Well,
since first pictures are coming up soon why not make a guess where?
Besides a picture of one of the rovers or other landing..or in some cases crash.. sites. Any one have any favorite spots?
The problem with high resolution pictures is when you look at rocks you just see smaller rocks so they can look the same..sort of like a nice fractal...
Nice to have an image with something that is recognizable.
I'm hoping for months end..I prefer tomorrow but I can wait til the end of September..but hopefully not October...
anyone elxe?
cheers
jb

I'm afraid all my favorite targets are landing and crash sites.

Well, if you press me, I'll say It'd be interesting trying to spot the most geologically young lava flow, and try to use small crater counts to date it. I'm guessing there are several scattered sites that could be candidates for the most recent activity.

I would have thought that the pre-conjunction imaging would be of basically, whatever they can grab, much as with the pre aerobraking imaging. I don't think there's the time to schedule sequence and command something more specific than that.

Doug

Oops... the mention of landing site targets got me wandering off. You're right. Well, one target that would present itself every orbit would be the north polar cap. A relatively blank, featureless part of it might serve for some kinds of camera calibrations. The border areas would have a lot of detail and contrasts. I'd be willing to bet that polar pictures will be in the mix of the first new pictures to come in since before aerobraking.

I think you are right.. what ever is there, lets take a picture. Just hope the pictures are released as discussed in other thread and not held for months on end like Smart-1 or Mars Express.. I think we have been spoiled by MER.
I really doubt they will target specific sites but lets hope for some "interesting" places they can pass over sooner rather than later.. I'm going to be thrilled with anything they send back actually... but I would prefer victoria myself
With high resolution I'm assuming a smaller path along the ground, so that much longer for significant ground cover.
High resolution of the poles melting would be cool
jb

Well - at 1.5m/pixel - MOC is approx 3km across and as much as 10km long.

HiRISE at 33cm/pixel has a maximum of 6.6km across and 13.2km long.

Doug

I'm thinking that the area around Victoria Crater would be a high-priority area to get HiRISE images of, as soon as possible. That would allow the MER team to spend their time during conjunction doing some real planning. The MOC images we have are nice, but the HiRISE images of the site will be invaluable for planning the Victoria campaign.

Oh, and some good CRISM work in the area would be extraordinarily helpful, too.

In fact, I'm thinking that the first CRISM work ought to be at the MER sites. We have a lot of ground truth at those sites, which will let them approach the overall CRISM results with valuable information about how their readings correlate with what's actually on the ground.

-the other Doug

See the following post. MRO will soon take pictures over Victoria Crater in order to improve the coordination of analysis between MER and MRO teams.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=67072

Reference of the source at spaceref.com

Rodolfo

I hate to say this, Rodolfo, but the spaceref.com article gave me the impression that they were planning to start studying Meridiani with MRO in November or December. I'm wondering if the Victoria area might not get a priority for at least a first-look from HiRISE and CRISM *before* the solar conjunction.

-the other Doug

I can't speak for the HiRISE team, but I believe there's only one day's worth of off-nadir imaging allocated pre-conjunction, so if they don't hit it then, and they don't go right over it, it's not going to happen.

I don't think it's giving much away to say that the MER-B site is in the CTX target database.

And I think you're overstating the incremental value of HiRISE imaging over the MOC CPROTO for traverse planning, but I guess we'll see.

The discussion in that article is more about correlation of orbital and MER observations from mineralogical perspective than from one of a planning process. The emphasis in the pre-conjunction and early science mapping phase will likely be the north polar regions (since this expected to be a time of minimal dust loading) and the potential landing sites for Phoenix. Of course, if the ground-track happens to fall across Victoria region during a nadir-sequence orbit, I suspect people would be happy. The planning process has just begun in earnest with the completion of the burn earlier this week...and so, one will know fairly soon.

But wouldn't you want an off-nadir image of Victoria to combine with a later nadir (or near-nadir) image
to get good stereo to make 3-D planning maps? Getting an off-nadir image should be a lot easier than a nadir image, although I admit you still have to get fairly close to an overhead pass. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious.

