MER team in mass hibernation

Or so it seems.

Don't you think it is a bit odd that nothing newsworthy has emanated from
MER HQ at JPL for well over two months? This troubles me. Wasn't
effective public outreach considered a noble and necessary goal of
public-money-burning enterprises ("PMBE's") not that long ago.
Scientists/engineers may sit haughtily in their ivory towers, seldom
deigning to dispense their wisdom upon the unwashed masses (who fork out
without complaint for said tower-dwellers big fat salaries) for a while,
but then people get annoyed from all the wondering about why hundreds of
millions of their rather hard-earned dollars are pouring into the
equivalent of a private sandbox for the peter pan elite who get to push
the buttons then plan their next photo-op with Matt Golombek.

Or, the great unwashed simply forget about space exploration and tell
their local congressman to spend money on spider habitat conservation
instead. You know, age old saws are trotted out such as "how many school
lunches can 750 Million buy"? Or, "How 'bout that ballooning public
debt"?

No news is definitely bad news when you are on the taxpayer's dime.

Tell the MER team you would like to have more regular updates -- heck
Cassini is still months from Saturn and we are hearing weekly from those
guys and have been for quite a while! Let's hear from the new, more open
NASA!

Mark

Mork posted:

Don't you think it is a bit odd that nothing newsworthy has emanated from
MER HQ at JPL for well over two months? This troubles me.

Uh, the spacecraft is in its "cruise" phase, so it isn't doing much other than
flying through space. That isn't exactly "newsworthy". If you want to read
about some of the preparations currently going on for post-landing activites,
you can go to the Athena site: http://athena.cornell.edu/ What is happening
(at least on the ground) during the cruise phase is at:
http://athena.cornell.edu/mars_facts/science_bites.html
The descriptive "diary" by principle investigator Steve Squyres concerning of
the hastles of getting things ready is particularly interesting.
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

**********************************************
* Attend the 11th Annual NEBRASKA STAR PARTY *
* July 18-23, 2004, Merritt Reservoir *
* http://www.NebraskaStarParty.org *
**********************************************

David Knisely wrote in news:1066774004.912634@cache3:

Mork posted:

Don't you think it is a bit odd that nothing newsworthy has emanated
from MER HQ at JPL for well over two months? This troubles me.

Uh, the spacecraft is in its "cruise" phase, so it isn't doing much

Thanks for the Athena links and your uh insight , but there is
obviously a great deal of preparation and testing going on, and probably
landing ellipse refinement, updated science planning, navigation issues,
DSN communication issues or preparations and just general questions being
asked by the public that could be reported. The Pathfinder team was much
better at keeping it interesting ahead of the landing and that kept the
excitement at a high level. The MER guys just seem not to care. The
Cornell team is keeping some interest and kudos to them for making the
mission seem interesting and reflecting on its human component. BUt the
main MER site is devoid of any news or even links to the anecdotes at the
Athena site.

The last news item (August 5, 3 months ago) concerned problems with an
instrument:

"The Mössbauer spectrometer on Spirit is the one whose test data did not
fit the pattern expected from normal operation"

Why not follow up on this? Is JPL scared they'll blow us away while
discussing the nuts and bolts or hard news of the mission?

Mark

In message 1066774004.912634@cache3, David Knisely
writes
Mork posted:

Don't you think it is a bit odd that nothing newsworthy has emanated
from MER HQ at JPL for well over two months? This troubles me.

Uh, the spacecraft is in its "cruise" phase, so it isn't doing much
other than flying through space. That isn't exactly "newsworthy".

You could say the same about Cassini, Stardust, and others, but I find
the regular updates by Ron Baalke very interesting. Gives a feeling of
looking over their shoulders.
ISTR that when Cassini was down-sized the plan was to do almost nothing
during the cruise phase except periodically check the spacecraft health.
That doesn't seem to have happened for Cassini, but is it true of MER?
--
"It is written in mathematical language"
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

ISTR that when Cassini was down-sized the plan was to do almost nothing
during the cruise phase except periodically check the spacecraft health.
That doesn't seem to have happened for Cassini, but is it true of MER?

The MER team have been extremely busy. We are right in the middle of an
Operations Readiness Test (ORT), which lasts 2 weeks. The ORT is a dress
rehearsal of the real thing, and the ORT runs the team through the period one week
prior to landing through the first week of surface operations. The team is
on 'Mars time' during the ORT, which means they basically are working mostly
during the night shifts. It exercises all of the procedures the operations and
science teams are expected to go through. We have a sandbox area with a test rover
that the team practices with during these ORT's. During the ORT's, anomalies are
introduced to test the team. For example, when TCM-5 was executed, one of the
thrusters was stuck on, which was followed by the gas leak.
So, the spacecraft team had to quickly analyze the state of the spacecraft, and the
navigation team had to determine a new orbit determination and what effect it
had on the landing site. And, of course, this factors in whether to do the
the following TCM-6 or not.

