" Coming Soon
May 24, 2019 - InSight Release 1a
Jun. 1, 2019 - MRO Release 49
Jun. 15, 2019 - LRO Release 38
June 26, 2019 - InSight Release 1b
Jul. 1, 2019 - Odyssey Release 68
Aug. 1, 2019 - MSL Release 21"
This is from the PDS Geosciences node, but imaging is probably the same schedule.
Phil
Full Version: InSight Surface Operations
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
QUOTE (stevesliva @ Apr 11 2019, 01:48 PM) 
Interesting that they think the possibility that it's a buried obstruction is rather low, and that they're leaning towards the idea that it don't have the leverage that friction with the sides of the borehole would allow.
Actually my take on the update was that they just don't know.
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Apr 19 2019, 10:59 AM)
Coming Soon
Thanks Phil
Watch Twitter etc for an InSight mission Press Release expected later today re InSight's seismometer source
Got news but it’s in French...so be patients and don’t shiver 
It's the big one! Well, in a manner of speaking...
Translation of:
https://www.seis-insight.eu/fr/actualites/469-quake-sol128
Insight detects the first earthquake on Mars
7 april 2019, during sol 128, the two detectors in the seismometer SEIS in
Insight detected the first seismic tremor on mars, more than 40 years after the
attempt by NASA's mythical Viking landers.
Since the wind and thermal sheild was emplaced 2 february 2019, which
dramatically reduced environmental noise, the seismometer SEIS on Insight has
been listening daily for activity on the red planet. Although the instrument
immediately presented researchers with a continual and very weak noise,
originating from both noise sources in the lander and the constant action of
the atmosphere on the surface, seismologists hoped above all to be able to pick
out the signature of seismic events from the data received every day from
Elysium Planitia. And now it has been done: during sol 128 the first
earthquake, weak but originating from mars, was detected by SEIS.
On the trail of Viking
Before Insight, the only seismometer capable of detecting earthquakes on mars
was that of the lander Viking 2, which landed 3 september 1976 on the desolate
and pebbly expanse of Utopia Planitia. Unlike the seismometer of Viking 1, of
which the movable part was never able to be unlocked, the instrument was
functional, but unfortunately it was rendered ineffective by the action of wind
on the landing site, especially during the day. This was due to the fact that,
unlike SEIS, Viking did not put its seismometer on the ground or use a wind
sheild.
All in all, over a period of 560 mars days (called sols), or 19 months from
1976 to 1978, the data returned by Viking 2's seismometer was mainly useful to
meteorologists. In all of the recorded data only 1 candidate event of
potentially seismic origin was detected on sol 80. Unfortunately no data was
colected by the weather station that sol, preventing validation of the event:
seismologists couldn't be certain that the sequence of vibrations was really of
seismic origin and not just wind. To prevent this from happening again,
Insight was equipped with an environmental station more capable than that of
Viking (temperature, wind speed and direction, ultra-sensitive barometer, and
magnetometer), and which is expected to function continually through the end of
the mission.
The sol 128 signal
Looking back, it's a good bet that none of the geophysicists who worked on
Viking could imagine that a period of 40 years would elapse before the
signature of an earthquake would finally be dected on the red planet. And yet
that's how it happened. After 1976 none of the succesful landers carried
seismometers, while numerous geophysical missions were canceled. Reaching the
martian surface 26 november 2018 and deploying SEIS with its robotic arm 19
december last, Insight has opened a new chapter in mars exploration, and has
put the previously neglected science of planetary seismology back on the map.
The event observed by Insight on sol 128 was of very weak amplitude, and
corresponds to a tiny displacement of the martian surface. The jolt was so
tenuous that it's not possible to localize its epicenter, the location of its
source on the globe of mars. By a domino effect, not knowing this makes the
analysis of the data very uncertain, and does not allow the event to be placed
on a scale of magnitude. It is also not possible to identify the physical
mechanism of the ground movement. It could be a micro-tremor from a more or
less great depth, probably in the crust, originating in stress from the cooling
and contraction of the planet, or it could be a meteorite impact.
Although seismologists working on Insight will continue to study the sol 128
event for many years to come, one interesting observation has already been
made: many fundamental characteristics of the event, such as its duration, its
form, and the distribution of energy in different frequencies, leads one to
think that the red planet, from a seismological point of view, is more like the
moon than the earth.
Mars seismology: a common thread with the moon
Unlike mars, the moon's first seismometers were placed not by a landed robot
but by the hands of astronauts during the Apollo missions. The first station,
set up by the crew of Apollo 11 in july 1969 on the sea of tranquility, only
worked for a month or so, but was quickly replaced by a network of more
sophisticated instruments set up by Apollo missions 12 14 15 and 16 in
different regions of the lunar near side. The last instrument was the
gravimeter from Apollo 17, later used as a seismometer.
