NASA
Moderator: Anita Sohus
November 18, 2003/11:00 a.m. CST
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NASA
November 18, 2003
11:00 a.m. CST
Coordinator This conference is being recorded at the request of NASA. If you have any
objections, please disconnect at this time. Miss Anita Sohus, please begin.
Anita Thank you. We may have a lot of new people signing on this morning, I hope, so they’re
going to be a little lost, but we’ll catch them up as we proceed. What we want to do this morning
is have some overviews from our Mars Education folks here at JPL, Arizona State (ASU), and
Cornell. Then we’ll have Eric talk a little bit about the upcoming operational readiness test.
Stephenie (Lievense) (JPL/Mars Outreach Team) is going to start.
Stephenie We have four folks representing three of the educational projects that we’ll have
going on during the landed portion of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. I’ll just quickly
introduce them. Sheri Klug is from ASU and she does a million amazing education projects, but
today she is going to talk about something called Rover Quest.
Christine While Sheri is based at Arizona State University, she is actually officially the
JPL, Mars K thru 12 Education Lead.
Stephenie Thanks. Then Cassie Bowman (NASA Ames and Raytheon) and Diane Bollen
(Cornell) are going to talk to you about the Athena Student Interns Project.
Stephenie Last, but certainly not least is Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society, who
is going to talk about Red Rover Goes to Mars. Emily is not an official part of the Mars public
engagement team, but they do a lot of great educational projects that we all tie into. Cassie,
would you and Diane like to start first and talk to us a little bit about Athena?
Anita Could you start by explaining what Athena is?
Cassie Athena is the name of the science package on both of the rovers, so this is called the
Athena Student Interns Program. What it is is an active participation educational program, for
13 high school teams from ten states in the country. They were selected by a national application
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process, to participate in this program, which is based on lessons learned from four pilot
implementations that started in the spring of 1999.
The idea behind it is that there are distributed groups of high school students that are paired one
on one with mentors that come from members of the science team. So these actual scientists are
working with these groups and these kids and teachers become, essentially, collaborative
researchers with the scientists during the mission.
This program started in May of this year and will continue through May of 2004. The
students have been working with their science team members to prepare to do their data
collection analysis on whatever their mentor specifically works on. So the deputy principal
investigator, Ray Arvidson (Washington University, St. Louis), is working a lot on soil
properties, and his students are going to be looking at images that come from hazard avoidance
cameras on the rover and look at the wheel tracks and they’re going to be trying to understand
something about the soil property from that and other things along that line.
The students support the science team efforts, they engage in data collection and analysis,
and they create image products that help not only the science team, but also the public, sort of
envision what’s going on. So an example of that would be panoramas that are taken by the
rover, the students will go through and annotate and circle and label, where the rover has been,
where different collections have taken place, images acquired and that kind of thing. That not
only helps the science team understand, globally what the rover has been up to over time, but
also will be provided to the public, so that kids and teachers can follow along and understand, in
the general public, what’s been going on.
Even though there are only 39 people participating in this program, 26 students and 13
teachers, a big part of the program is the outreach that they do to try extend the impact. They all
are very active in doing presentations to their local schools and communities, also to partnering
with the Solar System Ambassadors Program, which is run out of JPL, to do larger community
presentations, as well as presenting at national conferences. We’ve got a group that’s going to
do a poster presentation at the American Geophysical Union Conference, and we usually have
participation in LPSC (the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference—usually March in Houston
at Lunar and Planetary Institute) and other things like that. The teachers are going to their local
regional NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) activities and that kind of thing.
Students, during the mission, will be creating web features, such as daily diaries, the
teams that are out at JPL during the mission, what they’ve been doing, what their impressions are
and what they’ve learned, that kind of thing. They’ll be creating other image products, possibly
some activities and a number of things that partner with Cornell, who is kind of heading up all of
the Athena stuff. So it’s pretty exciting.
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The program is assessed with a participatory evaluation technique that’s called
empowerment evaluation that involves the students and the teachers in evaluating the program as
they go, so that we can make mid-course corrections, as necessary, so that it’s as high an impact
program as possible.
The other thing I wanted to mention, in relation to the museum visualization alliance, is
that I’ll provide Anita with the names and contact information for these different teams. If it
turns out that there’s a team in your area that you would like to have come and give a
presentation at the museum, they would absolutely be thrilled to do that, and that’s part of their
participation requirements. So please feel free to do that, and we do have 13 sites, they’re pretty
well spread out. Anita, if you don’t mind, you can pass that information on and then, they can get
in touch if they want.
Anita Alright, I’d be happy to.
Cassie Diane, do you want to add anything or are there any questions?
Anita Do you know off hand, which ten states they’re in?
Cassie Yes, I’m going to have to think for a second, to go through all of them in my mind.
We’ve got one group in Northern California in Redding, California and another group in LA.
We have a group in New Mexico, about an hour outside of Albuquerque. We have a group
outside of Reno, Nevada. We have a group outside of Boulder, Colorado. We have a group in
Birmingham, Alabama and one in Durham, North Carolina; two in Pennsylvania; one in Hershey
and one in Allentown; one in Buffalo, New York. Theres two groups in Illinois, one in
Hayworth, Illinois, which is close to Saint Louis and the other one in Wheaton, which is outside
of Chicago. I may be forgetting someone, but I think that’s it and I’ll send the list to Anita and
then she can send that out. If there are ones that seem like a good match to you, you’re more
than welcome to contact them, or to contact me, if you have questions.
Anita Diane, did you have anything to add?
Diane I think Cassie pretty well covered it, unless any of the museum folks have questions.
Su-yen Su-yen calling from Liberty Science Center (New Jersey). How are the kids reporting to
the public? Do they go through their own Web site or do they come through the JPL site?
Diane They’re going to be posting things, both on the JPL site and Cornell’s Athena site. So
there’ll be some similar information posted and then, they have some different activities that
they’re doing for those two sites.
