Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - Mars Rover Scheduled To Land Tonight At 11:31pm MST- Update- Landed!

troutman · 08-08-2012, 10:24 AM

Grab your 3D glasses for this view of Curiosity's landscape on Mars

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...am-pan-3d.html

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...-1-status.html

Here's the big picture of what's planned for the coming days. If they run into problems, this schedule could slip. Note that images acquired on a given day will not necessarily be returned to Earth on that day.

Sol 2: Retry high-gain antenna communication session. Lift the mast from its stowed position on the desk, exposing the Navcams, Mastcams, and ChemCam for the first time. Use the Navcams to begin acquiring a 360-degree panorama. Only the bottom two tiers of that panorama will be taken tosol, so the images will mostly show the rover deck. Use the Mastcam to take a photo of the calibration target, otherwise known as the Marsdial.
Sol 3: Do some activities to prepare for flight software upgrade. Perform some aliveness tests on several science instruments including APXS, DAN, Chemin, and SAM. Take full 360-degree panorama with the wider-angle Mastcam.
Sol 4: More activities to prepare for flight software upgrade. More RAD data acquisition. Use Chemcam spectrometer in passive mode (without shooting laser). Use DAN neutron detector in passive mode (without shooting neutrons).
Sols 5-8: Flight software upgrade. They need to move from version 9 of the flight software, which operates Curiosity as a spacecraft, to version 10, which is designed to operate Curiosity as a landed, roving vehicle. The software was already uploaded to Curiosity while it was on its way to Mars, but it'll still take four days to install and check out the operating system upgrade on both of its redundant main computers.

So after the end of sol 4, which is in the afternoon of Friday, August 10, there won't be any new data acquired for a while.

08-08-2012, 10:24 AM	#154
troutman Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Crowsnest Pass Exp:	Grab your 3D glasses for this view of Curiosity's landscape on Mars http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...am-pan-3d.html http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...-1-status.html Here's the big picture of what's planned for the coming days. If they run into problems, this schedule could slip. Note that images acquired on a given day will not necessarily be returned to Earth on that day. Sol 2: Retry high-gain antenna communication session. Lift the mast from its stowed position on the desk, exposing the Navcams, Mastcams, and ChemCam for the first time. Use the Navcams to begin acquiring a 360-degree panorama. Only the bottom two tiers of that panorama will be taken tosol, so the images will mostly show the rover deck. Use the Mastcam to take a photo of the calibration target, otherwise known as the Marsdial. Sol 3: Do some activities to prepare for flight software upgrade. Perform some aliveness tests on several science instruments including APXS, DAN, Chemin, and SAM. Take full 360-degree panorama with the wider-angle Mastcam. Sol 4: More activities to prepare for flight software upgrade. More RAD data acquisition. Use Chemcam spectrometer in passive mode (without shooting laser). Use DAN neutron detector in passive mode (without shooting neutrons). Sols 5-8: Flight software upgrade. They need to move from version 9 of the flight software, which operates Curiosity as a spacecraft, to version 10, which is designed to operate Curiosity as a landed, roving vehicle. The software was already uploaded to Curiosity while it was on its way to Mars, but it'll still take four days to install and check out the operating system upgrade on both of its redundant main computers. So after the end of sol 4, which is in the afternoon of Friday, August 10, there won't be any new data acquired for a while. Last edited by troutman; 08-08-2012 at 11:33 AM.