As is often the case in planetary science, the moon quickly perplexed
seismologists, in as much as the data collected was very different from the
terrestrial data they had handled before. When the first lunar earthquakes
were recorded they were not initially recognized as such by scientists.
Crashing many heavy objects into the surface of the moon (like Saturn V third
stages or lunar modules) to create artificial vibrations helped geophysicists
recognize lunar seismic events and understand how seismic waves propagate
through our satellite.
This is due to the fact that the lunar regolith is completely dehydrated.
Although seismic waves experience little attenuation as a result of the very
low level of water, they are none the less diffracted in all directions by
structures of all sizes. Exposed to meteoritic bombardment for billions of
years, the lunar crust, far from being homogeneous, has been completely
crushed. Reverberating incessantly through the cracked and faulted envelope,
waveforms spread out in time and become complex. Instead of recording a clear
signal over a reasonably short time, a seismometer on the moon records instead
a very diffuse and unstructured signal spread out over a long interval of time
(up to an hour).
The way that the first seismic signal was detected on mars bore a striking
similarity to the way it happened on the moon. When it first appeared on the
control screens the event of sol 128 was originally classified as of unknown
origin. After discarding many hypotheses such as meteorological phenomena or
lander activity (like solar panel vibrations or robotic arm movements) or even
a parasitic signal from the instrument itself, seismologists at the Mars Quake
Service (MQS, a working group convened by Insight at the Ecole Polytechnique
Fédérale in Zurich) have used a series of techniques and sophisticated tools to
make the data speak, and have reached the conclusion that the sol 128 event
originated from mars, the first ever detected on the planet. And the
characteristics of the signal show that mars, like the moon, posseses
structures that strongly diffract seismic waves, and which make interpretation
of waveforms more complex than on earth.
In addition to sol 128, three other events are currently under consideration as
potential seismic events. They occurred respectively on sols 105 (14 march)
and 132 and 133 (11 and 12 april 2019). Unlike the signal of sol 128 they were
only heard by the SEIS's ultra-sensitive VBB detectors given the very small
amount of energy they contained. Although the origin of these signals remains
mysterious they are not associated with meteorological activity or currently
known noise sources.
Throughout its lifetime (july 1969 to september 1977) the Apollo lunar
seismometer network recorded 10,000 seismic events, often at a great depth
(800-1000km), but sometimes near the surface, and generally of weak magnitude
(less than 2 on the Richter scale), plus 2000 signals from meteoritic impacts.
All these events have allowed a determination of the interior structure of the
moon, a characterisation of the properties of its crust, mantle, and core, and
the proposing of hypotheses concerning its formation.
If the moon is to serve as a better guide to the analysis of data from Insight
than the earth, scientists will have to redouble their ingenuity to get mars to
reveal its secrets. The observation of the first series of events shows that
mars certainly still has seismic activity, if small, and that chances are good
that we will see larger events in the months and years to come, capable of
illuminating a good part of the interior structure of mars and revealing the
sectets of its evolution.
In planetary seismology patience is clearly a virtue, and for geophysicists
studying mars a 40-year wait has just come to an end.
Translation of:
https://www.seis-insight.eu/fr/actualites/469-quake-sol128
Insight detects the first earthquake on Mars
7 april 2019, during sol 128, the two detectors in the seismometer SEIS in
Insight detected the first seismic tremor on mars, more than 40 years after the
attempt by NASA's mythical Viking landers.
Since the wind and thermal sheild was emplaced 2 february 2019, which
dramatically reduced environmental noise, the seismometer SEIS on Insight has
been listening daily for activity on the red planet. Although the instrument
immediately presented researchers with a continual and very weak noise,
originating from both noise sources in the lander and the constant action of
the atmosphere on the surface, seismologists hoped above all to be able to pick
out the signature of seismic events from the data received every day from
Elysium Planitia. And now it has been done: during sol 128 the first
earthquake, weak but originating from mars, was detected by SEIS.
On the trail of Viking
Before Insight, the only seismometer capable of detecting earthquakes on mars
was that of the lander Viking 2, which landed 3 september 1976 on the desolate
and pebbly expanse of Utopia Planitia. Unlike the seismometer of Viking 1, of
which the movable part was never able to be unlocked, the instrument was
functional, but unfortunately it was rendered ineffective by the action of wind
on the landing site, especially during the day. This was due to the fact that,
unlike SEIS, Viking did not put its seismometer on the ground or use a wind
sheild.
