
observation from the Pancam that indicated color differences between
the buff
colored rocks (represented by the McKittrick target) and the dark red
rocks
(represented by the Guadalupe target). Guadalupe has more Fe and
hematite
than McKittrick has. Woohoo!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm serving as Pancam PDL today. We had very little Pancam data
acquired
today so it is a slow sol for me. Today is a big day for the MI.
They're
acquiring, I think 128 MI images today on the rock "Last Chance" (a
rock that ostensibly displays cross bedding).
Discussion at the Science downlink assessment meeting started to focus
on the
last things we need to do before leaving the crater.
As is often the case, all the Pancam downlink activity took place in a
short
period of time right during and immediately after the afternoon Odyssey
pass. Whew!
Thursday March 4, 2004;
MER All Hands Meeting
Review from Ray Arvidson on Spirit: they're trying to get to rim of
Bonneville
by LPSC. IDD and mTES results of both the Spirit trench &
from the
rock Humphrey sound interesting. The RAT hole on Humphrey shows
(probable)
veins and amygdules and possibly holes where olivine phenocrysts have
weathered
out.
Andy
Knoll
talked about
Richard Cook
talked about what the rovers can do in the long term. They're
pondering a
flight software patch (dealing with mobility, flash management, etc.).
It will
be ready to load before the end of March. They're working on a "deep
sleep" mode that will help with power management over the long term.
They're talking about being able to do useful things through sol 250
(!) (one
or two hour drives per sol). They think the rovers are OK, in terms of
thermal
cycling, through sol 270. They think that Spirit can go 25 m per
hour for
two hours. With the flatter terrain at Meridiani, 50 m per hour for a
couple of
hours looks achievable.
John
Callas
said they're going to make a "meet me" line available for folks when
they're away from JPL so we can listen in to SOWG meetings.
----
At the science context meeting, the long term planning outlook suggests
that we
have about 10 more sols within the crater.
I'm
min/geochem
STG lead today. We drove to the lower portion of the outcrop,
"the
Dells" today. The "Berry Bowl" is nearby. We're also
planning ahead to our next site, "Shoemaker's Patio".
The
SOWG
meeting went pretty well. We had to make some tough
decisions on
what sequences to push for.
March 7, sol 42
We're now at the science downlink assessment meeting. We've had a
partially blown sol. We were supposed to RAT on the rock we're at now
(Slickrock), but RAT'ing sequence didn't go to completion.
We did the bump this sol and we're now parked in front of the "Berry
Bowl". It looks like someone has a reachability map up and both
"berries" and "bowl" appear reachable by the IDD
instruments. Early APXS from "Mojo2" indicate it is similar to
the "Robert E." target.
At end of sol discussion, Phil C talked about mTES mapping of crater
& exit
strategy. Sharpest gradient between high hematite and low hematite is
at Dark
Rock Hills. Phil places a high priority on doing in situ
spectroscopy on
the large dark rocks just outside the crater rim. Mike Malin keeps
harping on
wanting to look at aeolian and soil features before leaving the crater
(even
though we're likely to see them outside the crater... I don't get
it).
All hands meeting after
end-of-sol
Hap McSween talked about Spirit's progress. They've passed 300 m of
driving now
and just, as of this sol (sol 65), reached the outside rim of
Bonneville
crater. The Navcam images look awesome! He showed mTES spectra of
Humphrey. It is still a mystery what is causing the
big
absorption at just short of 900 cm-1. The MB spectrum for Humphrey is a
dead
ringer for that of
Scott McLennan talked about
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opportunity sol 49, March
14, 2004
I'm Pancam
PDL today it
has been a week or so since I did that job. It is a pretty
straight
forward job now. I think we're spending another day at the
Shoemaker
Flats part of the outcrop today. We didn't get many of our
proposed
Pancam sequences in to the plan for this sol. We'll just have to
re-propose them for today.
It was a
quiet day as
Pancam PDL. We just had the overnight data downlinks and an
afternoon
Odyssey pass (with not much data in the PM Odyssey pass). I'm up
in the
SOWG meeting now. It was kind of a frustrating meeting. We were
oversubscribed
in terms of both data volume and duration. The soils STG came in
with
several soils MI and Pancam observations that I thought were extraneous
given
that we're about to embark on a crater floor soils traverse (and this
is our
last chance to look at outcrop rocks). So I was kind of an attack
dog on
the soils group, asking why some of their observations needed to be
collected
here. I was actually successful since they dropped some of their
requests and
all our 13 color requests got in the plan.
Sol 51, March 16
I took
most of the
day off, but came in for the end of sol discussion. John Grotzinger is
talking
about sedimentary environments on Earth and their possible relevance to
what
we're seeing at Meridiani Planum. Good stuff. I hope he
posts this
on quill. His talk was the preamble to a set of talks by Matt
Golombek,--
on, basically a set of "Mars 101" lectures. From Matt's lecture:
Tharsis existed before the valley networks formed. The major provinces
we see
now were in place by the mid-Noachian. The bed we've been investigating
is
potentially the same marker bed that has been mapped from orbit for
hundreds of
kilometers.
