[meteorite-list] Video Documents Three-Year Trek on Mars by NASARover

From: David R Childs <david.childs7_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:01:15 +0100
Message-ID: <6E1108F34AAD49AF89AB52536579F515_at_user85620c2ece>

Tremendous Ron, thanks for sharing.

David R Childs
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Baalke" <baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>
To: "Meteorite Mailing List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 9:59 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Video Documents Three-Year Trek on Mars by
NASARover


>
> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-316
>
> Video Documents Three-Year Trek on Mars by NASA Rover
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> October 10, 2011
>
> While NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was traveling from
> Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, between September 2008 and August
> 2011, the rover team took an end-of-drive image on each Martian day that
> included a drive. A new video compiles these 309 images, providing an
> historic record of the three-year trek that totaled about 13 miles (21
> kilometers) across a Martian plain pocked with smaller craters.
>
> The video featuring the end-of-drive images is now available online, at
> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=114782241
> .
> It shows the rim of Endeavour becoming visible on the horizon partway
> through the journey and growing larger as Opportunity neared that goal.
> The drive included detours, as Opportunity went around large expanses of
> treacherous terrain along the way.
>
> The rover team also produced a sound track for the video, using each
> drive day's data from Opportunity's accelerometers. The low-frequency
> data has been sped up 1,000 times to yield audible frequencies.
>
> "The sound represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the
> surface of Mars," said Paolo Bellutta, a rover planner at NASA's Jet
> Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who has plotted many of
> Opportunity's drives and coordinated production of the video. "When the
> sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is
> softer, the rover was moving on sand."
>
> Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month
> prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of
> bonus, extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet
> environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting
> microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity
> continues its work at Endeavour. NASA will launch the next-generation
> Mars rover, car-size Curiosity, this autumn, for arrival at Mars' Gale
> crater in August 2012.
>
> JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
> manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission
> Directorate, Washington. More information about the rovers is online at:
> http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can
> also follow the mission on Facebook at
> http://www.facebook.com/marsrovers and on Twitter at
> http://www.twitter.com/marsrovers .
>
> Guy Webster 818-354-6278
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov
>
> 2011-316
>
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Received on Wed 12 Oct 2011 02:01:15 PM PDT