All in all, over a period of 560 mars days (called sols), or 19 months from
1976 to 1978, the data returned by Viking 2's seismometer was mainly useful to
meteorologists. In all of the recorded data only 1 candidate event of
potentially seismic origin was detected on sol 80. Unfortunately no data was
colected by the weather station that sol, preventing validation of the event:
seismologists couldn't be certain that the sequence of vibrations was really of
seismic origin and not just wind. To prevent this from happening again,
Insight was equipped with an environmental station more capable than that of
Viking (temperature, wind speed and direction, ultra-sensitive barometer, and
magnetometer), and which is expected to function continually through the end of
the mission.
The sol 128 signal
Looking back, it's a good bet that none of the geophysicists who worked on
Viking could imagine that a period of 40 years would elapse before the
signature of an earthquake would finally be dected on the red planet. And yet
that's how it happened. After 1976 none of the succesful landers carried
seismometers, while numerous geophysical missions were canceled. Reaching the
martian surface 26 november 2018 and deploying SEIS with its robotic arm 19
december last, Insight has opened a new chapter in mars exploration, and has
put the previously neglected science of planetary seismology back on the map.
The event observed by Insight on sol 128 was of very weak amplitude, and
corresponds to a tiny displacement of the martian surface. The jolt was so
tenuous that it's not possible to localize its epicenter, the location of its
source on the globe of mars. By a domino effect, not knowing this makes the
analysis of the data very uncertain, and does not allow the event to be placed
on a scale of magnitude. It is also not possible to identify the physical
mechanism of the ground movement. It could be a micro-tremor from a more or
less great depth, probably in the crust, originating in stress from the cooling
and contraction of the planet, or it could be a meteorite impact.
Although seismologists working on Insight will continue to study the sol 128
event for many years to come, one interesting observation has already been
made: many fundamental characteristics of the event, such as its duration, its
form, and the distribution of energy in different frequencies, leads one to
think that the red planet, from a seismological point of view, is more like the
moon than the earth.
Mars seismology: a common thread with the moon
Unlike mars, the moon's first seismometers were placed not by a landed robot
but by the hands of astronauts during the Apollo missions. The first station,
set up by the crew of Apollo 11 in july 1969 on the sea of tranquility, only
worked for a month or so, but was quickly replaced by a network of more
sophisticated instruments set up by Apollo missions 12 14 15 and 16 in
different regions of the lunar near side. The last instrument was the
gravimeter from Apollo 17, later used as a seismometer.
As is often the case in planetary science, the moon quickly perplexed
seismologists, in as much as the data collected was very different from the
terrestrial data they had handled before. When the first lunar earthquakes
were recorded they were not initially recognized as such by scientists.
Crashing many heavy objects into the surface of the moon (like Saturn V third
stages or lunar modules) to create artificial vibrations helped geophysicists
recognize lunar seismic events and understand how seismic waves propagate
through our satellite.
This is due to the fact that the lunar regolith is completely dehydrated.
Although seismic waves experience little attenuation as a result of the very
low level of water, they are none the less diffracted in all directions by
structures of all sizes. Exposed to meteoritic bombardment for billions of
years, the lunar crust, far from being homogeneous, has been completely
crushed. Reverberating incessantly through the cracked and faulted envelope,
waveforms spread out in time and become complex. Instead of recording a clear
signal over a reasonably short time, a seismometer on the moon records instead
a very diffuse and unstructured signal spread out over a long interval of time
(up to an hour).
The way that the first seismic signal was detected on mars bore a striking
similarity to the way it happened on the moon. When it first appeared on the
control screens the event of sol 128 was originally classified as of unknown
origin. After discarding many hypotheses such as meteorological phenomena or
lander activity (like solar panel vibrations or robotic arm movements) or even
a parasitic signal from the instrument itself, seismologists at the Mars Quake
Service (MQS, a working group convened by Insight at the Ecole Polytechnique
Fédérale in Zurich) have used a series of techniques and sophisticated tools to
make the data speak, and have reached the conclusion that the sol 128 event
originated from mars, the first ever detected on the planet. And the
characteristics of the signal show that mars, like the moon, posseses
structures that strongly diffract seismic waves, and which make interpretation
of waveforms more complex than on earth.
In addition to sol 128, three other events are currently under consideration as
potential seismic events. They occurred respectively on sols 105 (14 march)
and 132 and 133 (11 and 12 april 2019). Unlike the signal of sol 128 they were
only heard by the SEIS's ultra-sensitive VBB detectors given the very small
amount of energy they contained. Although the origin of these signals remains
mysterious they are not associated with meteorological activity or currently
known noise sources.
Throughout its lifetime (july 1969 to september 1977) the Apollo lunar
seismometer network recorded 10,000 seismic events, often at a great depth
(800-1000km), but sometimes near the surface, and generally of weak magnitude
(less than 2 on the Richter scale), plus 2000 signals from meteoritic impacts.
