Goals

Eagle-eyed readers may notice that there is a new mission statement for the project, over on the right-hand side there. (It's under the heading that says "Mission Statement".) Currently MMB2.0 is a program directed at a small set of fairly hard-core space enthusiasts, who already know quite a bit about the robotic Mars missions. My new goal is turn MMB2.0 into a program that anyone can download and start learning about the Mars Exploration Rover missions immediately. The way I intend to do that, in short, is to bring back the "Browser" in Midnight Mars Browser.

Right now the program could more accurately be called "Midnight Mars Downloader" - it is geared toward downloading images from the missions, and then viewing them. In contrast, a true "Browser" would mean wandering around "areas", and having the images download more-or-less automatically as needed. This is not a trivial excercise with missions as data-rich as the rovers, where there are many gigabytes of image data involved. Managing how much data is stored on a user's computer may be a challenge. But for our new target audience of casual users, especially ones who can't dedicate 10 gigabytes or more of hard drive space to MER image storage, this is the way to go.

A secondary shift here is one from where MMB was a program for following the latest images in the ongoing rover missions, to a mode where it is more a record of the missions gone by. This would be a natural progression to begin now, since the rovers are moving slowly with age these days, having already been successful beyond anyone's dreams. One could eventually view the software as a new "book" about the rovers. The content is data made publicly available by NASA; the program is just a new way to gather and organize it.

That's the plan. The good news is, a lot of the program is already in place. The changes just made with regard to movement in panorama mode (see the previous post) are a step in this direction. But there's a lot of work yet to get to this goal, and as always, it's just a spare-time project. So we'll see how things go. If you can support the project, please consider donating. Even a supportive comment on the blog would be appreciated.

2.0 Dev 13 - Movement by clicking on hotspots

In panorama mode, the rover model now automatically appears in position when you hover the mouse over a 'hotspot' in the rover tracking. And, when you click on the hotspot, the panorama view now shifts to that position. So now you can wander around in the rovers' footsteps just by clicking with the mouse.

As usual, you can download the latest here, or if you already have 2.0, you can use the "Update Software" feature in the Help menu.

Website Update

I've updated to a new Blogger template, and updated the site to emphasize MMB 2.0. Blogger's new template editing features are pretty impressive. Okay, maybe they're not that new, I just haven't been paying attention until now.

Also I've enabled comments once again - but with moderation turned on, to avoid spam.

Oh, and, if you use Midnight Mars Browser and want to support the project, the "Donate" button is back, over on the right.

Google Code

The Midnight Mars Browser project is now hosted here at Google Code. Google Code is a fantastic place for hosting small open-source software projects like MMB. Setup and administration is a breeze (so far, anyway), which is particularly important for a spare-time developer without a lot of spare time. I'll be updating the site with additional documentation, and updating the issues list, as time allows.

Metadata Vacation

Metadata updates will resume on January 2.

The rovers are moving so slowly these days, I'm guessing not much will happen for the next week anyway.

2.0 Dev Release 10

This update to 2.0 sees some reorganization to make it easier and less confusing to browse images.

The "Locations" view has been replaced by a new "Time Intervals" view. Previously, MMB panoramas contained all the images from one location. This doesn't always work very well, since increasingly, the rovers are staying in one place for long periods of time, and images often overlap. So now, panoramas and slideshows are organized by "time intervals".

In the "Viewer Settings" there is a new "Time intervals" section with controls for how panoramas and slideshows are split up. The options are:

- "Split by location": Images are grouped by rover location.
- "Split by sol": Images are grouped by sol (day)
- "Split by elapse minutes": Images are grouped by time interval. A new time interval is created if there are more than X minutes between images.



Another change is that the "Images" view now shows images from the currently viewed time interval only. The selected time interval is displayed at the top of the view.



So for example, take Spirit's "McMurdo" pan, which was split over two different rover locations (technically; actually the rover did not move). You can use the new controls to browse, in panorama mode, each day's images separately. Or, you can view the images from each location separately. Or, you can now (for the first time in MMB) view the entire panorama, including both locations at once - by specifying the start sol (809) and the end sol (1009), and turning off all the "split by" options. Here's a view:



As usual, you can get the latest version by using the Update Software feature. If you update, you may see an "unable to restore all workbench views" dialog the first time you start up. This is because the Locations view no longer exists; just click "ok" and open the Time Intervals view using the Windows menu.

Yeah!

