One problem is Shiaparelli is landing to the west, so if Oppy is still in Endeavour crater come October I don't think she'll have a line of sight.

If we are back out by then then I would imagine that a few Navcams would be taken in that direction at the right time just to try. It might be possible to see the entry phase, not sure how bright that would be.

I think the better chance of catching something would be with with the front Hazcams since they are much wider FOV. They won't be able to resolve the lander because the lower resolution, but maybe flashing/atmospheric glow and streaking during peak heating if the rover was pointed in the general direction? Maybe find a small mound to pitch the rover slightly up for a better view of the sky? It would have to be incredibly lucky to catch anything in Navcam let alone Pancam.

The direction for the entry phase will be well known, shouldn't be any problem getting it within a Navcam frame. Whether anything will be visible is another matter.

Probably 50/50 that you could get the decent within a Navcam frame (based on the landing ellipse) but as the parachute will be less than 1/2 a pixel across* I don't think that will be doable anyway.

*Unless it's at the far end of the ellipse and heading for Eagle crater

If the entry takes place in a dark sky, it would easily be visible, given a line of sight. Resolution isn't an issue. If it's in a daytime sky, then transparency would be a key variable.

I easily saw the Stardust capsule (re)enter Earth's atmosphere with the naked eye from many hundreds of miles away, directly over the lights of a city. But it was at night.

There is a report now that the Briz-M stage disintegrated after Exomars's separation from it:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rock...aunch-disaster/

Entry is early afternoon in Meridiani. Seasonally, dust optical depth may be 0.9-1.2 in the absence of a global dust event.

Not sure if this is the correct thread?

ESA Press release N° 11–2016:

SECOND EXOMARS MISSION MOVES TO NEXT LAUNCH OPPORTUNITY IN 2020
Dated 2 May 2016 : LINK

More and more like MSL; 2020 will be a crowded year for landings apparently!

As Emily suggested, perhaps this post should be moved to a new subtopic.

EDIT: I have moved the contents to here.

Fernando

@HiRISE flyby of Aram Dorsum

Click thru to see the video...



And the scene in Gigapan

ESA published a couple of amazingly detailed illustrations of the Exomars rover.

Just noticed the wheel rims 'sag' on the portion touching the ground like a deflated tire. Was it always designed that way or did they notice Curiosity's issues with sharp rocks? What are the advantages compared with rigid wheels? This page has some info that it's for navigating dunes but is slightly vague on how it works.

Deformable wheels have the advantage of increasing the contact surface therefore increasing traction. Increased traction will decrease sinkage and will get better performance (less slip). Not always and not in all conditions, but it is a nice feature. Apparently the ExoMars rover will also have active suspension which will allow to transfer load between wheels, which is nice to have under difficult situations. It would also allow to change the vehicle attitude slightly, which is a bonus when driving a solar-powered vehicle.

Both the deformable wheels and the active suspension add mechanical and software complexity. If ESA actually manages to bring it to Mars, I'm very happy and humbled by their accomplishment.

Paolo

Aram Dorsum 2

Click thru for video...



Features ExoMars rover to scale.

Distilled from MOLA/HRSC x5/CTX x6/HiRISE x3

Here are some stills illustrating the rover & ridge a little better than the video managed.

Here is a 1.8 gigapixel render of the Aram Dorsum HiRISE dataset...



And here is the interactive version over at Gigapan

Can you spot Exomars Rover?

Here is a model over at Sketchfab

The VR avatar is about 6m tall due to hard lower limit on Sketchfab avatar size related to volume of the scene.

Next version will be cropped smaller to accommodate correct avatar scale.

Everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the PanCam Instrument for the ExoMars Rover.

Darn, still using 1024x1024 camera sensors.

On the plus side, it should be easy to add ExoMars pancam capability to AlgorimancerPG, if there's any interest, and if I can get back up to speed on Visual C++ (I've been focused on R for the past decade) -- I'd be happy to open-source that project, if anyone would like to take over.

I know it's really early, but could this signal a dedicated automatic pipeline for raws or just an image of the day like Rosetta?
Gosh, it would be weird after NASA spoiled us for a decade-plus to suddenly not have daily panoramas and maps of a rover's traverse.

For the benefit of those unable to attend last month's SPA meeting in London, here is the video of the talk about ExoMars 2020, given by Prof Andrew Coates:
https://vimeo.com/267085187

CTX mosaic of the Coogoon Vallis Fan landing site in Oxia Planum colorized with HRSC data.


Coogoon Vallis Fan

Sorry to reply to an old post, but I'm on the ExoMars PanCam science team, and just saw it. If you were to make the project open-source at some point in the future, then I'm pretty sure that I could find somebody interested in updating it.

Cheers,
Pete

Exomars Rover has a name: Rosalind Franklin

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_an...salind_Franklin

Cool! Rosie the Rover!

better not call it like that
https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/1093547130264858624

Some diminutive seems inevitable. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin her family referred to her as "Ros".

Indeed - she was not messing around- from that same Wiki Page...

The spaceships are Webb, Kepler, Cassini, Galileo, Schiaparelli, and Hubble, not Jimmy, Joe, Gio, Gali, Gio, or Eddie. There is one notable exception to this rule, BepiColombo, which uses the man's full name. I beg of you, please do not perpetuate the disrespect of calling the rover by Franklin's first name. If we intend the name as an honor to her memory, then the rover's name is Franklin or Rosalind Franklin.

Only JWST uses the full name of person it's named after.

mcaplinger, the same wikipedia article also says "In the family, she was called "Ros". To others, she was simply 'Rosalind'."