All these events have allowed a determination of the interior structure of the
moon, a characterisation of the properties of its crust, mantle, and core, and
the proposing of hypotheses concerning its formation.
If the moon is to serve as a better guide to the analysis of data from Insight
than the earth, scientists will have to redouble their ingenuity to get mars to
reveal its secrets. The observation of the first series of events shows that
mars certainly still has seismic activity, if small, and that chances are good
that we will see larger events in the months and years to come, capable of
illuminating a good part of the interior structure of mars and revealing the
sectets of its evolution.
In planetary seismology patience is clearly a virtue, and for geophysicists
studying mars a 40-year wait has just come to an end.
Hopefully the first of many .
.
Thank you VERY much for the translation, rer.
One question that occurs to me is what effect large amounts of subsurface ice may have on seismic signatures. Hopefully there will be enough events detected to at least determine qualitative differences between the overall regoliths of Mars and the Moon in this area.
One question that occurs to me is what effect large amounts of subsurface ice may have on seismic signatures. Hopefully there will be enough events detected to at least determine qualitative differences between the overall regoliths of Mars and the Moon in this area.
Very useful translation, thanks! I think the Viking missions should be described as 'legendary' rather than 'mythical'. However, the new result is very exciting and hopefully only the first of many.
Phil
Phil
There's a new article on the NASA site showing the clouds and sunrise/sunset pics
Thanks for pointing those out. It's not clear what happened with the "colour corrected" versions - perhaps they meant to say false colour.
A day on Mars with pictures taken from the InSight Instrument Context Camera (ICC).
The two small yellow Sun symbols show when sunrise and sunset take place.
Enjoy
Click to view attachment
The two small yellow Sun symbols show when sunrise and sunset take place.
Enjoy
Click to view attachment
The InSight cameras are partially color blind (tritanomaly, with a short-wavelength sensitivity that is close to the mid-wavelength sensitivity). Maki et al (paywall) describe an aggressive matrix to convert InSight white-balanced images to sRGB. I suspect this is a result of that extrapolation.
Thanks for that reference. I can imagine that a matrix to sRGB would have to work hard to discriminate some colours. Still, the test chart images (Fig 8) seem to show that the sRGB conversion works well. Maybe being in a high S/N lab situation helps.
This makes me wonder what has been done to the public pngs. Perhaps just a white balance but no sRGB conversion? The public png colours look not bad, but I guess being in a nearly monochromatic environment helps! The flags and green and blue dots on the calibration target do look fairly desaturated, eg in this sol 10 image:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0004_0010M_.PNG
That's what you'd expect for an image before transforming to sRGB.
This makes me wonder what has been done to the public pngs. Perhaps just a white balance but no sRGB conversion? The public png colours look not bad, but I guess being in a nearly monochromatic environment helps! The flags and green and blue dots on the calibration target do look fairly desaturated, eg in this sol 10 image:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0004_0010M_.PNG
That's what you'd expect for an image before transforming to sRGB.
Thoughts of the mole being obstructed remind me of other cases where similar impasses occurred.
Apollo 15 drilled for two purposes, the first being the very same: To put a heat-flow probe below the surface. This was much more difficult than anticipated and led to delays and eventually accepting a lesser depth than desired. Drilling for a second purpose, a deep core sample, also did not go well, and even removing the drill proved more difficult than anticipated.
The drill gear/procedures were redesigned for Apollo 16, solving the drilling problem, but a different mishap disabled the heat-flow experiment on Apollo 16.
Apollo 14 used a sampling tube plus hammer without a drill and achieved a depth of only 70 cm.
Drilling was also difficult during Apollo 17 and consumed more time budget than expected. Harrison Schmitt, who operated the drill, summarized, "Anybody who's thinking about drilling on the moon — I don't think we have those issues settled yet."
I'm also reminded of the difficulty in placing a sample of ice into the Mars' Phoenix experiment (this was never accomplished as planned) and the outstanding possibility that the Deep Space 2 penetrator probes also failed due to unanticipated difficulty in the mechanical entry of the probes into the regolith (the true cause of failure may never be known).
All told, the rate of mishaps in penetrating the surface of another world more than a few centimeters is probably nearer 100% than 0% and, in context, the difficulty with the mole is not surprising.
Apollo 15 drilled for two purposes, the first being the very same: To put a heat-flow probe below the surface. This was much more difficult than anticipated and led to delays and eventually accepting a lesser depth than desired. Drilling for a second purpose, a deep core sample, also did not go well, and even removing the drill proved more difficult than anticipated.
The drill gear/procedures were redesigned for Apollo 16, solving the drilling problem, but a different mishap disabled the heat-flow experiment on Apollo 16.