Isn't MRO observing from entirely different sun angles than MGS? I'm thinking that perhaps a combination of pictures of Victoria taken early morning and late afternoon might aid in understanding the lay of the land a little better than either picture set alone.

No, MGS is at about 2 PM and MRO is at about 3 PM.

Well, guess that's not a whole lot of help, just an hour difference. Thanks for the info, though. Somehow I'd gotten the impression that MRO had gone for a 9 am orbit.

It depends upon what you mean by "easy." off-nadir targets are a "commodity" and it may be that only two (or so) are allowed every other orbit. so, it's a question of priority by the science teams. there does not appear to be a great deal of excitement burning off-nadir opportunities simply for MER-B traverse planning. I believe there are already some nice MOC data that are being used. certainly, if one really wants Victoria, off-nadir targeting is likely to acquire the data sooner.

perhaps i spoke to soon. the Mars Program Office appears to have gotten an off-nadir slew into the target planning for pre-conjunction observation (though the final target list has not yet been determined).

I can imagine, given that the Mars office has been compartively quiet in terms of 'big' news since the MRO MOI - a big press release during conjunction to unveil the Victoria panorama, the McMurdo pan, and a HiRISE / CTX / CRISM data set of one of the two landing sites would make a nice 'story' that would make most of the major newspapers.

Perhaps the order came from on high to try and grab one of the two sites if at all possible before conjunction...stranger things have happened.

But I'm jumping the gun

Doug

Not only a picture of Victoria will make a nice story, it will be very timely for VC exploration allowing about 2 weeks of thinking. BTW, IIRC, they kind of sparcely communicated during last conjunction. Do you know how long we can expect the "real" com will be out ?

Well -

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/anteam/me...MD/2C241MMD.htm

During the 18-day conjunction period that began on Sol 241, the sun will be obscuring the communications path between Earth and Mars, making communications sessions unreliable. We were able to successfully command Spirit on Sol 241, and had partial commanding success on Sol 242. We will be attempting to command Spirit on Sol 243 also. Beyond that, thru Sol 255, sequences already safely on board will perform a set of science activities on a daily basis. On Sols 256-258, the last three days of conjunction, we will be attempting normal operations again.

I would say at least a fortnight.

Doug

Well,
if the Sharad was deployed right, it looks like we are 8 days from pointing the cameras at mars...

slowly getting there

jb

well,
from MRO site, it seems the next step is 5 days from Instrument operational checkout. Lets hope for a release of pictures before end of the month..which will include the first "pictures" from Sharad that seems to have been taken.

HiRISE Camera Will Take First Close-Up Pictures of Mars Sept. 29
By Lori Stiles
UA News Services
September 25, 2006

EDIT: I decided to link directly to the UA press release.

2nd EDIT: I notice the Media Note isn't included on the UANews.org website, so I'll put it back here:

QUOTE

MEDIA NOTE: Reporters are welcome to join the HiRISE team in UA's Sonett Space Sciences Building when the first HiRISE image is received at HiROC at approximately 2:30 p.m. MST (Pacific) time. Please make arrangements with Lori Stiles, University Communications, 520-626-4402 or 520-360-0574 (cell).

....ooo, ooo, ooo....(jumping excitedly about like a kid on Christmas Eve...)

Huh? MST is Mountain Standard Time (Denver, Salt Lake, Phoenix.) Pacific time is an hour earlier (Los Angeles, San Francisco and of course Elk Grove)

[EDIT: never mind. Arizona isn't on Daylight Savings so they stay on MST while the rest of the zone goes to MDT, and the Pacific zone goes to PDT. So this time of year, MST=PDT ....sorry, my bad]

Yeah, good catch, Dan. Even more confusing is the fact that Arizona doesn't do Daylight Savings Time, so right now the entire state is effectively on Pacific time...they need to clarify this.

[EDIT: Me & Dan were typing @ the same time...he cleared it up. Still think that UA could've made this a bit less confusing, though...]

More on U.S. time zones here

Yep, we don't believe in Daylight Savings Time here. No changing clocks here, just the annoyance of my football games being on an hour later in November.

In terms of this HiRISE business, they got T-shirts for this check-out period Maybe we (Cassini Titan people) should get a T-shirt for each Titan flyby...

