I'm working on a book section about the rover's Heat Rejection System -- the pumps and tubes that move freon all over the rover to take waste heat from the MMRTG and bring it inside the WEB or move it to cold radiator plates to get rid of it. One thing I was surprised to learn is that all the tubing that you can see connected to the RTG is not actually part of the Rover Heat Rejection System -- it was part of the Cruise Heat Rejection System and was purged shortly before landing. (The Rover Heat Rejection System removes heat from the RTG only through the radiator plates cupped around the RTG.) There are two tubes coming up from the back of the rover deck that used to take waste heat from the RTG and run it past the white plates on the cruise stage to dump it to space. Those tubes were guillotined when the rover separated from the descent stage (I think, I haven't actually seen a specific timeline of pyro events so I'm not sure that's the right moment). You can see the cut tubes in any Navcam image that shows the back end of the rover:
Click to view attachment

I would really like to have a color photo of the RTG on Mars with the cut tubes visible. But in the MAHLI self-portraits, the HGA invariably blocks the view: sol 84, sol 177, sol 613. I'm pretty sure that Mastcam has never pointed this low on the RTG to take a color picture, but am posting this here to ask for help, in the hopes that I'm wrong...

Hope this helps Emily.



I have been wondering when or if they will ever do a complete rover deck panorama with Mastcam. I hope they do someday.

Here's the single image - http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra..._DXXX&s=118

Bless you! That is exactly what I needed! Thanks James!