What a great idea: Spirit and Opportunity '08!!! At last, a ticket I
can really get behind.

http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2007/10/example-of-good-return-on-govt-money.html

Sent from my iPhone

September 30 Planetary Society Mars Rover Update

Another great rover update by A.J.S Rayl at the Planetary Society:

http://www.planetary.org/news/

2007/0930_Mars_Exploration_Rovers_Update_Spirit.html

Highlights: Teams hopes to have Spirit winter at Von Braun/Goddard
after investigating Home Plate. Opportunity will be at her present
location for some weeks, investigating the top of the bright layer
inside Victoria Crater. The bright layer actually has three distinct
layers, which will be named after influential sedimentologists and
stratigraphers, the top layer being named 'Steno'.

Movie - Opportunity Enters Victoria Crater

Version 2.0 Development Release 8

With the unofficial end of summer, comes the unofficial resumption of work on Midnight Mars Browser. My hope is to slowly add some more "polish" to the application, and finally get to an official "2.0" release.

Dev version 8 is a small step in that direction. I've upgraded the framework to Eclipse 3.3, which buys us a few nice features. In particular the popup views are very useful, once you've figured out how to use them.

I've also added some icons for the views. Right now these icons are "borrowed" from Eclipse and unmannedspaceflight.com; I'll have to work on making some proper icons later.

Unfortunately the Update Software feature doesn't seem to be working for some reason, so if you want this one, you'll need to download it from here.

Version 2.0 Development Release 7

I've posted the latest and greatest... If you are already using MMB 2.0 dev5 or later, you can just choose Help -> Update Software (be sure to let it run... it should have a progress indicator but does not yet). Otherwise, here.

Important note: You will need to update to this latest version for the panorama feature to work correctly. This is because the metadata has changed to support the latest features (namely, the rover motion counter 'overflow' issue is finally fixed for panorama mode - you're welcome).

A lot of work went into streamlining the panorama feature in this release. I think it now officially kicks the stuffing out of 1.x's panorama feature.

Finally: there are literally dozens of items left on the To-Do List, but work on it will probably slow down considerably over the summer.

Movies Gone

I had to take down the movies, as they were using up too much bandwidth.

76m drive on Opportunity Sol 1163

76m drive on Opportunity Sol 1163, originally uploaded by marscat.

Opportunity has begun the trip back to "Duck Bay", where it's likely that she will drive into Victoria Crater.

Flickr's blog feature has been improved since I last tried it.

Drive on Opportunity sol 1162

Drive on Opportunity sol 1162, originally uploaded by marscat.

Rover Model Feature; New Movies

To go along with the rover tracking feature in MMB2.0, there will soon be a "Rover Model" feature, where you can move a 3D model of the rover along the rover's actual path to see what it looks like in relation to the surroundings. UnmannedSpaceflight.com maestro Doug Ellison created the 3D rover model that MMB will use. Check it out an early version in these QuickTime movies:

Opportunity Sol 1061-1066 w/model

Spirit Summit movie

And there are some screenshots here.

New Movie - Opportunity Sols 1061-1066

Here's a new rover movie showing Opportunity's drive along the edge of "The Bay of Toil," at Victoria Crater, Mars, on sols 1061 and 1066. This is captured using MMB2.0's panorama screenshot feature. It's different from other rover movies in that the view is in ground-relative perspective instead of rover-relative perspective. There are many more sequences of images that could be captured like this.

Version 2.0Dev5

I've posted the fifth development version of MMB 2.0. This version includes:

- "Update Software" feature: The Eclipse "Update Software" feature has been added: this will make it easier to get updates to the software from now on. Just select "Update Software" from the help menu and away you go. Of course you need to download this one last version the old fashioned way, to get the software update feature.

- Panorama Info View: The Panorama Info View shows the direction, field of view, and other information about the currently viewed panorama.

- Image Info View: The Image Info View shows information about the current image.

- Separate "Get Latest Image from Exploratorium" and "Get Latest Images from JPL" menu options: I've split up the two "Get Latest Images" options. The single "Get Latest Images" option used to check both Exploratorium and JPL for new images, but when Exploratorium is up and running it is rarely necessary to check JPL, so checking just Exploratorium saves time.

The previous development version (Dev 4) also saw the introduction of the "Rover Tracking" feature, where you can see the rover tracking information visualized in the Panorama.

To download the development version of Midnight Mars Browser 2.0, you can go here

And no, this isn't meant to be an April Fools joke...

Version 2.0 Development Release

I've posted a development release of Midnight Mars Browser 2.0. "Development Release" means it's a preview version and not feature-complete. It may have problems. This release is for folks who are already using MMB 1.x and want to take a walk on the wild side. You can go here and read the notices, if you dare.

Vacation

Well, sort of a vacation... more like work-related exile... Anyway, I will be away from MMBCentCom until next Thursday the eighth, so no metadata updates until then. But there's some fun stuff coming after that, so stay tuned.

Version 2.0

No, Version 2.0 isn't done yet (and it's still kind of a tossup whether it ever will be), but if you're curious, you can see development screenshots here.