Apollo 14 used a sampling tube plus hammer without a drill and achieved a depth of only 70 cm.
Drilling was also difficult during Apollo 17 and consumed more time budget than expected. Harrison Schmitt, who operated the drill, summarized, "Anybody who's thinking about drilling on the moon — I don't think we have those issues settled yet."
I'm also reminded of the difficulty in placing a sample of ice into the Mars' Phoenix experiment (this was never accomplished as planned) and the outstanding possibility that the Deep Space 2 penetrator probes also failed due to unanticipated difficulty in the mechanical entry of the probes into the regolith (the true cause of failure may never be known).
All told, the rate of mishaps in penetrating the surface of another world more than a few centimeters is probably nearer 100% than 0% and, in context, the difficulty with the mole is not surprising.
QUOTE (fredk @ May 4 2019, 10:09 AM)
Maybe being in a high S/N lab situation helps.
Signal levels in the lab are typically much lower than under solar illumination because it's hard to get sunlight in a lab.
The MER-heritage CCD has very low QE in the blue so the Bayer pattern needs a lot of boosting in the blue.
I'm not sure what issue you're actually reacting to.
QUOTE (mcaplinger @ May 6 2019, 02:17 AM)
I'm not sure what issue you're actually reacting to.
My original comment was about the recent press release cloud and sunrise/set animations, especially for the ICC. This is a frame from that animation, for which the caption reads "This color-corrected version more accurately shows the image as the human eye would see it":
Click to view attachment
It's hard to believe such saturated purples and cyans are accurate, given all the previous imaging of the sky, so my original comment was that perhaps they meant to say "false colour".
As Deimos suggested, maybe instead large errors were introduced in the matrix conversion to sRGB, since that matrix will have to amplify small differences between G and B channels due to their similar spectral responses.
QUOTE (fredk @ May 6 2019, 07:34 AM)
It's hard to believe such saturated purples and cyans are accurate...
Well, it is after sunset and the martian sky is bluish at sunset, and then someone may have put a strong log stretch on it to simulate the eye response? Who knows, these true color things are slippery.
QUOTE (PaulH51 @ May 6 2019, 03:29 PM)
Interesting Mole Update 'DLR HP3 Blog' link
QUOTE
Depending on the outcome of the diagnostic hammering, our next operation could be using the arm to load the support structure close to the fore-right-foot (the one you see in the image above) or the ground right next to the support structure near the tether box.
I don't quite understand the operation plans above. Are they talking about moving the frame of the mole?
QUOTE (akuo @ May 7 2019, 11:48 AM)
I don't quite understand the operation plans above. Are they talking about moving the frame of the mole?
They way I'm reading this - Is that they intend to apply load to the housing structure with the robotic arm (just above the foot pad you see in the image), I guess this is to prevent the housing moving during the test and thus compressing the regolith enough to either let the mole break through the duricrust and or increase the friction on the mole's hull so the whole mole enters the regolith.
QUOTE (fredk @ May 6 2019, 05:34 PM)
It's hard to believe such saturated purples and cyans are accurate, given all the previous imaging of the sky, so my original comment was that perhaps they meant to say "false colour".
As Deimos suggested, maybe instead large errors were introduced in the matrix conversion to sRGB, since that matrix will have to amplify small differences between G and B channels due to their similar spectral responses.
As Deimos suggested, maybe instead large errors were introduced in the matrix conversion to sRGB, since that matrix will have to amplify small differences between G and B channels due to their similar spectral responses.
Dear Fred, I must agree with your assumptions.
Here are some color-processed VL1 'sky-dynamics' pictures taken at sunrise (with fog) and at sunset.
The Martian sky has indeed a bluish halo, but near the Sun, and the rest is amber-colored (i.e. a desaturated salmon pink).
Enjoy
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
QUOTE (PaulH51 @ May 7 2019, 12:41 AM)
They way I'm reading this - Is that they intend to apply load to the housing structure with the robotic arm (just above the foot pad you see in the image), I guess this is to prevent the housing moving during the test and thus compressing the regolith enough to either let the mole break through the duricrust and or increase the friction on the mole's hull so the whole mole enters the regolith.
Not without parsing things carefully, I read it the same way. They mention "applying load" at either of two places. The support structure, or the ground adjacent to the support structure. Holding the structure might give the mole more leverage. Pressing on the ground might make things more cohesive beneath the surface.
We're talking about the DLR blog
QUOTE (fredk @ May 6 2019, 07:34 AM)
It's hard to believe such saturated purples and cyans are accurate, given all the previous imaging of the sky, so my original comment was that perhaps they meant to say "false colour".