This is the 6th ORT since launch. In the past ORT's, we've focused on one
MER spacecraft, but for this one we started with MER-B through landing, and then are
testing surface operations for both landers.

Ron Baalke

Mork posted:

The MER guys just seem not to care.

You are interpreting it this way, but from the information on the site this is
clearly not the case. I have talked to one of the people involved with the
MER program, and the team seems to have a bit more serious attitude than the
Pathfinder one did (probably as a result of the MPL failure). I don't really
care which instrument's power supply they tested this week or what light bulb
they turned on. All I care about is getting the darn thing down in one piece
and fulfilling its misssion requirements. If they don't have time to put out
press releases about needless engineering trivia (like so many of the ones
from Cassini, ect. seem to be doing), then that is just fine with me, because
they are doing the job that they were hired to do. Once the probe approaches
Mars, *then* they need to start talking to the public a lot.

"The Mössbauer spectrometer on Spirit is the one whose test data did not
fit the pattern expected from normal operation"

Why not follow up on this? Is JPL scared they'll blow us away while
discussing the nuts and bolts or hard news of the mission?

What is stated on the web page is actually a bit more involved:
"The Mössbauer spectrometer on Spirit is working, and even if we don't come up
with a way to improve its performance, we'll be able to get scientific
information out of the data it sends us from Mars," Squyres said. "But it's a
very flexible instrument, with lots of parameters we can change. We have high
hopes that over the coming months we'll be able to understand exactly what's
happened to it and make adjustments that will improve its performance."

They may still be looking at the problem, but I suspect that little further
can be done until the rover is down and has a chance to test the spectrometer
on the surface rocks. However, if it really bugs you, why not just send them
an e-mail and *ask* them about it?
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

**********************************************
* Attend the 11th Annual NEBRASKA STAR PARTY *
* July 18-23, 2004, Merritt Reservoir *
* http://www.NebraskaStarParty.org *
**********************************************

(Ron Baalke) wrote in
:

ISTR that when Cassini was down-sized the plan was to do almost
nothing during the cruise phase except periodically check the
spacecraft health. That doesn't seem to have happened for Cassini, but
is it true of MER?

The MER team have been extremely busy. We are right in the middle of
an Operations Readiness Test (ORT), which lasts 2 weeks. The ORT is
a dress rehearsal of the real thing, and the ORT runs the team through
...
Ron Baalke


Thanks very much Ron and it is understandable that the people deeply
involved have no time to report, but some of the project's budget should
be devoted to outreach and that outreach should be regular, consistent,
and sometimes boring, and handled by someone who doesn't have to twiddle
knobs all day. Regular updates, for me personally, make me feel much
more involved in the progress of the mission. And in the global sense
that is important as people need to see the routine nature of solar
system exploration and not just jump from peak of discovery to valley of
despair.

I agree that your outstanding devotion to keeping the interested folk up
to date on Cassini and so many other aspects of JPL and NASA work is a
singular achievement. The Cassini updates are terrific from my
perspective. I just wish someone was doing the same for the MERs.

Thanks again
Mark

David Knisely wrote in news:1066974869.269230@cache1:

Mork posted:

The MER guys just seem not to care.

You are interpreting it this way, but from the information on the site
this is clearly not the case. I have talked to one of the people
involved with the MER program, and the team seems to have a bit more
serious attitude than the Pathfinder one did (probably as a result of
the MPL failure). I don't really care which instrument's power supply
they tested this week or what light bulb they turned on. All I care
about is getting the darn thing down in one piece and fulfilling its
misssion requirements.

Such a simplistic attitude desparately needs to be eradicated! The CAIB
spent most of this year battling such complacency. The catastrophic
failures of MPL, MCO and Challenger resulted from such complacency. You
would supress criticism and discussion on the basis that someone else
knows better. Read the CAIB report and prepare for an epiphany.

It is outright folly to sit back, head in sand, and trust the geeks to
get everything there in one piece. Discussion and public awareness of
every aspect of the mission is healthy, and I would say essential, even
if the public may not be able to have any meaningful impact on the
minutiae. Telling the taxpayers of the world to toss $500 Mil into a
black box and forget about it for a few years while propeller heads spend
it freely is simply not a flyer these days.

Scientists on the public purse have to deal with this reality just like
their brethren in the other segment of the economy. (The one that digs
holes, drives goods to market, builds walls, puts bread and butter on the
table and, oh yeah, pays the scads of money it takes to build the sandbox
for the boys at JPL to play with their MERs in.



Mark