I don't know if any of you live in the Tucson area (Besides myself and Jason), but if you'll be in the area, there's an open house for the Phoenix mission. It'll feature tours of the control center, access to the PIT (Where the engineering model of Phoenix currently resides), various UA Mars missions presentations, talks by Alfred McEwen, Peter Smith, and other PI's from various instruments around (Alfred is with HiRISE, Peter with Phoenix). Also, we're planning on bringing the HiWall, it should be fun. It's going from 10-4, on May 5th (The event is called Cinco de Mars), so... Come if you can, it should be lots of fun. The Phoenix Mission controls building is located at 6th and Drachman, just northwest of the University of Arizona. For more information, see http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANew...ArticleID=13785

I'll be around in the morning at the HiRISE booth.

Rats. I used to live in Tucson, wish I still did now...sounds like fun!

Oh, I missed this chance while staying here in Minneapolis
Next time tell them to ask me first before organizing such event

The US is really really BIG.

Well, I got to see a video today that may or may not be shown, including lots of 3d pictures from HiRISE and MER. It should be very cool. We moved the HiWall over there today, it took 7 men about 2 hours, it was crazy... But we did it, and hope everyone enjoys. I'll at least try and give some highlights if I can, but no promises...

I second the coolness of that video, even if it was just about Mars. Half of it shows an animation of the Phoenix EDL sequence plus some post-landing activities. The second half featured various 3D pans from the rovers and HiRISE. I think tuvas would agree with me, we need 3D glasses like the ones they had.

The open house looks like it will be pretty cool. The HiWall will be there (actually, it is there now, after it pulled a "Spirit" on us). I know the terrain looks "boring", but I hope they display images showing the type of terrain they plan to land in. Give the people a preview of what to expect.

But I have one bone to pick. At open house, there will be large posters highlighting the planets of the solar system, plus "Trans-Saturnian Objects", the Kuiper Belt, the Asteroid Belt, and Europa (and our moon)... yeah, that's right, Europa. I think that's flat-out discrimination. What about Io? What about Titan? What about Triton? Hey, there is plenty of water on two of them, and on Io, there is a nice, small patch on the flank of a mountain...