In the mission plan, it was to be raised at the end of 2010 (end of the relay mission) but I haven't heard anything about that recently. If consumables are doing OK I expect that will be delayed as long as possible. They never did raise the orbit of MGS AFAIK.

Also, MRO's breakup analysis showed there were no planetary protection issues if it did crash; there was some sterilization to insure this (e.g., cable bundles.) http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AdSpR..42.1108B

Maybe Mars Express photobombed a HiRise image?

The entire January issue of Icarus is dedicated to HiRISE; a total of 20 papers!

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00191035

Any guess for which one contains the BIG announcement?

Why are you assuming it's in any of them. No press conference scheduled, this isn't going to be a big discovery.

I think if there is going to be any major announcement (there might not be any, as you said no press conference is schedule), and when they have just 20 papers out, then it is logical to assume there is a link between these two events.

I know what you're saying Siravan, but I think it's pretty safe to say that there's going to be no big 'discovery' announced, because:

* There's no NASA press event scheduled
* It has only been mentioned on Twitter (and here, and on UT, both reporting the original Twitter mention)
* None of the "big" space web sites are worked up about this
* No details have leaked out - ALL the major discovery announcements have been leaked, despite being embargoed.

I think the original Tweet has probably been misinterpreted. Having said that, the HiRISE Twitterer hasn't done anything to correct that misinterpretation. Bit naughty, but got us all talking about HiRISE!

All these points suggest it's only big to people like us, which makes MPL more likely than a science story. But as we are people like us, that counts as big.

Phil

I subscribe discussion... hoping you'll not post too many "false positives" while waiting...

I guess the actual large number of papers is the big announcement.

Maybe they spotted a big volcano.....oh wait.....nevermind.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/hiwish.php

HiWish is the announcement?

Probably. Like I said - no big press conference means no big news.

Personally - I find that very very exciting.

Ii was going post that but edited my post when I saw there were observing requests from early last year - I thought it was something already known, but i'd missed it

It's only gone public today. It's access, I believe, to the same tool used internally for target suggestion, more or less.

Great, now we can expect weekly images from Cydonia

I think this is a massive announcement, almost the same scale as pushing Pathfinder images to the internet.

It represents a continuing paradigm shift. Think about it, now the public at large can suggest an imaging target for a major spacecraft. This continues the progression of more and more access. (And hopefully, more downstream support).

This opens space up to everyone.

I can't actually think of anything that would be bigger.

Interesting that it took the "People's Camera" all the way until now to implement this.



You mean again, right? Considering that we did this for years on MOC.

Not to belabour MC's point - but we were able to do this with MGS / MOC.

And they did thousands of publicly suggested images.

Oh, I agree.

This is a continuation of that, and with a more powerful camera.

But the trend to more and more back-and-forth feedback is huge. Compare this to just a few decades ago and waiting for the local newspaper to print one selected image....


(I'll also timidly add that more tools are available to the general public as well: Google Mars, HiRise images via internet, and more and more internet connections and faster access. Only until the last few years did I personally get a decent enough connection to be able to enjoy the plethora of data in the public domain.)

Darn - I'm still rooting for MPL. Someone in the HiCAVE is laughing at me right now. (I know where you live)

Phil

Heh, I was thinking the same thing.


I hear you, brother. I want to see its final resting place and the condition it's in.

Well, I was about to request more possible MPL sites but I'm having trouble with the HiWISH form...
Can you all see the map on the right ?...

We should call this sort of technology "Space 2.0" by analogy to "Web 2.0," which meant sites like Wikipedia that worked by massive involvement of the public.

In this case, I hope "massive" ends up meaning more than just us here though. :-)

--Greg

Scott Maxwell's Mars 3.0 presentation at Gnomedex 2008 seems appropriate here - this is a another good step along that road.

I started a new thread for discussions of spots that we in the UMSF community pick using the HiWish tool.

I thought this might be the announcement because it's the only non-science thing I could think of besides MPL...not such a "big" announcement seeing as they promised to have this capability from the beginning. I remember frustratingly waiting for it to come online when I was in grad school.