I sat down this morning with Justin Maki and looked at a bunch of color-corrected Insight images. Justin has, IMHO, done a spectacular job with this and most of the images are really nice. This particular one was obviously very dark and then it was simply linearly stretched on the clouds, which make them a lot more contrasty than they would really be. But the underlying blue tint is real.
I encourage everyone to look at the color-corrected versions when they get released to the PDS.
Thanks a lot for asking about this. For sure if a linear stretch includes a constant term (ie if the black point is shifted, so the darks are clipped) then you can get a boost in saturation. Conversely you can tone down the saturation in this image with another linear stretch (with black point shift). The upper right corner of the image does appear to be clipped.
The palette available in these 8-bit gifs can also do wonky things to colours.
The palette available in these 8-bit gifs can also do wonky things to colours.
I think we're making progress...?
Compare
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0693M_.PNG
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0704M_.PNG
The whole HP3 assembly is moving again. (animated .gif attached)
Compare
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0693M_.PNG
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0704M_.PNG
The whole HP3 assembly is moving again. (animated .gif attached)
QUOTE (Hungry4info @ May 9 2019, 08:23 AM)
I think we're making progress...?
....The whole HP3 assembly is moving again. (animated .gif attached)
....The whole HP3 assembly is moving again. (animated .gif attached)
I think they were hoping to see some movement of the science tether in the housing window highlighted in this image, I've sampled the frames from sol 158 and can't see any movement of the tether with my ageing eyes
Click to view attachment
Here's a far better animation showing the movement of the HP3 shaft by landru79.
https://twitter.com/landru79/status/1126141561354498048
https://twitter.com/landru79/status/1126141561354498048
The footing seems to have remained stable compared to the significant movement observed in the last (Sol 92 - 3rd March) operation of the mole.
Off to the northwest from the landing site there is a hill. It was very faintly visible in early panoramas posted here, and I was just looking at it again in recent images. Here's a view of it accompanied by a version of the same image stretched vertically (Me-o-vision style) to make it easier to see the shape. It looks as if it has a lower extension to the right which I had not seen before. This may help identify it in HiRISE images (I had 2 candidates). This is a composite of two recent images.
Let me know if you spot any other small distant hills like this. There is a distant long ridge to the east which is easy to spot on orbital images.
Phil
Click to view attachment
Let me know if you spot any other small distant hills like this. There is a distant long ridge to the east which is easy to spot on orbital images.
Phil
Click to view attachment
The InSight raw image server was not updated with new images for about a week, but it's now back on line and all the new images are once again coming in, and hopefully the first PDS release (1a) will be made available soon (May 24, 2019). Thanks to Phil for the earlier heads up on the planned date.
Translation of https://www.seis-insight.eu/fr/actualites/4...is-data-release
First public availability of SEIS seismometer data
The first seismometer recordings from the seismometer SEIS on InSight will now
be available for all! From friday 24 May a set of recordings covering a period
of 3 months, from 26 November 2018, the day of landing, to the end of February
2019, will be freely available under the heading "Science" on the official SEIS
website.
https://www.seis-insight.eu/en/science/science-summary
Since being deployed on the surface of mars, on the equatorial plane of
Elysium, the seismometer SEIS has been recording the faintest movements of the
red planet. The signals the instrument records are transmitted daily by UHF to
a fleet of satellites orbiting mars which are tasked with relaying the data
packets to earth, thanks mainly to the network of powerful antennas provided by
NASA's DSN.
Having been recovered in the control rooms of JPL in California, the data is
sent to SISMOC, the seismometer operations center run by the french space
agency CNES in Toulouse. Once verified and analysed, the data is transformed
into an international standard format called SEED, well known to seismologists
everywhere.
From Toulouse, the data is sent to the Mars SEIS Data Service (MSDS), a service
of the data center of the Institut de Physique du Globe (IPG) in Paris, where
it is verified once again before being archived and transmitted to the InSight
science team through the SEIS Data Portal (SDP). The MSDS is also in charge of
making the data available to the public through three international venues:
NASA's Planetary Data System in the USA, the Incorporated Research Institutions
for Seismology (IRIS) also in the USA, and finally the data center at IPGP in
France.
Starting this Friday 24 May at 9pm in Paris access will be provided to data
recorded 3 months ago on the red planet, from 26 November 2018 to 28 February
2019. This first data set contains only uncalibrated data. On 26 June, a
calibrated data set covering the period from 26 November 2018 to 31 March 2019
will be made publically available. As for derived products, the first ones
will be available starting in October 2019.
Some schools participating in the program called "Sismo à l’école", coordinated
by the GéoAzur lab in Nice, will also receive data from mars and will be able
to integrate it into their teaching. Under the leadership of the educational
program set up for InSight, many classes at colleges and high schools had
already been prepared to use data from SEIS by participating in blind tests run
by the Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Zurich, a member of the InSight mission.