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Su-yen Does it point out what they’ve been doing, so they explain to the lay public, because by
now they’ve become experts from what they’re doing, do they explain what they’re doing and
then write up their results, or is it just results?
Diane No, we’re really hoping, one of the points of having students involved is that they can
explain it in an interesting and usable way for teachers, the students and the public. So it’s
definitely one of our goals. For 13 weeks in a row, every week, there’ll be a different group of
kids working on something different, so their diaries for that week will reflect what they’ve been
working on.
Michelle Cassie, this is Michelle (Viotti, Mars Public Engagement Manager). They’ve
been on the road talking to other students and members of their communities already, right?
Cassie Yes, absolutely. There have already been, I would say over a hundred presentations by
the different groups. It’s really been incredible how excited they’ve been. We have one group
that is updating a bulletin board in their local elementary school every week with new
information; and the teachers in the school are using that in their classes and the kids are getting
really excited. So things like that are happening, which is really what we’re trying to get at.
W Cassie, what age are these kids?
Cassie These are high school students and they started last year in May at the end of the school
year as freshmen, sophomores or juniors, so this year they’re sophomores, juniors or seniors in
high school.
Stephenie Thanks, Cassie. I think that we’ll let Emily go next, if that’s okay. Emily
Lakdawalla is going to talk about the Red Rover Goes to Mars Student Astronaut Program.
Emily Thanks, Stephenie. If you’d like to look at my slides, they’re posted on our Web site at
redrovergoestomars.org/slides.ppt. Red Rover Goes to Mars has been in existence as a project
for several years; it has a whole bunch of different components to it. There are going to be three
of them that will be active over the next few months and during the Mars Exploration Rover
surface operations.
The first part is the student astronauts, which is a group of kids that have some superficial
similarities to the Athena student interns. There are 16 student astronauts; they were selected
through an international essay competition that was open to entry by absolutely any kid, who was
interested in entering. There are eight boys and eight girls, representing 12 countries and five
continents and they’re age 13 to 17. So there’s quite a diversity of kids.
We’ll be bringing them to Pasadena for about a week at a time in pairs. So it will start
just before the landing of the first rover and pairs of kids are going to be rotating in and out every
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week. Their work inside mission operations will be to work with the sundial that’s on the bed of
the rover.
It’s actually a calibration target for Cornell’s pan-cam instrument on the rover. But it also looks
like and will act as a sundial, and our student astronauts will be operating some software to
impose hour markings on the dial, because, of course, the problem is that you don’t know what
orientation the rover is going to be sitting at on any particular day, so you have to use software to
impose hour markings on it.
Then they’ll be posting these sundial images on the Web, and they’ll also be posting
online daily journals about their experiences inside mission operations, which is not to say about
what was discovered today, but more about what the process of science is like, what the process
of exploring Mars is like with a rover mission, what kind of challenges are faced and how the
scientists and engineers solve those problems. The kids will write about their takes on that in
daily journals, so it will be posted on our Web site.
We hope that these kids’ sort of international perspectives will be really interesting to the
public, about what they’re seeing. I’m working with them right now, to help them work on
putting their ideas and thoughts into words that the general public will find interesting and
comprehensible and so forth. We selected these kids to be really good communicators, it’s a
really exciting group and I’m looking forward to their work inside mission operations. So that’s
the student astronauts.
The second component of Red Rover Goes to Mars, is something called the Mars
stations. This is a project that grew out of something called, Red Rover Red Rover, which is a
project with Lego and the Planetary Society to make little Lego Mars rovers that you can operate
over the Internet, to explore a simulated Mars diorama. The Mars stations are special Red Rover
sites that are designed to look like specific geographic locations on Mars and that are hosted by
educational institutions, museums and so forth and have software that operates over a Web
browser; so that anybody with a Web browser can come into a Mars station and driver a rover
and see through its Web camera and explore this Mars environment.
We currently have four active stations, our software is just wrapping its development and
we’re seeking more Mars stations. So I don’t know if any of the museums who are online right
now would be interested in hosting one of these dioramas, but we’d be excited to bring on more
Mars stations.
The final component is the DVD assembly. The Planetary Society provided to the
mission a DVD that contains on it four million names that were collected by NASA from around
the world, of people who wanted to send their names to Mars aboard the spacecraft. We
provided the DVD assembly to the mission and on the face of this DVD are little stickers that
have astrobot mini figures on them and the astrobots; their names are Biff Starling and Sandy
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Moondust and they’re currently writing online Web logs about their experiences aboard the
spacecraft from the time that they took off, to they’re in the middle of cruise right now. They’ll
be describing online what it’s like to experience the landing and operations on Mars and all of
those sorts of things. You can find out more about all of these things on our Web site at
redrovergoestomars.org.
Then the last thing that I wanted to mention was that on January 3rd and 4th, we’ll be
hosting a public event called Wild About Mars Weekend, at which we’ll be bringing thousands
of people to the Pasadena Convention Center to witness the landing of Spirit live and also to see
the results of Stardust flying past Comet Wild 2. It will have lots of speakers and we’ll be Web
casting that on our Web site, so hopefully, that will be something that a lot of people will able to
see over the Web.
That’s pretty much all I had to say about Red Rover Goes to Mars. I’m wondering if
anybody has any questions.
Jay This is Jay (Dobeck) from Boston (Museum of Science). I’m wondering who you’d talk
to about partnering with putting in a site.
Emily With the Mars station?
Jay Yes.
Emily We currently have just four active ones, here at the society, Wichita State University,
Marshall University in West Virginia, and the …, in Spain. There are a couple more coming
online; I don’t have anyone in Boston yet. If you’re interested, please send me an e-mail.
Jay Okay, is your e-mail on the site?
Emily Yes, there’s an e-mail address on the site, at which you can contact me.
Anita What’s the commitment on the part of the museums, Emily?
