Pre-landing, we had a promise from the panel of a press conf. that
images taken by the rover would be put on the web "as soon as we get them"
Early on in the Spirit mission, there was a delay of about 4, 5 days
before they started doing it properly
Now - however, a worrying pattern is emerging and one that is sure to
fuel the conspiracy theorists appetite for anything untoward.
Consider the nice colour image of the spirit lander structure. In the
raw imagery folder, we have the pancam images of this image set in L2
only - and none for L5 and L6 (which have been taken, have been sent
down, and been used to make the colour image). Why are they not up in
the raw images folder?
The front hazcam images that made the animated gif of the traverse
from the immediate egress position on Spirit, toward Adirondack (
about 4, 5 Front hazcam images in all) - never posted in raw images (
I find the 'linearized' hazcam images are TERRIBLE to look at and
would much rather look at the raw imagery )
NONE of the pancam images used to make the posed stars-and-stripes
image of the IDD on Sol 18 (or there abouts) on Spirit.
And now - none of the spectacular images of the backshell and 'chute.
It's painfully clear that JPL/Cornell are with-holding raw images and
'saving them up' for PR opportunities.
As the frequency of press confs. has dropped from one a day, to two a
week (and lord knows at what time, 9am, 10am, they never do make their
mind up) - surely it's time that this raw imagery gets pumped out onto
the web a) in it's entirety, and
in a timely fashion.That - or issue a retraction of the promise to push all images onto
the web as recieved, and remove the "All 2,147 Raw Images" message
(or whatever it may become)
I only wish I'd paid the taxes to fund these missions so I had proper grounds to moan and grumble about it!!
Doug
