confused

Juggling 3 different time zones here

I'm guessing "showtime" refers to the whole atmosphere surrounding preparations for the EVENT. The pictures may be anticlimactic, but as others have said, a couple centimeters forward motion will be good news.

If we knew what time Spirit was programmed to move, Spirit time, you could just check the "Spirit time" link I posted. Noon Spirit time is still almost 17 hours away. But I don't know if Spirit will move before or after that.

Sorry to have added to the confusion. It's now late evening Spirit time as centsworth pointed out; driving action can be expected at noon give or take a few hours Mars time, which is some time in the wee hours of the morning California time. Unconfused yet?

I imagine 'Showtime' meant the commands were transmitted. As for expected movement, I think they'll be happy to see a fraction of a centimeter and no drift in a bad direction.

According to the press briefing last week, the plan was (presumably California time):

My interpretation of "show time" is that Maxwell arrived at work and started working on the very important driving plan for Spirit. But I have to say it's a bit silly putting much effort into trying to "read the tealeaves", ie trying to decipher such cryptic posts.

That's what UTC is for

According to @marssciencegrad, downlinks are set for:


Which is to say, and in ISO 8601 anyways

This thread started when briv1016 noticed that the wheels had moved and the hazcam images changed. Tesheiner made the 5 image movie and we were off.

I think it would be great to have a thread--like the map thread--where just images are posted. We could all go there and see how Spirit has moved since starting the wheel turns. As lots of images may come come down with each drive day, the total number of hazcam & other images could get really large. So maybe one movie where only the final frame of each day's effort gets added to the end of the movie.

Since I don't have image/movie skills, I am not not the one to start the new thread: Spirit Escape--the Movie. But maybe someone who could make such movies could start such a thread.

This thread should definitely continue for all of its great discussions (and images).

Like the extrication process is going to be, a movie will be painstakingly SLOW .
I'm sure that someone will do a movie, but a long way into the process/progress. Not really worth a new thread, just occasional updates here.

Are there hazcam pics from the test rovers going thru the planned maneuvers?

Small blurb about the upcoming drive:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/20091116a.html


Also, the tracking site has the planned imaging sequence for sol 2088.


Edit: Thanks Astro.

I hadn't seen these mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Check out this from JPLraw video on YouTube.

The 7min38sec NASA B-roll video contains:
Video of JPL engineers in MER testbed and in a meeting discussing the extrication tests
Various images showing where Spirit is stuck, underbelly view and local terrain
Some interesting interview segments with Ashley Stroupe
Extra images and animation of Spirit's journey, current location, maps etc.

brellis asked: Are there hazcam pics from the test rovers going thru the planned maneuvers?
There's a very quick shot from TeeBee's FrontHazcam showing some 'downhill' movement.

All-in-all some interesting stuff to watch while we wait for new images from Spirit.

I'll see about building a movie over time as this whole thing unfolds.
Can anyone suggest a way to convert .gif files into something usable by YouTube? (.flv)

Flash would seem to be the best way to import gifs and export flv. Adobe do a free thirty-day trial if you want to experiment.

Andy

Youtube will actually take almost anything, and convert it itself. Perhaps Quicktime Pro ( load an anim gif, export to H264 .mob - then upload to youtube)


next bit isn't aimed at you directly.


This is a warning. Progress today may be negligible, it may be significant, it may be entirely invisible and non existent.

DO NOT attempt to draw too many conclusions, positive or negative, regarding the efficacy of the technique, the likelihood of a final extraction and so on. People using words like 'never' or 'certain' or 'wrong' will have firm forum wrist slappings.

Many of you were not around during the month of extraction at Purgatory Ripple. The old hands know how frustrating this process is going to be. Be patient. Do not jump to conclusions. Do not resort to superlatives.

Warning over.

As you were.

Thanks for the link to the vidéo Astro0, I'll be watching it .

Some data on the tracking site now!

Movement of a few tenths of a mm according to that data (don't read too much into this!)

edit:
Looks like the drive number has only be incremented by 'one'. I was expecting at least two as the drive was in two legs + maybe more as there were visdom navcam images sequenced.

Possible aborted drive?

That's the same time that images have been showing up on exploratorium (as well as a few other times during the day). None showed up at 1440 today. Does anyone know what the timing is like here - when does a downlink at 1440 typically show up on exploratorium? (I thought it was fast?) Could it be there was data returned but no full images?

> Movement of a few tenths of a mm

Actually, a few mm. (Edited)

Fredk, regarding the downlink time, I think that 1440UTC was the beginning of the downlink session so it missed the data transfer to the exploratorium by a small amount of time. We may see the pictures in the next window which will be at 2040UTC.

Don't think so.
The rationale (my assumption) is that in that case the imaging sequence that would be triggered would be "front_hazcam_fault_pri15_4bpp" instead of "front_hazcam_ultimate_4_bpp" and the seqid corresponds to the latter.

...
02088::p1214::05::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_hazcam_ultimate_4_bpp
02088::p1235::00::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_hazcam_0.5bpp_pri_18
02088::p1247::03::2::2::0::0::0::4::frHC_mega_cleatcam_half_2_bpp_pri_26
02088::p1254::00::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_hazcam_fault_pri15_4bpp
02088::p1314::00::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_ultimate_4bpp_pri15
02088::p1335::00::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_hazcam_0.5_bpp_pri_18
02088::p1347::03::2::2::0::0::0::4::RearHC_mega_cleatcam_half_2_bpp_pri_26
02088::p1354::01::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_fault_pri15_4bpp
...

