El Dorado

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

Some nice Pancam false-color images are now coming in of "El Dorado". I happen to be home today so the MMB pan metadata has been updated with the new images.

Things to Come in 2006 (Maybe)

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

As far as MMB programming goes, I'm officially "retired" - not that I was ever "hired" - but there are still some things I'd like to get done in 2006, if I can find the time.

One of the smaller things to do is to make it easier to update the metadata on this end. That might result in timelier metadata updates on your end, plus make my life easier.

One other, larger, task would be to rewrite the program as an Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) application. This might allow me to give the program a much nicer user interface. Reasons why this might actually get done include the fact that I need to be learning Eclipse plugin and RCP programming anyway, and this would give me another area to develop my "skillz".

Another thing I'd like to do is get rid of some of the program's remaining memory leaks and improve the performance of the Panorama feature (especially switching between panoramas). Unfortunately no one bought me JProfiler for Christmas. :(

Anyway, those are things I'd kind of "like" to do with the program - whether they actually get done or not depend on whether I find time and focus in the New Year. We'll see what happens.

To all twenty or so of you who read this blog: Happy New Year (Soon)!

Comanche Tidbits

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

New Mission Update by Steve Squyres at the Athena site. Summary: Similar to the other rocks around here, Comanche is relatively unaltered and has lots of olivine, but it otherwise appears to have a different composition from anything so far, so it may be yet another new Gusev rock type. Next Spirit target is El Dorado; expect lots of driving. Oppy, on the other hand, won't be going anywhere for awhile as they are still figuring out how to safely stow the arm. "64KC" now probably the best-imaged site on the planet. :)

"Comanche" Up Close and Personal

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

Some false-color closeups of "Comanche" now coming in...

I couldn't begin to speculate what we are looking at, but it's interesting to me that the rock is broken up, and appears to be much darker than the bedrock beneath it. I've been puzzling over this one for a while, in my clueless non-geologist kind of way. I hope somebody more knowledgable throws some commentary out there soon... This just looks like a rock that is trying to tell us something new.

"Comanche"

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

Spirit is on final approach to "Comanche", seen here.

Meanwhile, Opporunity's arm is working again, mostly, which is great news. See the latest Mission Report by Steve Sqyures", here.

Opportunity's Shadow

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

Opportunity took this image of her shadow on Sol 669. Pancam false-color.

Opportunity Hits a Snag

Planterary Society Blog article (with a MMB screenshot)

Here's hoping the rover operators can figure out a way to get the arm working again. Good luck to them and Opportunity.

If not, well... there are worse things to have than a mobile camera platform with a working MiniTES on a still largely unexplored planet. But let's not go there yet.

The Inner Basin

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Originally uploaded by marscat.

Spirit is spending the weekend investigating a rock outcrop and returning this magnificent panorama of the Inner Basin. I've created the brightness-adjustment metadata so this is what you'll see in the Midnight Mars Browser program. There are a bunch of other images on the Flickr page.

Happy Birthsol, Spirit!

Spirit Rover has now survived a complete Martian year (almost two Earth years!) at Gusev Crater on Mars. Congratulations to Spirit and the entire MER team!

Here are some great synthetic images of Spirit on Mars:





Here is the official JPL website feature.

Pictures Site Back Up

I'm going to try posting images to the pictures site again, and keep this site for software updates.

Spirit Sol 651-653

A view of Lower Haskin Ridge from Spirit Sol 651-653. The depression where Spirit is currently parked as of Sol 656 is at center bottom.

Spirit Sol 651 False-Color

Pancam false-color is being returned from Spirit Sol 651. Meanwhile Spirit has reached Lower Haskin Ridge, completing the first part of her descent from the Husband Hill summit.

Version 1.4.0

Midnight Mars Browser version 1.4.0 has been posted. This version features some performance enhancements, particularly for the Slideshow feature. Also, for the first time I am releasing the program source code under the GNU General Public License. A few people have expressed an interest in seeing the source code for learning purposes; a few people may be interested in actually extending the program. Personally, I'd like to see a Midnight Saturn Browser, and I don't have time to do it myself.

Download the latest version of Midnight Mars Browser

Opportunity Sol 631: Erebus West

Back on "land". And the tall drifts are beautiful:



Fortunately we don't have to drive over them.

Opportunity Sol 630 - Approaching Erebus West End

Approaching Erebus west end. No obvious signs of dust storms to be seen.

Anaglyph version

Spirit Sol 649-650: Leaving Kansas

Spirit has finished up with "Kansas" and is continuing downhill.

Exploratorium Mega-Posting

No doubt because of their recent server outage, Exploratorium has posted a huge number (thousands) of old Spirit images on October 31. MMB users who haven't previously downloaded all the images should just keep auto-update off for a day or two more and then choose "Reset Last Download Time..." from the Update menu to avoid downloading all these images. Sorry, not much I can do about it at this point.

Calibrated Color Posted for Sols 360-450

Daniel Crotty's calibrated color images for Sols 360-450 have been posted at his site. You can download these using MMB and view them in the Panorama feature. MMB Pan metadata has been updated again to take the new images into account. Above is the view from "Larry's Lookout" (Spirit Sol 409-414).

PDS Update: Sols 360-450

PDS-based MMB panorama definitions for Sols 360-450 have been posted. Since I fixed some bugs in the part of MMB that reads PDS metadata and generates MMB panorama definitions, I've updated the definitions for Sols 1-360 as well. (A trick to download all the new definitions faster for big updates like this is to delete your MMBHome/metadata/downloaded directory and then do a metadata update.)

Dust Storm

news update