Emily The commitment on the part of the museums is that you have to buy the equipment and
build the diorama. Building the diorama is probably the largest commitment for a museum,
because, of course, you have a lot of public visitors, so you’ll want one that looks really nice for
your visitors. The equipment consists of Lego components to build a rover and Web camera and
a computer to serve it over the Internet. The computer and the Internet link do not actually have
to be terribly good ones. This is designed for very low bandwidth, so it doesn’t place a lot of
demands on your Internet.
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Jim This is Jim (Todd) from OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, Portland).
About Mars Web casts, how do we get the Internet address and so on for that event that we can
tap into?
Emily There is information on our Web site at planetary.org/wam.
Jim Thank you.
Anita Is Sheri on the line?
Sheri I sure am.
Anita Okay, can you go forward?
Sheri I have three things that I want to talk a little bit about today that the museums might be
interested in and also that we’ll be supporting for education, which will include informal
education. The first is ….
Anita This is Sheri Klug from Arizona State.
Sheri Arizona State, sorry. Also, we hope to have a new online drivable terrain before landing
that will be the hematite rover site for Red Rover goes to Mars. So we’re working on that, also,
and that will be another site online, hopefully.
Rover Quest is going to be taking and turning around the data that comes down from the
rovers, probably on a biweekly basis, taking an image of the day or an interesting data set and
getting users or viewers involved on a personal level. So we’re working on this, both on the
formal education and informal education side, to take something of interest on the panoramic
camera view or the infrared spectrometer view or whatever and making it to where we have
questions that the viewers can then do some observations.
Even on a pass-through basis, I can envision this in a museum, to where you might be
able to have something that can show, something that the scientists are looking at today and
trying to make predictions on what’s interesting here, what do you think they’re going to do next,
what would be the thing that you would choose to do?
So we will be accumulating these activities, writing them to where people can drop in or
drop out very easily, again, both on a formal education and informal basis. Then possibly having
them link to where, okay this is what we were looking at today or yesterday, and this is what
happened today and this is where they went and this is why. Were you correct, were you
thinking the same thing or gee this is where we’re going next, kind of again, giving them some
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involvement in the story, getting them involved on a day to day basis and getting them also to be
looking at things the way the scientists are looking at them.
So this will be online, it will be on the Mars education Web site. We’ll be posting it,
probably, we’re still determining how often, but we’re thinking at least a biweekly basis. So that
will be Rover Quest.
The other two items I have, the next one is the Mars Exploration Student Data Team.
That is along the same lines as the Athena Student Interim program, but this is involving orbit
data. So we kind of put ourselves akin in the Apollo era, to the Michael Collins of the Apollo 11
team. We’re in orbit, using data sets, using our student teams.
We have 39 active teams that are geographically distributed across the U.S. and I will
also get Anita the information on where those teams are located. We have over 700 students that
are involved at this point and teachers. They are in three different tracks of involvement. We’ve
got Orbit Watch, Storm Watch and Rover Watch. Each of these three teams are being involved
in taking on daily orbital data from our THEMIS camera, which is our Thermal Emission
Imaging System, both visible and infrared (on the Mars Odyssey orbiter), and then our TES,
Thermal Emission Spectrometer, on the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.
Both of those are in orbit right now and the students have access to looking to see what’s
happening in real time and using that data to help inform the team, the Mission Operations/Mars
Exploration Rover teams, what’s going on, if they see anything such as Storm Watch, do they
see storms starting to brew, dust storms in certain areas around the planet, will it have any
implication. They’re doing temperature watches, to where they’re looking at the temperatures
that the rover will be affected with different instruments. What can they predict looking at the
temperature data, as far as the highs and lows? Is that anything that will impact the
instrumentation?
We’re looking for flyovers. For the first time in history, we’re actually going to have two
instruments that are the same genre, the mini-thermal emission spectrometers (mini-TES) on the
rovers and the thermal emission spectrometer (TES) on Mars Global Surveyor, that will be flying
over the same column of air at the same time, be looking up and down and being able to do some
amazing kinds of historic readings. So they’ll be actually looking for the flyover times and those
kinds of things.
So we’ve got kids involved, we’ve been fabulously excited. We haven’t told them
exactly how to do this. They’ve had to figure it out, they’ve been posting things on a board, or
on our electronic internal boards, designing the experiments, coming up with the parameters of
what they need, what they’re going to have to do for these.
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Michelle, they’re even doing Mars poetry, I thought you’d be excited about that. All kinds of
things are spinning off from these groups. So they are again, very high-line students and I’m
sure they’d be excited if you decided to have speakers come in and talk about being involved in
the program or talking about Mars, these would be great kids. So we’ll post again, where they’re
located.
The third thing that we have going on right now is the Mars Student Imaging Program.
That’s been going on, associated with the Mars Odyssey spacecraft and the THEMIS camera, for
about a year and a half. We’ve had over 2500 students involved in that from fifth grade through
community college. They are actually able to as teams, decide on a target, actually aim our
camera that’s orbiting Mars, take an image, and do the analysis. So we’ve had students involved
in being able to do real time science, just like our scientists are doing. With the PhD’s, they’re
actually doing it in fifth and sixth grade and getting to, again, analyze an image and let NASA
know what it is they’re looking at, what they’ve found out about that chunk of Mars.
So that’s an ongoing program and it will be ongoing. The students have accumulated
some fabulous images and again, it’s a very immersive, hand’s on, no-cost (to the participants)
activity. We’ve had some interest from some of the museums, as far as maybe supporting a
team. There is no charge for this, we can do it through distance leaning and it will be going on,
as long as the orbiter is going on, so we’re hoping another eight or ten years, whatever longevity
we can have with the Odyssey spacecraft.
Those are three of the ongoing things that we have going on. Also, we will be doing and
have been doing partnerships with museums around the country for Mars education workshops.
So if you’re interested in maybe hosting a workshop, again we’re looking for geographically
distributed areas. We have been doing this around the country; I just came from the Denver
museum this last Saturday. We’ll be looking for opportunities, if you’ve got an idea that you’d
like to have us come in and so that, we can talk about a partnership there and possibly bring an
education workshop or work out an informal and a formal education tag team kind of thing, we’d
be interesting in doing that. Any questions?
