Tune in to NASA TV and the press conference to see more of the images. Since I didn't go to sleep, I figured I'd continue to share with anyone that's reading my enjoyment of the NASA/JPL press conference. I tried to get a slightly more accurate transcript but it's not quite up to "quotable outside this blog" levels :-) so don't go quoting these fine folks based on my record. It is pretty close though.
Ed Weiler:
"I will stop calling Mars the 'death planet'...For the first time in history we have an interplanetary communications network."
Steve Squyres:
"These people are the future of NASA. These people got us onto Mars. An amazing team and I'm proud of you guys...Not only have we landed in Gusev crater...but we have hit the 'science sweet spot' in Gusev crater...Team has already been able to match impact craters up with images taken from MGS and we landed in the sweet spot...We see enough rocks that we can do great science but they're not going to get in our way...This area looks like it has been swept free of dust. We see a lot of exposed rock surfaces...There are some 'pits' and I don't want to call them craters but we see what look like topographic depressions. They could be impact craters or deflation hollows. They are filled in with very fine grained materials and we're certainly going to want to take a look at these but except for these, the area has been swept clean which is ideal for our equipment, our cameras, and our wheels...It's a beautiful day."
Jennifer Trospar:
"Not one of our tests was as good as today...We've spent the last three and a half years together in an incredibly challenging and stressful situation...let these people know how important their contribution is" (applause).
"The state of the vehicle: clearly it's in good shape. We were base petal down...The solar array current is as expected and the batteries are fully charged. The telecom subsystem has performed. We projected 16 Megabits of data in this pass and we got 24 Megabits...We have the capability to send commands from Earth to the rover as well as to send commands to Odyssey and then to the rover...No faults, we're all green...There probably won't be much more pancam data until tomorrow...We have a lot of [egress] options...The big things that will happen tomorrow morning is 7 hours from now MGS data pass then four hours after that we'll have another Odyssey pass and then around 5PM tomorrow we will have direct low-gain contact...Later tomorrow we'll have high-gain contact."
Richard Cook(?):
"Relay equipment from MGS and Odyssey worked like a champ...We got a really amazing machine on the surface of Mars. We got a long surface mission ahead of us which is good because we're going to be driving a long ways..."
Q1. Can somebody say when we can expect a color picture. Also, chatter about 83% efficiency off the solar panels. We wanted to know what that was.
Jennifer: "If we get the high-gain set we'll get color late afternoon and evening tomorrow...Solar was working. I'm not familiar with any comments about that."
Q2. Dr. Squires, anything about the hills?
Steve: "We could have bounced and rolled a kilometer. I'm sure that right now my guys up in the science area are trying to do some triangulations. Between the descent images and the hills on the horizon which can be used as landmarks for triangulation...is going to give us a position really fast."
Q3. What's good about a dry lake bed?
Steve: "Sedimentary rock is what we are seeking here in Gusev. They can give us a great deal of information about what it was like here long ago."
Q4. Did you get back all of the descent images and why so soon.
Steve: "Sorry." (laughter).
Jennifer: "Things went very well."
Steve: "We got more than we expected because the geometry was such that we had a longer pass than we expected."
O'Keefe: "They all wish they had bought lottery tickets today. We have been so lucky. Sorry that we've kept you up so late" (laughter).
Q5. Did you expect this site to be rockier and have bigger rocks.
Steve: "It's definitely good. This rock population is as close to ideal as I could have possibly have dreamed...This is taylor made for driving on. The rocks really look swept clean and is a much cleaner surface than we had any right to hope for....The dust devils and wind have swept things clean. A lot of exposed rocks and a good surface for driving. It's quite possible that these rocks are so clean that we might not have to use the RAT much."
Q6. Next few days, how will it work.
Steve: "We're in the portion that is totally scripted and we'll be in this for the next few weeks...First the health checks...Second we're going to start acquiring some big panoramas. We will also get infrared panoramas. We've divided these panoramas into octants to do them piece at a time over a number of sols...We've wedged these data acquisitions in between the activities of getting the rover up and active...Everything's planned for the next 9 sols and we don't start reacting and planning until we have wheels in the dirt..."
Q7. Can you say anything more about that one big rock you're right up against. Could the lander have rolled to a stop against that rock.
Jennifer: "We don't actually have the size of the rock yet but we'll be working on that tonight and tomorrow...It is possible that we kinda butted up against it...Actually we have an estimate, 75-80 centimeters.
Steve: "These are not our best images...Give us a little time and we'll tell you about that rock."
Q8. Can you tell us about the mini-TES and what you expect to see.
Steve: "Fist mini-TES data around sol 4...Before that a health check. Starting around sol 4 we will get a full 360 degree panorama...This is a really good scene for mini-TES."
Q9. We've seen the two panoramas. Is that the same image data?
Steve: "Yes. They are exactly the same data projected in different ways. The thing I like about the polar panorama is that you can see the craft."
Q10. The one descent image looked oblique.
Steve: "It's actually not. The reason it looked oblique is that we do some on board summing and the way these cameras work is that we can sum it in one dimension in hardware...factor of 4 distortion...in fact that is just an artifact of how the image was handled in hardware."
Q11. Could you confirm that your re-turning job has restored the mosbauer spectrometer.
Steve "We won't know that until we've completed the tests....We've managed to get some nice data out of it during cruise. All of the instruments have just been through a lot. We'll be doing health checks over the next couple of sols. If it's doing as well now as it was during cruise we'll get great data out of it.
Q12. Can you get to that big rock with IDD without moving off the lander and have you seen the Gs that you took on landing.
Steve: "No. We're going to drive a nice safe distance."
Richard: "Right now it's too early to have gotten that data... In the next couple of days we'll be able to get that."
Q13. total number of images? Is that sunset?
Richard/Jennifer: "70ish. No, it wouldn't be sunset yet. You can actually see the shadow on the sundial and the sun's pretty high up. Taken about 2 or 3:30."
Q14. When will yo know how far away those ridges are.
Steve: "We've got a pretty good idea where we are from descent images. That gives us a starting point. I wouldn't be surprised if my team's up there and they already got it figured out. It could be really soon."
Q15. If this stuff is pretty windblown already and you don't have to use the RAT, how much extra time/science can you get.
Steve: "I don't thin of it in terms of extra science. I think of it in terms of now that we see what we got, what's the best science we can get out of it...If these are sedimentary rocks the 'bingo' we've got what we want. The other possibility is that we have to find a crater and count on mother nature to have dug a hole for us...It's too early to say. This is going to be a month's long voyage of exploration."
Q16. Restate what's with rolling off.
Jennifer: "We don't' have the petal height but we're guessing 45 cm which would be fine for the egress. In the forward egress path there's a fairly large rock we'd want to avoid. On the left side the airbags appear not to be fully retracted. We could do more retraction and drive down there. It's not clear if we'd need to do a bit of a petal lift to retract the airbag. Another option would be to turn in place a bit backwards...do a 120 degree turn and drive off that way. You can't always tell from the images. We'll be doing the assessment tonight and tomorrow. This is great. We have lots of places we can drive off here. It'll be a lot easier than many of our tests."
First press briefing will be at 9am in the morning. They'll discuss the MGS fly over and more.