As part of these full-dress rehersals, students learned to use data
visualization tools to look for potentially interesting events. Now it will be
real data from mars circulating through the network to hundreds of
institutions, and the students will likely experience the same anticipation and
excitement that the mission seismologists are familiar with. The transmission
of data to classes in this program will offer them the unique opportunity to
follow in almost-real time the seismic activity of another planet.
To find out more
Access SEIS instrument data through the official site
https://www.seis-insight.eu/en/science/science-summary
Web site of the IPGP data center
http://centrededonnees.ipgp.fr/
SEIS data on NASA's PDS
https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/insight/seis.htm
IRIS
https://www.iris.edu/hq/
"Sismo à l’école" for InSight
https://insight.oca.eu/fr/accueil-insight
Open access reference article in english giving an exhaustive description of SEIS
Lognonné, P., Banerdt, W.B., Giardini, D. et al. Space Sci Rev (2019) 215:12.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6
First public availability of SEIS seismometer data
The first seismometer recordings from the seismometer SEIS on InSight will now
be available for all! From friday 24 May a set of recordings covering a period
of 3 months, from 26 November 2018, the day of landing, to the end of February
2019, will be freely available under the heading "Science" on the official SEIS
website.
https://www.seis-insight.eu/en/science/science-summary
Since being deployed on the surface of mars, on the equatorial plane of
Elysium, the seismometer SEIS has been recording the faintest movements of the
red planet. The signals the instrument records are transmitted daily by UHF to
a fleet of satellites orbiting mars which are tasked with relaying the data
packets to earth, thanks mainly to the network of powerful antennas provided by
NASA's DSN.
Having been recovered in the control rooms of JPL in California, the data is
sent to SISMOC, the seismometer operations center run by the french space
agency CNES in Toulouse. Once verified and analysed, the data is transformed
into an international standard format called SEED, well known to seismologists
everywhere.
From Toulouse, the data is sent to the Mars SEIS Data Service (MSDS), a service
of the data center of the Institut de Physique du Globe (IPG) in Paris, where
it is verified once again before being archived and transmitted to the InSight
science team through the SEIS Data Portal (SDP). The MSDS is also in charge of
making the data available to the public through three international venues:
NASA's Planetary Data System in the USA, the Incorporated Research Institutions
for Seismology (IRIS) also in the USA, and finally the data center at IPGP in
France.
Starting this Friday 24 May at 9pm in Paris access will be provided to data
recorded 3 months ago on the red planet, from 26 November 2018 to 28 February
2019. This first data set contains only uncalibrated data. On 26 June, a
calibrated data set covering the period from 26 November 2018 to 31 March 2019
will be made publically available. As for derived products, the first ones
will be available starting in October 2019.
Some schools participating in the program called "Sismo à l’école", coordinated
by the GéoAzur lab in Nice, will also receive data from mars and will be able
to integrate it into their teaching. Under the leadership of the educational
program set up for InSight, many classes at colleges and high schools had
already been prepared to use data from SEIS by participating in blind tests run
by the Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Zurich, a member of the InSight mission.
As part of these full-dress rehersals, students learned to use data
visualization tools to look for potentially interesting events. Now it will be
real data from mars circulating through the network to hundreds of
institutions, and the students will likely experience the same anticipation and
excitement that the mission seismologists are familiar with. The transmission
of data to classes in this program will offer them the unique opportunity to
follow in almost-real time the seismic activity of another planet.
To find out more
Access SEIS instrument data through the official site
https://www.seis-insight.eu/en/science/science-summary
Web site of the IPGP data center
http://centrededonnees.ipgp.fr/
SEIS data on NASA's PDS
https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/insight/seis.htm
IRIS
https://www.iris.edu/hq/
"Sismo à l’école" for InSight
https://insight.oca.eu/fr/accueil-insight
Open access reference article in english giving an exhaustive description of SEIS
Lognonné, P., Banerdt, W.B., Giardini, D. et al. Space Sci Rev (2019) 215:12.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6
Thank you very much, rhr!
This is terrific outreach, and a unique opportunity for citizen science. Looking forward to the findings of these groups!
This is terrific outreach, and a unique opportunity for citizen science. Looking forward to the findings of these groups!
Looking at the Insight weather records https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/ the minimum temperature for Sol 172 is surely an error. -133.5° C or -208.3° F in American parlance is a third lower than the norm.
I didn't recognize the sol 126 night sky field, but the new sol 176 field is easy:
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0678M_.PNG
That's Orion's belt and sword near the upper right and Sirius to its lower left.
It's jarring to see the belt stars trailing the "wrong way" due to the different pole (though we've seen this before with MER).