M For the Mars education workshop that you mentioned, how far out in advance do you
need to plan this? Are you available for the winter, spring, summer or what does your schedule
look like?
Sheri Right now, January looks pretty packed. We do book out in advance, but we also have
four of us that conduct workshops here. So just depending on what you need, I have staff that
goes all over the place and sometimes, we’re in four places at once. So again, it’s not a one-size
fits all; it’s really tailored to whatever your needs are and the kind of audience you want to deal
with and the size you want to deal with. That’s totally up to discussion and negotiation, as far as
what you want.
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We can do 100 teacher workshops or we can do smaller workshops. It’s really just looking for a
host site that can help us advertise and bring in local knowledge, as far as what works in your
area. We’d love to collaborate and the museums are a fabulous partner for us.
M Where will this be posted to find out, I can e-mail you and communicate with you on
this?
Sheri Anita, are you going to distribute that information? I do have slides that were late
coming in, that Anita will have, as far as some information. I’ll have four slides, one on each of
the things I just talked about, but I can also give you an e-mail address, and that’s
sklug@asu.edu. I’m sure Anita will have a follow-up, as far as just contact information, posted
on their site.
M Thank you.
Stephenie Any other questions for Sheri or about any of the other education things we’ve
heard about? Okay, Eric De Jong is here and he’s going to give us a little update on the
upcoming operational readiness test.
Eric Yes, the operational readiness test actually starts tomorrow on Nov 19th and it runs
through the 23rd of this week. It may or may not extend to the 24th, at this moment, it looks not
as likely, but we’ll see as it evolves. So you can count on the 19th through 23rd and check in to
see if we’re still online doing testing during the 24th.
This particular operational readiness test is really focused on surface operations. Some of
you that have participated in previous ones will realize that they were focused on some of the
entry, descent, and landing and also some landing-to-egress aspects of the operation. This time
we’re going to start on SOL 26, so the 26th day of surface operations for Spirit. (a Sol is a
Martian day) We’re simulating Spirit ops on the 26th day of operations, SOL 26. So two things
that should be different about it, one, we should be driving more, even though we’re inside a
room, admittedly, but we will intend to put more clicks on the odometer and drive around this
room. That’s very good for practice for the science team and it also will allow us to know how
much adjustment we have to do when we get up to deploy the IDD (Instrument Deployment
Device) and so that will enable us --
W The arm of the rover.
Eric Yes, the robot arm, exactly. It has things like a microscopic imager on it, so we really
need to practice that a little bit. Second, some of the previous tests were meant to debug parts of
the operation, including the engineering side. In this particular case, we intend to get as much of
the camera operations actually running, as possible. We’ll do everything necessary to try to
make that so.
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That also means (if this were real operations) we’ll have had the experience of 25 SOLs on Mars
and we should be good at creating panoramas. So our intent on the first day even, is to get at
least a two-tier nav/cam, 360° panorama, so that will be very interesting for our product and the
kind of product that we’re hoping to produce in the mission and so, we want to practice with that.
Then if you recall, you may have heard us refer to an octet, one-eighth of 360 degrees for
the color pan/cam, panchromatic. That pan/cam image, we should actually have full color and it
will cover 45º and it should be 45º facing forward, at least that’s the plan. Actually, some parts
of the test are blind; however, we’re not actually able to see which way is forward and so we’re
trying to work out the details with the people that are running the simulation for us, so that this
octet does face forward.
In addition, hopefully, we’ll get microscopic images as well. Certainly, we’ll have the
hazard avoidance cameras, which are facing forward and facing rearward. So we should get a
pretty full set of images during these five/six days of operations. Also the downlink occurs,
nominally, starting on the first day at 8 a.m. That means that we will not have a simulated press
conference on the first day on the 19th, but rather the first simulated press conference will be on
the second day, the 20th.
It also means that most of the activities, for example, science assessment team meetings,
science operation working group meetings; many of these things that have occurred late at night
on previous tests, will happen during normal working hours during this test. So people like
Stephenie and Christine have had to come in at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. and things like that.
In this case, all of those activities should happen during the normal working day at Pacific
Standard Time. That also means that their work will be during that time; and so the additional
information they’re providing and the additional organization they provide, as well as caption
material, etc and stories, all will happen during nominal working day times. That should also be,
probably good practice for everyone.
So even though we’re working on Mars local time, those of you paying attention to your
Mars clocks will see that it synchs up, pretty well by SOL 25 or 26, with Pacific Standard Time.
So the two are closer to each other.
W The days start at about one in the afternoon and go into the night, but that’s better than
starting at three in the morning.
Eric Exactly. But also the downlink, which was occurring at strange times, will occur early in
the day, so 8 a.m. For some of us, it’s the operational day on Mars that counts, but still again,
that’s during reasonable hours. But for other parts of the activity, it’s the downlink that kind of
kicks things off. In some ways, looking at the downlink as when we get the downlink data,
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that’s the first time we have the opportunity to assess what data we have. Some of the imaging
comes down on the direct to earth link others of it comes on the relays (from the orbiters). But
over that downlink, we then start the process of assessing the images, preparing products and
making decisions for how to drive the rover for the next day. So much of that process should be
more visible to you during this ORT.
Stephenie This is Stephenie Lievense, I just wanted to make one comment regarding the
daily story images and text. The images will be actual images from the operations, from the test
bed.
Eric Yes, actually in a similar way, Michelle (Viotti, Mars Public Engagement Manager) has
asked if I could prepare some animations, even perhaps before we actually have data to work on
or after. So either on the 19th or on the end of the mission, the 24th or 25th, we will provide some
animations. Typically, we would have animation, since this is sol 26, but we may use them from
previous tests, including previous ground tests, like FIDO tests and things, just so that we have
some products that are representative.
Michelle Right, and I think that’s our key that we’re really going to try and get things out
that are at least of the same size and shape and all of that, of all our image and video and other
files and make sure that we place them on the site. It might be a little rough going the first
couple of days, as we mix and match and put things in one place and then in another. But
following this next ORT, we will have been through this telecon, go over the museum site with
you all, based on what our experience was, so that you can really figure out what you can expect
in each place and where to get the products.