Really? I originally wrote mm in the post but then calculated that the change from yestersol to tosol was only 0.21mm E/W 0.58mm N/S (I can't remember off hand the directions). Your the expert at this these days so I hope your right.



Thanks, I hadn't appricated that logic before.

Could someone remind us what exactly these numbers are based on? Integrating the accelerometers? Visodom?

Unless I'm very much mistaken (and that's quite likely) - it's IMU based.

You are right! I got wrong numbers for the pre-drive position.

AFAIK, it's both.
If visodom is not used, the rover's position is updated solely with the IMU data.
If visodom is used, and this is the case for the current drive, the position is calculated (my guess) as follows:
1. A step is executed in "blind" mode and the position updated with IMU info.
2. A navcam shot is taken and processed by the visodom logic and a corrected position is determined.

Are these numbers statistically significant? What about stress and temperature related changes (noise)?

I'm pretty sure that they are from the IMU.

I really don't know what signifcance to put on these very small numbers. My gut feeling is not a lot!

Just a fact check here -- was sol 1898 the last sol on which Spirit rolled wheels in a commanded drive? It seems like there's a more recent driving day that I'm missing.

Correct, Spirit got dug in on 6th May 2009 (sol 1899)

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say Spirit got 'dug in' on 1899 - the problems started on sol 1886 and she was furthest 'in' on 1891.

Emily, the last significant drive was on 1898. There was a drive with very little movement on sol 1899 which I think was the one that faulted out when the middle wheel stalled.

James

Thank you both!

(F5, F5, F5, F5...still looking for those raws!)

As Tesheiner wrote above, the jpegs shouldn't appear at exploratorium until around 20:40 UT. If not then, add n*6 hours, for integer n.

The exploratorium site must be broken again

It's still 20:30UTC per my account.

UTC = GMT = ZULU

Right on cue, the images are up at exploratorium:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...05P1214R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/re...05P1314R0M2.JPG
Looks indeed like very small movement.

Where did you guys find that time BTW?

The explotratorium is sync'ed four times a day at 0240, 0840, 1440 and 2040 UTC.
It's not posted anywhere, it's just a question of checking for new data day after day since some years ago.

Back to business, to our "armchair analysis"...

I believe I can see the "two steps" of today's drive on the tracking web data. If that's correct, it's a little bit different from previous extraction moves since it's completely embedded on a single "site/drive id" (if you know what I mean). Assuming the commanded wheel turns were as reported on the MER website (2.5m each step), the slip factor was really high, as expected: 99.98 - 99.99%

Do you mean the 20:40 time? I've just noticed that the exploratorium images have been appearing four times a day 6 hours apart. You can see that from the timestamps on the exploratorium files. Edit - Tesheiner was quicker than me!

I don't see much evidence of movement in the soil around the LF wheel, comparing before and after tosols drive attempt:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...04P1214R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...05P1214R0M1.JPG
So should these new images be at the halfway mark, after 2.5 metres of wheel motion, or after 5 metres? The wheel treads have definitely moved, but is that 2.5 metres worth of change in the surrounding soil?

Peering into the shadows, there is some change in the soil behind the LR wheel:
Click to view attachment

AFAIK, the images correspond to the end of the drive.

Fred - your anim is good - I think we see the RR wheel digging in a reasonable amount, not much movement on the LR.

Don't know what it tells us, if anything, but here's two images to compare the left middle wheel between Sol 2008 and Sol 2088.

Edit: Ugh; those show up in reverse order, and without the filenames - yech. If you switch between these images, it looks like the left middle wheel has raised a bit (not sunk). If you save the images to your computer they should have more illuminating filenames.

And for completeness, here's the right middle wheel, sol 2012 and sol 2088.

Apparently today’s drive only lasted 1 second.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/index.cfm

MIs from sol2076(2frames) and sol2088(1frame)
Animation - large movement was on sol 2076 when the wheels were re-aligned and last frame from today's movement.
Lined up as best as I can for now.
Click to view attachment

3xMI pan...
Click to view attachment

I thought the post drive results would be anticlimactic, but not THAT anticlimactic!

That can't be accurate. My understanding is that the instructions were for a drive of 2.5 meters. Now regardless of whether the rover actually moved, the wheels were instructed to turn accordingly. So if a 1.0s duration is accurate then that's a speed of 2.5 m/s. If I recall correctly that's about five times faster than the rover's top speed of 0.5 m/s.

EDIT: Never mind. I see there was a premature shut down due to the tilt.

Very nice animation. If the rocks could be aligned and kept still, we could see the rover move.
PAC

"...The rover has a top speed on flat hard ground of 5 centimeters (2 inches) per second...."
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/spacecra...ver_wheels.html

Given a wheel diameter of 25cm (78.5cm circumference), full speed would turn the wheel about 6.3% of a revolution in one second.

I just have to comment that the last day's worth of posts on this topic must hit some kind of high for the ratio of analysis to driving distance.