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight-raw-images/su...0000_0678M_.PNG
That's Orion's belt and sword near the upper right and Sirius to its lower left.
It's jarring to see the belt stars trailing the "wrong way" due to the different pole (though we've seen this before with MER).
QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ May 15 2019, 12:29 PM)
Off to the northwest from the landing site there is a hill. [...] It looks as if it has a lower extension to the right which I had not seen before.
I'm thinking it may be part of a crater rim, considering how populated with craters the area around Homestead Hollow seems to be.
The grapple on the robotic arm has been released on Sol 182 (June 1)
Are we going to see a lift on the HP3 housing? I can't think of any other reason for releasing the grapple.
No new entries on the mission blog
Click to view attachment
Are we going to see a lift on the HP3 housing? I can't think of any other reason for releasing the grapple.
No new entries on the mission blog
Click to view attachment
Interesting! The mission blog says they believe the mole is down 30 cm, with 7 cm still in the support structure if I interpret them correctly.
We don't know how much modeling they have done and a move now seems risky, but beggars can't be choosers.
Maybe they pull the structure up and it frees the mole from the structure it's rubbing against so it can proceed down at an angle.
We don't know how much modeling they have done and a move now seems risky, but beggars can't be choosers.
Maybe they pull the structure up and it frees the mole from the structure it's rubbing against so it can proceed down at an angle.
Moving the probe site was something that nobody seemed willing to consider. If this is actually going to be tried, it may come at the cost of some damage to the apparatus and other unanticipated complications, so it likely means that the team believes the probability of success in the present location is very low. Trying something innovative and risky is infinitely preferable to letting the present stalemate continue on to the end of the mission.
The lesson of Hayabusa I is that human ingenuity and persistence can make a crucial difference even in unmanned missions. In a nail-biting way it will be fun to see if they can pull it off. Space is difficult.
The lesson of Hayabusa I is that human ingenuity and persistence can make a crucial difference even in unmanned missions. In a nail-biting way it will be fun to see if they can pull it off. Space is difficult.
Sol 182 Animated Grapple test: I guess this increases the odds of an imminent attempt at getting the mole deeper into the regolith? Good luck team InSight
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment
I wonder if they figure that holding on with the grapple during hammering will help somehow. I'm not yet ready to jump to the conclusion that they're moving hp3.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed the heavy pixelation in the grapple animation, some of that was brought about by my processing, but the PNG images are unusually compressed compared with images issued since the mission started.
I checked the file size of an image of the arm / grapple / sky (without terrain) from sol 175 it was 1.13Mb. This latest batch from sol 182 are only ~240Kb.
I know the mission image server was loading slowly on mobile connections, but I hope that they did not fix that by compressing the detail out of the public images, when they only needed to add thumbnails in order to speed server loading times. I hope that future images loaded on the server return to the resolution seen before this batch, it would appear to be an outreach disaster if the public have await several months for the PDS versions to be posted.
I checked the file size of an image of the arm / grapple / sky (without terrain) from sol 175 it was 1.13Mb. This latest batch from sol 182 are only ~240Kb.
I know the mission image server was loading slowly on mobile connections, but I hope that they did not fix that by compressing the detail out of the public images, when they only needed to add thumbnails in order to speed server loading times. I hope that future images loaded on the server return to the resolution seen before this batch, it would appear to be an outreach disaster if the public have await several months for the PDS versions to be posted.
It seems very unlikely that compression was for the sake of loading the public page faster. My guess is that sequence of grapple shots was actually captured at higher compression - notice that it's a large sequence. And later frames are back up to the larger filesize.
(I agree that thumbnails would be welcome!)
(I agree that thumbnails would be welcome!)
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7416
QUOTE
the team plans to use InSight's robotic arm to lift the structure out of the way. Depending on what they see, the team might use InSight's robotic arm to help the mole further later this summer.
A video with further details has been released as well, showing their test model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9sJl3lacpQ
So much for the 'it's a boring mission after EDL and instrument deployment' chatter we had earlier (though I'm sure everyone involved would have preferred that!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9sJl3lacpQ
So much for the 'it's a boring mission after EDL and instrument deployment' chatter we had earlier (though I'm sure everyone involved would have preferred that!)
"If removed from the soil, the mole can't go back in."
Why is this? I understand that the structure provides initial guidance for the probe and that there is no way to reinsert the probe into the structure, but couldn't the arm be used to provide a bit of guidance to the probe to get it restarted?
Why is this? I understand that the structure provides initial guidance for the probe and that there is no way to reinsert the probe into the structure, but couldn't the arm be used to provide a bit of guidance to the probe to get it restarted?
Because the mole can only drill forward. If it's laying on the ground on its side, that's game-over. There's no plausible way to right it.
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