Eric One other thing, we are intending to provide to you some software that allows you to
actually see all of the images. Now to do that, actually the image data, I consider is broken into
three different kind of timeframes. The first of the timeframes I’m going to call Quick Look or
Real Time. The quick look or real time, are the basic images, as they were imaged by the camera
systems, like the navigation camera, the hazard avoidance camera. So those images, we will
make JPEGs of each and every image and then in near real time, or as a quick look product,
those are being shipped to you. Those are being shipped to you at the same time as they’re being
shipped to the science team.
We’re actually shipping those; we’re using the FEI subscriptions to do that. But I think,
and this is actually to be determined, whether we actually simulate or don’t simulate the short
terms process, where you may receive TAR files in addition, coming from lands and whether or
not we ship out both we’ll determine, shortly. So there are two pathways by which you can
receive this data, and again in both cases, it’s been as quick look or real time.
Now to accompany those images, we intend to also put out what are called SVG
(Scalable Vector Graphics) files. The reason why we put those out, is that those will include an
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automated caption and a viewer -- it’s a Java viewer that you can download, so that you can, in
fact, scroll through or display these images, easily, at your home site on your home computer or
whatever. In this case, basically you will be able to select and take. I would suggest copying the
images to a different directory.
Again, they’re all organized when we send them to you; they’re organized by SOL, by
day on Mars. If you want to take the best of and coordinate those and put those together,
separately, then you’ll be able to select those. Again, the suggestion is that you copy them over
to another directory, that way you have all the images in one place, as they came down to you
and then you can select “best of” or mix with those quick look images, also some of the released
images. So you can have your own customized show, using this SVG tool.
In just a minute or two, I’ll actually introduce Steve Levoe (JPL), who can describe a
little bit more about that particular aspect. So that’s number one, the quick look.
Number two is what I call, and a term that is being used frequently here, are tactical
decision products. So first the images come down and like I say, we distribute them immediately
to you and to the science teams. Then second, some of them are processed, either for release
possibilities and they want them to be used for some release, to describe something, or for a
tactical decision. The delay from the time the image hits the ground, to the time these kinds of
products are put together, [depends on the type of product] It might be a color product. It might
include some range information or it might include some annotation that describes whether or
not a certain rock is dangerous to the rover to drive towards.
Those kinds of products may take several hours to produce and so those won’t be instant,
because work has to be done to create them. But those we’ll coordinate each day in the morning.
We’ll try to get a group out in time for either the press conference or discussions or whatever
happens on that day, so the tactical products will be a once a day kind of thing,.
Third are what I call strategic products. Strategic products may take several days to put
together. For example, you may get one-eighth of a mosaic on one day, and it may take several
days to get the full mosaic. So such a product might take several days to assemble or the team
might have to do more analysis; like for egress, they might have to actually spend several days
deciding what is the best direction to drive in. So such products would be used to strategically
plan what we’re going to do in the future and so those products may take several days. So you
can be looking for those kinds of products, in those kinds of time lines, and I think that might be
a good way to look at it.
Now Steve Levoe is here and he might want to briefly describe this SVG viewer for the
quick look products. We’ve been working with inputs from Michelle, Stephenie, Christine and
Anita on what would be desirable, besides having the images, which is, of course, highly
desirable. What might be desirable or something simple, a simple viewer that you could use,
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immediately, to look at these products. Obviously, you may have staff there at your museum
that may want to create some additional products or additional viewers that are more
sophisticated or do other things.
The whole ideas, is again, to get the real time and quick looks, not only so you can view
them with this viewer, this SVG viewer, but in addition, to include an automated caption that
describes something about, what camera took this on what day. If there’s a filter, what color or
what wavelength is the filter and is it a left or right eye, if it’s a stereo camera and is it Spirit or
Opportunity, which of the two rovers is it and so on.
With that, if Steve is ready, I’d like to introduce Steve Levoe, who has been working hard on this
viewer and also on helping to get the products to you.
Steve Hello, I’m going to tell you just a few things about this capability that’s still not
completed, but should be completed, hopefully, and be available to you guys to try either at the
end of the day today or possibly tomorrow morning. At the end of our discussion or somewhere
in here, I’ll give you a Web site, where you can see what you’re getting and this Web page will
also be how you guys will get the software to actually do this.
So what we’re doing is SVG, which Eric has mentioned is Scalable Vector Graphics and
basically it’s just an image file format, where you can have an XML file which has a link to the
JPEG image. Then it has some other information, which allows you to have, basically, a picture
that can be drawn on demand. The reason why we’ve chosen this format is that in terms of
sending it out, it’s relatively small, because it’s a relatively small text file. So it doesn’t add a lot
of extra bandwidth or file size.
The other nice thing, in terms of your use, is that because it is an on-demand rendering
kind of thing, this viewer will allow you to choose exactly the resolution that you want to render
it at. So rather than giving you, for example, an image that’s pre-rendered and it’s a JPEG and
it’s 640x480, if you have a bigger screen that you want to show it on, then the text doesn’t look
very good, because it gets anti-aliased. On this one, the text will always be very, very crisp.
The other thing that it will allow is it will be relatively easy and we’ll give you some instructions
for you to customize it. That will be easy to do and we’ll show you how to do that.
Basically what we do is we take the images, we run them through a process that creates
an automated caption from a database that has the information that Eric was just describing, in
terms of what camera just took this, when the picture was taken, a little bit of other descriptive
information. Basically, what we do is take the image and put it together with the caption and
then, you have something that you can see that is the combination of the image and the caption.
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I have a Web page that you can go look at right now that has a little bit of info. This will
be the place where you’ll be able to download the software. This is a Java program, so it should
run on a Mac or a PC or a Linux box, all equally. Basically the software I’m going to give you is
a slide show, where when you start it, you’ll be able to either point it at a directory or create a list
of all the images, or the files that you want to show and it will basically just loop through it.