I punt on this issue. The rover's name is Rosalind Franklin. use a text expander or shortcut if you have to.

How about RF?

I like the name, and it's a nice change and tribute to an underappreciated figure in biology. I wouldn't want to forever stick to abstract concepts and acronyms for spacecraft names.

If character limits are ever at a premium, stick with ExoMars (just like MSL or MRO).

The trouble is that a lot of people think of planetary rovers as their little metal friends, requiring an easy informal monniker of some kind, whereas they don't tend to feel that way about space telescopes. It's a difficult requirement to square with respectful commemoration of a scientist, especially one of relatively recent memory.

EDIT: Just to be clear I can see the merits of both. Honouring scientific achievement is a great thing, but so is the fact that ordinary people want to be pals with the robots who are their eyes on other worlds.

FYI, an abbreviation is a shortening of a longer word or phrase. A diminutive is a term that implies the smallness or an attitude of intimacy towards the referent. (E.g., "Bill" is an abbreviation of "William" while "Billy" is a diminutive.) Abbreviating Rosalind Franklin is apt to imply a diminutive.

In life, Rosalind Franklin was diminished by the theft of her work. In this new life for her name, I'll call the rover Rosalind Franklin. That has the same number of syllables as "phyllosilicates" and "Meridiani" and four fewer than "en-gee-cee thirty eight forty two" or "unknown ultraviolet absorber." It won't injure anyone's jaw to say it, and the extra half second can be used to remember how many women in science have had their perceived importance subtracted along with their names.

Just in case anybody missed it, Rosalind Franklin's Russian space uber also got a name as well – Kazachok!


I honestly felt that way about Kepler to an unhealthy point that I often forgot about the actual Johannes Kepler...

Several sources, but especially Anatoly Zak, are reporting the ExoMars2020 parachute test just failed. Not a good sign at all for an upcoming launch. Parachutes are difficult.

Phil

Better to find out now then at Mars.

Last I heard the rover was still a go, but that was maybe 3 months ago when TGO adjusted its orbit for the rover (increased inclination from 73 to 74 degrees).

Of course Sojourner Truth's first name, taken alone, basically means "Rover".
Does that make it a rule-proving exception?

It's interesting that parachute design is so different that knowledge and expertise from all the previous successful missions isn't as relevant; is there any technical reason they're not as reliable as thrusters and heatshield? MSL (and 2020), as well as the Vikings were much heavier; I would have JPL on speed-dial!
Some more (Google translated) details from a Twitter post:



From https://twitter.com/andreabettini/status/1159848497761280002

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

Hi Phil,

I highlighted the word just because there has been an ESA report on parachute failure dated from June 28.Are you referring to a different, more recent, test?
Fernando

This is a second, separate failure.

Is this failure identical to curiosity testing parachute failures?

AFAIK, there's no information yet about this most recent failure, and only a little about the problems in May: https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_an..._and_challenges



Why the Exomars EDL system needs four separate parachutes when MSL/M2020 only needs one I don't know.

To oversimplify, parachute failures come in two flavors: the parachute fabric tears (sometimes catastrophically), or the parachute fails to inflate ("squidding"). I seem to recall both types of failure in MSL testing, but I don't recall for sure at the moment.

I think the complexity comes from the fact that neither ESA nor RSA have flown a successful very large Martian 'chute before, so I can understand the desire to 'stage' them with something small and tough, followed by something larger that doesn't have to be strong enough to handle the supersonic deployment. The LDSD deployment used that balute first as a drogue, to then pull out the main (but had two failures of the mains)

I'm at a loss as to how they got to the Drogue-1st Stage Main-Drogue 2-2nd Stage Main four chute design. I'm sure they're not doing it for fun.

The ExoMars EDM had a Disk-Gap-Band canopy of 12m.....but they're not re-using that flight proven design at all (it would make sense as a 1st Stage Main chute - instead they've developed a new 15m chute)

The final Rover EDL chute is for some reason, 35m across. That's more than 50% larger than the MSL 19.7m parachute despite being a lighter entry vehicle.

This was a concern I had about the EDM being so close to the rover mission....there simply isn't the time to take the lessons learned from EDM and then apply those to the design of the rover EDL.

There was an excellent documentary on the MER project which followed Steve Squyres as the mission developed. I forget its name now. But I recall him saying parachutes were a 'black art' or words to that effect, not really understood as well as you would expect. The inflation process must be a bit chaotic.

Phil

Is parachute design covered at all under ITAR? I have no idea. If not, then I do hope that ESA consults JPL for their decades of experience in this black art.

Certainly at risk of being covered under ITAR/EAR...... a cursory google brings up this which repeatedly cites parachutes as controlled
https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents...340-ccl9-4/file

As I mentioned upthread, even if there weren't export controls it's unclear if ESA would ask or JPL would respond in detail if they did.

There's a certain amount of open-literature info about US Mars parachute development from Viking on. All the failures on LDSD indicate that there are limits to our knowledge on this, though all the ASPIRE testing makes one feel pretty confident in the MSL parachute design.

I had the same reaction - in a comment at IPPW I described this design as 'baroque'. Introducing an extra serial step introduces another failure point - the tradeoff presumably being the ability to nudge all of the elements in the chain further from operating environments (Mach, q, Re etc.) in which they are known to fail.....

“Furthermore, in addition to the regular forum of exchanges between ESA and NASA experts, a workshop of Mars parachute specialists will convene next month to share knowledge.”

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_an...sting_continues

Details of multiple recent test failures. But also good news on some info exchange between agencies.