For those of you who may be interested and to whom this is available, you may be interested to know that "Mars Rocks: One Year Later" (a sequel to "Welcome to Mars," which documents the first year of surface operations for the MERs) is running right now (from 5 to 6 p.m. CDT) on The Discovery Channel.

Another documentary, "Moon for Sale," which claims to be about a "second race to the Moon," is on from 7 to 8 p.m. CDT tonight.

And finally, for those who haven't yet seen it but who get Discovery, "Roving Mars" will have a sneak preview tonight from 8 to 9 p.m., CDT.

Just thought it worth a mention...

-the other Doug

Thanx, OD, I caught it on the fly!
I can see how it would wow 'em in a wraparound format. Is the Discovery "preview" an edited version, or is it uncut?

Oh yes, I watched all these "Moon for Sale", "Roving Mars" and one for New Horizons mission which included some screenshots of our forum' discussion threads on the Jupiter encounter last Feb
They were really wonderful, I must be lucky to be here in the US this time

I saw the Discovery Channel New Horizons special, I believe Saturday evening, though I can't seem to find it on their web site.

The coolest part though was when Alan Stern was talking about the proposed "Kodak Moments" for the Jupiter encounter he said "We decided to do something different and we turned to the blogs for suggestions." and then they flashed several familiar blue UMSF screens. How neat is that?

I'll keep poking around and see if I can find what it was and when it will play again

Thu: I'll have to watch for the screenshots if they replay New Horizons. I missed that show. I hope you enjoy your visit to the US. We are lucky to have you as a visitor.

The New Horizons program was the same "Passport to Pluto" program that Discovery produced for the launch of New Horizons. They simply updated it to include about 15 minutes of new material, which covered the Jupiter encounter. (Which is *really* good planning on their part, I think!)

They've done the same thing with their Cassini program, "Rendezvous with Saturn's Moon," which was originally broadcast back when Huygens landed. The last time I say it, it was up-to-date enough to include the Saturn-backlit shot and also details on Enceladan plume activity.

-the other Doug

What *I* thought was the most impressive thing about "Passport to Pluto" was that Alan didn't hog the show. He's an important part of it, but we see lots of other people from the team as well. That showed real class.

--Greg

Alan stood at the bottom of the Atlas V was one of the most interesting pieces of footage I've ever seen. I always thought "Shuttle Big...Atlas V small...Delta 2 tiny"...Ooooooo No.

Doug

Did you every find a link to the program on the website? I was twerked a small amount about one little factoid that never gets enough attention from the media, i.e. the distances involved... wanted to review the program one more time...

Tom

You can download the pre-launch version of it here:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/videos/Pas...luto720x486.mov (130 MB)

Atlas 5 is 196 feet tall for 500 version and 192 feet for 400 version. The shuttle is 184 feet tall. Side by side you can't really tell the difference. But the shuttle is by far the most powerful and most massive vehicle.

tall and big are different things

Here you go, since you'll never see them side by side in real life :-) The person under the shuttle is to the same scale too.

Someone's spent a lot at Realspacemodels


Doug