You’ll have control over the size of the window and you’ll also have control over the delay time,
so how long it holds and basically whether or not you want to have it loop or just go through one
time. But the default will be that it will just loop, so you’ll have a continuous display, you get it
going and it just goes. This should be useful and we can take some input to perfect it along the
way.
Eric By the way, the caption material that Steve will include, I’ve worked with the science
team on that, so that it’s as complete as we can make it. We think it’s quite explicit and easy for
everyone to understand. So that’s our goal there and hopefully that text works well for you.
The other benefit is that the captions will be automatically generated, so there will be no
human intervention, which means there will be no slowness associated with you receiving the
image and the caption. That’s the idea. The same exact automated caption that Steve is going to
point you at the Web site where you can look at some examples, so you can see some examples,
are the same automated caption material that’s going to go into the summary information that is
generated before people generate individual captions for other images.
The reason for that is so that they also, the scientists who generate a caption, they will
have this information in front of them, so that they don’t have to go hunting and searching for, oh
gosh what time of day was it on Mars when we took this particular observation. It’s the same
material the science team is using, when they are trying to write their captions, so just so you
know, it should be all consistent. We did include several examples.
Included in the examples are the full names, the full approved names, which I actually
sometimes forget myself. We get used to calling things pan/cam, but panoramic camera is the
full name and haz/cam is hazard avoidance camera and so that way, we all can get used to the
full terminology. So we’re practicing that terminology, with the science team as well. So you’ll
get the benefit right at the same time we are. So you can correct us, any time we start using the
shortened versions, too.
Steve So for those of you would like to play along here, the Web site should be the one that you
already have access to, it’s marsdata.jpl.nasa.gov/svg/, if you just type that in, then it will bring
up the default page.
Eric You can do that right now, if you’d like to and in the meanwhile Steve will talk about it.
Again, I just want to say one more thing about scalable vector graphics, the name is everything.
The whole idea is that it is scalable and it’s vector graphics and that means, since it uses vectors
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to draw things, that means that you don’t get the stair/step aliasing that you otherwise get and it
means that it’s scalable … so that whatever device you have, if you know the actual resolution of
your projector or of your screen, you can adjust it to match that, so that you get the best
representation image possible.
Anita You can only get to that Web site if we have your IP address, right?
Eric That is true. We need your IP addresses, so that we can get you this information, because
again, the whole idea behind the alliance is that you really do have kind of a special path here.
So if you send us your IP address, then we’ll make sure that you can get to this information.
Anita Please repeat the Web URL.
Steve The URL is marsdata.jpl.nasa.gov/svg/. All lowercase.
M I’m being prompted for a password.
Eric Yes, we used the user name/password on this and it’s mviz for the user name and muse
for the password. That’s good that you’re being prompted, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to
do on all these Windows security things, so we’re trying to adhere to that in our practice here.
So if you have any problem with that, you can give us a call and we’ll help you through
it, but in the meantime, maybe Steve you just want to mention some of what they should see
here.
Anita They should call Barbara or Rich for help?
Eric Yes. Barbara McGuffie who just walked in here, Barbara McGuffie is actually helping to
coordinate making sure that everyone’s IP address is available and Rich Pavlovski is making
sure that everyone’s FEI subscriptions work. Actually, two phone numbers are being setup for
that, and I’ll give you Barbara’s secretary’s number, Mary Castillo, who you can call any time of
the day or night, to ask for help. Mary Castillo is at 818-354-1952.
We’re providing some automated help as well, with two additional phone lines, but you can call
Mary directly and she’ll put you in connection with Barbara to make sure your accounts are good
and with Rich to make sure the FEI is running.
Steve Okay, some of you may be able to get to the page, some of you may not, but I’ll briefly
go over what is on here. The beginning is basically a little bit of a cookbook, which is what we
are using to create the captions. It’s the kind of information that we’re going to be putting in
there and then partway down the page, you’ll see examples of these automated captions. So
you’ll see a variety of automated captions as examples for the various different kinds of images
that you’ll be getting.
NASA
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Eric You might as well just read one.
Steve Okay, so as an example, one caption might be, right panoramic camera, full frame image,
acquired on Sol 61 of Opportunity’s mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately 10:14 Mars
local solar time, with the camera commanded to use filter eight, 880 nanometers and the credit is
NASA/JPL and Cornell.
Eric By the way, in case you’re wondering why some of the words in the caption get — I
might have thought about shortening it to just the filter 880 nanometers, but there were people on
the science team that wanted to be explicit that we did command it to use that filter; but they
didn’t have feed bits, since we’re giving you the images before they’ve been seen by anybody,
they don’t have the feedback to guarantee that it actually was filter eight. So that’s why they
wanted to be explicit like that, so we adhered to their concerns, to make sure that everything was
correct.
Steve Okay, so now what we’re going to do is to go ahead and go down to the bottom of the
page. At the very bottom of the page, there are links to a couple of request forms and a service
request. These are forms that you can download, one is a PDF version and one is a Word
document. Those you fill out and then ….
Eric I don’t know if Barbara wants to speak here, but they provide all the information
necessary in the service request form, like the IP address and the points of contact, so that we can
make sure that you’re connected. The anomaly request form is meant, hopefully, you never have
to use that; but it’s meant that if you’re having a problem, then you can show us. You can tell us
what the problem is and we will actually keep track of all of those problems and then make sure
that we’ve responded to you. We’re going to have a reporting system, where we will fix the
problems and keep track of this.
So again, the service request form is the one you first want to fill out, to make sure we
have all the contact information. The anomaly request form is if there is a problem, we think
we’ve tried to outline what the major problems might be, so that you can tell it to us sufficiently
and we can get and respond to it quickly.
Steve One thing that is not on this page right now, but we will put on is the e-mail address of
where you would send it back to us.
Anita The service request information is actually on the application form, right? I believe
Lance just added that.
Barbara Yes, that’s right.