Indeed...you'd have quite a wardrobe already!

OT a bit, but I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB for three years (1986-early 1990)...loved the base & Tucson, but that DT disconnect used to drive me nuts...never could remember what time it was everywhere else when I had to make an out-of-state call.

Thanks for the warning, Alex. Now do I stick around for the images, or leave for home before the insanity starts...
Maybe this will all be upstairs, who knows. Maybe I will be spared the worst of the poking and proding, and the: "Are those HiRISE images?"/"No, these are of an interesting place." exchanges...

Oooooooooooo - harsh

Doug

Lets hope we get a whole bunch of pictures full size friday... not a compressed file and have them release only one.

but then again, if they only release one picture, the pictures better be clear .. I'd rather have an excellent camera with few public released pictures than full release but a faulty cam.... We'd get a peek at them eventually... May have to buy a MUCH BIGGER monitor and video card to handle the new released pictures..

jb

CNN's article on Opportunity's arrival at Victoria states that HiRISE will be looking at that crater and Opportunity very soon. With the first 40 check-out images coming over the next week or so, hmm....

SWEEEEEEET!!!!!

That would be pretty cool. That said, however, and given how much the mainstream media screw up their "facts" when reporting space-related stories, I'd feel a little more confident that this is going to happen if there was official confirmation (e.g., from NASA or the HiRISE team).

http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0927_Ma...Gets_Ready.html

Good article at the Planetary Society website.

A MRO press conference is scheduled for October 16 at 1pm EST. You can see it on NASA TV or streamed at the JPL web site. Looking forward to great pictures!

Hmmm thats a long time to wait to se those pictures.

check out the blog for the MRO camera...
bet it gets overloaded with me hitting refresh..
so don't you guys use the site

Thank you jabe. If I understand it correctely, first image is due in ONE hour from now!
Please double check

« PreparationsWaiting to receive the first image…. »We just took the first image!!
We just received the telemetry to confirm that the HiRISE camera took its first picture!!! We all gathered around a screen projecting the telemetry data, and everyone cheered as the numbers came in. We’ll have to wait another ~6 hours or so to actually receive the image… The images go from the spacecraft to the DSN network, then to JPL, then to us.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 8:44 am

The first image should show up around 2:30 pm MST (or Pacific daylight time for those who don't like our anti-Daylight time views). So about 2 hours and 42 minutes from the time of this post.

Wow, that blog is almost like being upstairs.

Thanks for the correction volcanopele, MST,EDT,PST,GMT ...I'm on GMT+2, and it'll change next month! It could have been worse if they've decided to apply this to Mars

I believe that it is 4:30 EST so about 2 hours when you posted message... I'm figuring jpl will also post image..just in case blog gets flooded..

Waiting for the first HiRISE image, I didn't saw this one reported in any other thread.

New Spectrometer Begins Its Global Map of Mars

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/mult...o-20060929.html

I'm confused. Are we expecting the images to be posted on the MRO mission site, or where?

Blogs are a wonderful thing. I just read a little further down and found out there is cake!!

EDIT: GRRR, the cake's not here yet

They might be posted at: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/ . The MRO site might also be a good bet, but the HiRISE page may post the full size images. I'll ask around.

EDIT: Keep an out on that page, the MRO JPL page, and the main HiRISE page: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/hirise/ .

Hey, volcanopele, sorry to bug you but re my previous question: Do you know where the first pics will be posted on the Web? I'm not sure where to go...thanks!

[EDIT] Jumped the gun, man...thanks!!! Jeez, and this was my 400th post....oh, the ignominity of it all!
[EDIT2] Gotcha...thanks again, you da man, even if you are an Ionian caldera!!!

I bet jpl will have the pics real fast..they have in the past

BREAKING NEWS: The blog says that the first pictures are in, and "they look amazing!" Singular & plural were mixed in the entry, but from context this might be about the very first pic.

UPDATE (NEW ENTRY QUOTED VERBATIM): "We’ve been looking at the first images for the last several minutes, they are incredible. We have identified many boulders, craters, channels, and other incredible features. Everything is looking as well as we have dreamed. Stay tuned for more!"