From Mike Carr's talk: Water ice that is in diffusive contact
with the
atmosphere is unstable at latitudes south of 40 degrees. Valley
networks are
late Noachian in age. Youngest valley networks exist on flanks of large
volcanoes. Mike says more recent images indicate valley networks
couldn't be
formed by groundwater sapping (as had been previously believed). In
Mars
Pathfinder soils, there's no geochemical evidence of leaching. If
Opportunity
Ledge rocks are evaporites, where did all the leaching take
place. Mars
obliquity excursions of up to 45 degrees would allow for standing ice
at
equator (eg. at Meridiani). These obliquity excursions last for on the
order of
40,000 years.
Tim Parker gave his ideas on northern ocean(s). Contact 1 =
Deuteronilus
level; contact 2 =
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opportunity
At
the
science downlink assessment meeting... Jim Bell is back and gave a
report on
the reaction from LPSC. It sounds like those guys got quite the
enthusiastic
reaction from the folks there in
At the SOWG meeting, it looks like we didn't get the Navcam imagery
required
for the rover planners to drive us to our next soil target (a spot
right near
the lander). Essentially we have a blown sol. We're going to have
to
spend at least one more sol one way or another. Later in the
meeting, the
rover planners backed off and said they probably could get us to the
site 2
location. We'll see!
At the end-of-sol discussion, Ray Arvidson again went through his
presentation
of Meridiani geology (from orbital remote sensing). The material is
largely
contained in their recent JGR paper. Ray's likely history:1. Form
&
tilt Noachian lithosphere in response to loading from Tharsis.
We
got to
the last of our soil traverse locations today. The plan is to finally
exit the crater (now, I believe, officially called Eagle Crater). It
looks like
we will be exiting the crater to the east; not directly out from where
we are
but a little to the left (north) of a direct radial exit. After exiting
the
crater, the rover drivers are going to try to have us end up sitting on
the
bright material that shows up in the MOC imagery as a halo around the
crater.
I'm
back at
JPL after being away since March 21. Apparently
I flew out here this time (I have a tag team of Rosie
caretakers). The
flight got in to LAX on time and I got out of LAX in record time. Bags
were
coming out on the carousel by the time I got there, and the National
rental car
van was pulling up just as I got to the curb. Even the drive from
LA to
JPL went fast.
Spirit switched to Earth time yesterday. I went into the Spirit
science
operations room and the shades were open with sunlight streaming in...
I
thought I was in the wrong room!
Bounce rock is unlike anything we examined in Eagle Crater.
Apparently
mTES shows it to have a deeper hematite absorption than anything
they've seen
so far. It is also pretty unique in Pancam too. It has a
deep 1 um
absorption (it really stands out in MNF band 2).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 31 : All hands meeting
Hap
McSween
is giving a recap of Spirit science results in the last week. The
rock,
Mazatzal, that they've been looking at is a light toned rock. They've
done RAT
brushing and RAT grinding on the rock. There's an easily
brush-able layer
and then a dark varnish that is more resistant. Pre-brush MB has a
strong Fe3+
shoulder that goes away after grinding. The pre-grinding surface
is very
rich in S and Cl (Cl went up after brushing (!)). The brushed Mazatzal
surface is
not showing an olivine absorption in the mTES spectrum. A vein in the
rock cuts
both the rock and the varnish.
Moessbauer of pre-RAT Bounce rock shows really clean pyroxene
doublet, no
sign of hematite.
John Callas talked logistics of mission ops.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
spent most
of today at the AVIRIS workshop (held at the Pasadena Sheraton, which
way back
when was the Holiday Inn at the time of my first AVIRIS workshop back
in 1988).
I gave a talk (a review talk of AVIRIS' use for Mars analog studies
with a few
Opportunity & Spirit Pancam images thrown in for good measure) at
the very
end of the day and I think it was well received. I went out for
dinner
with some of the folks from USGS Denver. We went to an Italian
restaurant
on Raymond which was pretty good.
I wasn't going to come in for the
On another front, the Flight Software (FSW) upload for
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm
back at
JPL after being home for just a few days. I've been looking at
some of
the sol 95 13 filter Pancam scenes and while the actual spectra look
pretty
bland, the decorrelation stretch images look pretty spectacular.
I'm not
sure what it all means yet, but it gives me something to work on :-).
We're having an all-hands meeting this afternoon. Matt Golombek
is giving
the science summary for the last couple of weeks on Spirit.
They've been
by a couple of shallow craters,
Brad Joliff is giving the science summary for
At the end of the meeting, John Callas mentioned that we're working
towards
distributed operations by September 1. We'll have video conferencing in
the
SOWG room and the 4th floor science operations room. We'll ultimately
be losing
the 5th floor all together with the instrument rooms being the first
too go.
Our
schedule
has "snapped back" from mid-afternoon science meetings to meetings
first thing in the AM. Yesterday we didn't have any formal
science
meetings because we were kind of in-between sols 104 and 105. I
still
came in for a few hours to put a few tweaks on the draft sol 105
min/geochem
plan (I've been min/geochem STL for the past several sols).
We had a compressed meeting schedule this morning, the SOWG meeting
only took
15 minutes! I had some input into some remote sensing sequences
and also
a suggestion to do MI on a dark cobble near Lion Stone. All the
MI
targets had lion names and I got to name that cobble "Jad Bal Ja"
after Tarzan's lion friend.
We're at the end of sol meeting and talking about what we're going to
do next.
I gave a presentation on my work with the sol 97 p2559 and p2560 13
filter
sequences. I'm getting some pretty good results.
Mike Wyatt is giving a presentation on mTES results. The dune field has a