NASA
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Eric So we’re trying to be consistent, no matter which site you go to, you get the same
information. We’re thinking all those up as quickly as we can.
Steve So now what we’re going to do, there is a link near the bottom there that says Jedi SVG
example. Those of you that can, click on that and what you’ll see is a couple of things. The first
thing you’ll see is just the JPEG image that you would receive. One of the other virtues of using
this SVG viewer is that images that you’re going to be getting are in a variety of sizes. So by
putting them in the SVG page, we will upsize or downsize them, so that you have a sort of
consistent view of all the images, so some of them won’t overwhelm the screen and you don’t
get to see everything and other ones will be so small, that you don’t get to see anything.
I’m kind of showing you the raw materials that go together. Then the next thing, there’s
a link to the actual caption file. So if you click on that, then you would just see the text or the
caption and then there’s a link to the SVG file and some of your browsers may be configured, so
that they can read SVG, others may not. Then the last thing, which you won’t be receiving, but
it was just for example purposes, is a rendering at 640x480 of one of these examples. But what
you’re going to be seeing when you see the player will just be a slide show of images just like
the last image there.
Anita What that is folks, is the indoor, what we call sandbox; it’s our indoor testbed for the
Mars rovers. What you’re seeing in the background is actually camouflage, which when you go
and see it in person, you wonder why are they using military camouflage; but you see it here in
black and white, it’s so we can test the camera’s ability to see different textures and color
gradations. I might be able to send you a color photo of that, just so that you get a better idea of
what the test bed looks like.
Eric Sounds good. Again, these are meant to be quick looks, but the same viewer will allow
you to see, and that’s if you read the earlier part, the same viewer is intended first to provide you
with the ability to see these quick look products, but also you can use it to display the released
images as well, in a consistent format. So we wanted to make sure that you could quickly absorb
all of this imagery and display it right away.
You can, of course, also take the JPEG images and the released images and put them in
Photoshop and use them in a variety of ways, yourself, in addition. So you’re not limited to this
one viewing mechanism at all, it’s just this one simple one that you can run quickly and so,
we’ve got one to get you started, kind of like a little jump start.
Anita Now is SVG going to be pushed to the people, as a subscription basis or do they need to
come grab them?
Eric Yes, they’ll also be pushed as part of the subscription. Again, as Steve indicated, there is
very modest additional use of the bandwidth, so it won’t slow anything down.
NASA
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Anita So they won’t need FEI client to subscribe for this.
Eric It is at least my intention that we’re going to push everything out of here on FEI and then,
Lance is currently running the TAR, so we’ll have both versions available. So there will be both
ways to get it. These will be included in the TAR, as well as the FEI.
Eric Absolutely, each TAR will be on a per day or a per SOL basis and the FEI automatically
updates, so in both cases, you’ll be able to get the ones you missed. Yes.
W Okay, you’ll provide us with instructions for if they will do that.
Eric Sure, absolutely. So this is, again, some of the things that are being unveiled, just in time
for this ORT. But don’t feel that you’re alone in that. Actually, the science area on the fourth
floor is just being put together, as well. So we’re all in this together, preparing as fast as we can,
in preparation for January.
Anita Concurrent engineering.
Eric Do you have anything else on that?
Steve Only that on this page, eventually, hopefully tonight or tomorrow, there will be
instructions and links for you to actually get all this good stuff, and instructions on how to install
it. I’m planning on probably providing both kind of a JAR file download for those of you who
are familiar with Java and also what’s called Web Start, which should just automatically throw
stuff onto your machine and make it run. Are there any questions about this aspect of it?
W I expect when we get into the test, then we’ll start getting questions, as people see it . . .
Eric Again, feel free to call Mary, any time of the day or night, to get connected to it.
W We can also rerun this after the operational readiness test, as well.
Eric Yes, actually we’re interested in your feedback, our ability to adjust to feedback, during
the test, might be a little less than it will be after the test. Because, obviously, the first goal
during the test is to make sure that a) all the files get out to you, b) that the flow continues and c)
that if we get any feedback from the science and engineering team, that we make sure that we’ve
adjusted to that as well, so that you’re not missing anything that is available.
Then afterwards, though, and feel free to send it during the test, but after we’ll kind of put
together, we’ll do a lessons learned. The science and engineering team did the whole entire test;
and we’ll also be including your feedback, as well, in those lessons learned and we’ll try to use
NASA
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Page 20
those lessons learned, of course, to adjust for surface ops. This is the last official test of the full
team kind of thing, but there are some EDL tests and there’ll be individual testing of software
that’s going to continue, up until people go away for Christmas vacation. So feel free to give us
some feedback on that and we’ll do our best to adjust to that.
Joel Eric, this is Joel Halvorson in Minnesota. I have a quick question, I know early iterations
of this, we had registered domains and so are we having to register, because I’m not getting in
and I’ve been out of the testing loop for a few weeks?
Eric No, you shouldn’t have to reregister. Just go ahead and send an e-mail if you want, just
as a reminder.
Joel If we do register, if we put in a DNS, is that good enough to get in a whole range of
machines, or do we have to have static IP’s for this?
Eric I’m not absolutely sure of that. I’ll have to check with Chris Cordell and Lance, to make
sure whether they’re allowing a big range or if they need static IP’s. You might want to consider
making sure that you have at least one static IP, that is your failsafe and then see if we can also
do a range.
Joel Okay, great. Thanks.
Jamie Eric, this is Jamie at SSI. I’m having a similar problem, because we’re behind a firewall
now, so I gave my firewall IP and I don’t know if that’s been implemented or if that doesn’t
work, but I’ve been trying to follow up on that. So you may have more than one person with
problems doing the static IP thing.
Eric Yes, the big question is, how does your firewall talk to our firewall and we’ve had
experience with that problem; and you may also have to talk to your SA’s about port activation,
making sure the right ports are activated on your side, to mitigate with us. So we may have to
get your SA talking to our SA.
Joel Yes, that would be fine.
Eric But so far we haven’t had any cases, where we haven’t been able to work through those,
poking the correct holes in the firewall.
Joel So is calling Mary the way to start that process?
Eric Yes.
Barbara Or he can e-mail me.
NASA
Moderator: Anita Sohus
November 18, 2003/11:00 a.m. CST
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Eric Yes, you can also e-mail barbara.mcguffie@jpl.nasa.gov.
Joel Will do.
Anita Okay, I wanted to talk about the next steps here. Next week, I believe, I don’t know if
CoCo is on the line, but we do have a speaker scheduled, as well as lesson learned from the
operational readiness test. After that, we probably won’t do anything on the day before
Christmas, I don’t know about the day before New Years Eve. But we will try to continue these
telecoms. ….
Mars Express, oh, thank you for reminding me. Mars Express actually happens
Christmas Eve day, December 24th and there is a training on Mars Express later in the week
under the auspices of the Solar System Ambassadors Program, which we are inviting you to
participate in, if you wish. I will send out an e-mail on it, but it’s Thursday, this week,
November 20th, from 3:00 to 4:30 Pacific Standard time. To call in, it’s 888-405-9176, the pass
code is express and I will e-mail that information to you. I know Christine is setting that up,
right?
Christine Yes.
Anita We hope to continue these Mars Tuesdays telecons throughout the surface operations,
with part troubleshooting, part information exchange. If you have not signed on to the Web site
to officially apply and give us your IP address, then please do so, so that we can get up and
running, as we get things running here.
Eric I might add one more thing and that is that the other kind of tactical product that I didn’t
mention, that I think is important to think about, are the videos themselves, and again NASA TV
is probably the best way to get that.
Now we may have some stuff from the Web, but depending on bandwidth, if you want
full res, absolutely full res, if you connect to your local cable provider or whoever, NASA TV, in
the past has always not only had the press conferences; but all of the animation kind of material
has been shown either before and/or after the press conference, as well. So that’s the quickest
way. We’ll have other ways to get you some of this material, but I think that will be the most
ideal time that you can get that material.
Anita Yes, and part of the e-mail notifications that we want to send you, is a schedule for that
type of thing and also, I think most of you know that NASA TV puts up an hour a day of these
types of files or animations. They put up an hour a day of history and an hour of day of
educational programming and that repeats four times a day, one hour of each thing repeats four
times a day. So it’s a good thing to get to.
NASA
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Eric Yes, it’s a very good resource for these kinds of materials and it will be extremely timely
by definition during the mission. Nominal science briefings are at 9 a.m. Pacific, so that’s
certainly one timeframe that you can look forward to a lot of material. People will have a
deadline to try to get some of that material out at that time. There’ll be others scheduled, which
as new dimensions, we’ll provide you with the schedule, other scheduled events that are event
driven, like the egress or landing or things like that. There will be truss events and video and
images going out as soon around those events, as they can be put together.
Anita Is John Stoke on the line? Those of you who are subscribers to John Stoke’s View Space,
we’re also talking to him about the possibility of him ingesting and sending out the images.
That’s another possibility for you folks.
Erie I guess one last comment about the video. As Anita mentioned, there’s a B roll or other
things, this will include interviews, sometimes with scientists. The press briefings will not be the
only way of getting information, because there will be interviews throughout the day. There will
be stories put together by Christine and Stephenie and other people.
On top of that, there is video that has been shot during testing, that may be appropriate
and sometimes they’ll show that during the day rather than at the press conference. So if you
were wondering how does the rock abrasion tool work, there may be some footage that is
released during B -oll that shows how it actually functions, that we have shot here during local
testing. Keep that in mind, it really is good to check that schedule and again, Anita, is going to
try to have that kind of information available to you, so that you can easily reference it and
download by connecting directly to NASA TV.
Anita Another opportunity that we are just now being able to make available to you, is what we
call live shots. This has been primarily for the news media over the years, where they send in
their questions and then our expert in the studio responds to the questions, as though he’s talking
to a live interviewer and then that material is put up on the NASA satellite or shipped to the
media outlet. This is a new opportunity to museums, as well, for those of you who do your own
programming. You’ll be receiving e-mail notices about live shots. Not just for Mars, but for
JPL topics, anyway.
Okay, anything else that anybody wants to discuss or are we done for today? I think
we’ve thrown a lot of material at you, so you’ll need some time to digest it.
M I think it’s really good to get together once a week including during surface ops. I think
that’s going to be very, very helpful, to get your feedback will be most useful. So doing it at a
regular time, as we all cycle through the Martian clock, I think is a great thing to do. So I’m
happy we’re going to continue these.
NASA
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Page 23
M Are these minutes going to be online or e-mailed out again?
Anita Yes, the answer is yes.
M Okay, good.
Anita I usually get the transcript a couple of days afterwards and it takes me a day or so to clean
them up.
M Are they archived on the Web site as well?
Anita Yes.
M Okay, great.
M I think Christine was mentioning this in the background. I think this is a really good time
right now for us to meet, but we may consider during surface ops doing it a little later in the day,
simply because the press conferences, as we said, are scheduled at 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time
and right before then is going to be kind of hectic; but right after would be, probably, a good
time to do this. That way you’d also have all the material, anything you got during the press
conference, so if there were questions, that would be a very good time to discuss them.
M I don’t know, as this crowd increases, there may be a natural break, in terms of activity,
for example, the people that are more involved in the technical aspects and those who are
involved on the floor, for example, interpreting what they see.
Anita Right. So far, we’ve been doing the interpretive part at the top of the hour and the
technical part at the bottom of the hour.
M Also, the other thing to consider here is if we make it after the press conference that gives
us a better chance of tearing away a few speakers that, otherwise, would be involved either in
preparing material or actually in the press conference. So it would be a lot easier to get someone
to provide some of the interpretation.
Anita Yes, we’re committed to doing what you guys need, so we hope that this is what you
need and if we’re overdoing it or under doing it, let us know. You’ll get information on the Mars
Express training from me at next week’s telecon