Off-Nominal - 113 - AutoNav Road Rage

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Jake and Anthony check in on the ongoing planetary missions around the solar system.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 113 - AutoNav Road Rage - YouTubeESA - BepiColombo’s third Mercury flyby: the movieESA - A trio of images highlight BepiColombo’s third Mercury flybyWhere is Curiosity? | Mission – NASA Mars ExplorationNASA’s Curiosity Captures Martian Morning, Afternoon in New ‘Postcard’AreoBrowserNASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover Gets a Major Software UpgradeNASA’s Perseverance Collects First Mars Sample of New Science CampaignNASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes 50th FlightMars Helicopter - NASA MarsDebate rages about future of New Horizons - SpaceNewsNASA Psyche mission back on track for October launch - SpaceNewsFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, Jake, it's me and you. I'm loving this new music. I'm diving now. It's like good. Yeah, yeah. I'm good. I mean, we haven't really made it past the first one yet of the new set.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. I'll have to hit it a little early for the outro so we can see what the second song is on the list. Okay, sounds good, yeah. One day we'll get through all eight or whatever I put on there. This is the best content for audio listeners who only ever hear the all phenomenal. intro music, which is a great plug to head over and watch the first one minute on YouTube, and then you can switch back to this just to see whatever. What you're missing over there?

You are missing a lot. The number one reason to go watch YouTube is to listen to the stream hold music. Oh, man, okay. On a note, we have a video or asset focused show today. We do. I should say. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to talk about some planet stuff today, because I'm

I don't have a planetary show anymore. And so it has to come out here. Whatever's in here has to come out. And this is the only vessel I have now. So it's going to happen. And all you have is planetary content. Every show opening looks like a planetary show. That's right.

I haven't talked about planetary missions in a while. So I'm excited to like check in. Because we're going to check in some missions. But we also have some like topics. I feel like there's some discussions to be had about missions. are ongoing or almost going. Lurking in these little highlights, I think there's a narrative. We'll see if we can tease one out.

We'll see if we're actually good storytellers or if we're just, you know, up your rambling on the internet. Shocker. Is that what people come for? I feel like that's what people come for. I mean, that's probably half and half, really. Yeah. I hope more than half.

Let us know. Let us know. Are you here for the shit show or the good? good show. Well, what are you drinking today? I have a baromo pale ale. I want to get that on there. What's the right? That's a moody label. Yeah. So that looks like it was designed by most of the designers I know. Black and white and really moody. Yeah. I was going to actually make fun of you. This almost looks like an Anthony design. It's like, well, I'm influenced by those around me, I guess. Black, white, and a simple sans-sera font, what else do you need, right?

A little text on a curve. That's always fun. Throw that in there. It kind of looks like the off-nominal website. Like, let's be honest, right? A little bit. Yeah. It actually looks like some of the early Miko T-shirts.

Yes, it does. Yes. Yeah, like the old Falcon one. Yeah, totally. The Centaur one. There's a Centaur one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, cool.

What do you got? Oh, I'm clearing out some limes. and tonic, so I've got myself a gin and tonic once again. The truth is, I'm a little late on doing my summer white wine order because it's been not very summery here yet. So I'm still in a gin and tonic mood. But we're moving into white wine season. You get like an order for the year?

Like, what are you talking about? No, I don't have that much space in my house. Come on. What does that mean? Just, you know, there's a, so I don't know, those of you out there in the PA area may know that we have a really strange system in Pennsylvania here to buy alcohol. And it's a little more lenient over in New Jersey, only a little bit. And there's just a, there's just a store that I do like an order ahead thing and then drive up and put it in my trunk just to do it in bulk. So, yeah, total wine is the, in case you're shopping in the region.

I believe that's only a regional store. I don't know. Not sure how far they go. Well, I've never heard of it. So they're not in Yucatan. No. Unlike Ticcate and the other small brands that made their way down your way. The other small brands.

Oh, dear. Okay. Well, yeah, I don't know. So what do you want to start? What do you want to unpack? Should we do like, should we like do a geography-based order? Should we go like middle out? Middle out?

just do Mars and then not Mars because that's really how it all kind of organizes like if it gets serious a little bit, right? I feel like middle out starts us out with just looking at fun pictures and ends with us getting into drama. All right. Middle out makes sense to me. Foreshadowing. Good.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Beppie Columbo then? Is that where we're going to start? Beppe Columbo. That's the jam, right? Trying to find this. Here's the full.

This is a really, these images. These images on this website. Issa's got this cool, like a toggling thing we can look at, right? With the sliders to show the features and stuff. I'll just pull it up. I don't know. I'm fighting.

Just bring you that. All right. First off, Beppy Colombo is one of those spacecraft that does it right in which when they aligned their cameras, they were like, let's just have a little tiny bit of the spacecraft in this picture. You know what I'm saying? Yes, yeah. This one is a baller photo.

Look at this thing. Let me get the full res, Jake. Pings. Full res. Fill the screen up with X-Ling or do I want high-res ping one? Oh, I guess that's like the, yeah. All right, we're getting high-res. You're doing the whole thing.

Look at this. You can see all the stuff in my downloads folder. You can really just look at this. Mercury, underrated planet to look at. Look at this thing. Yeah, no, it's cool stuff. We had a fun discussion in the Discord about this today because it kicked off some, someone was asking about, like, there was like this weird fault line that you can see in one of these pictures and it was like, what is that?

Is that like a tectonic fault? And then I got confused because I, you know, I know of some facts. And one of those facts is that plate tectonics is an earth thing. So I was like, no, it can't be earth, you know, it can't be plate tectonics. But there's other tectonics, too. And so we were digging into it and we kind of learned a bit about it. But yeah, like the thing is just like kind of like shrinking and cracking and cooling in the weird temperature environment, you know, that close to the sun and, you know, just entropy over time. So there's all these weird like, you know, like fractures.

Stress fractures. Yeah, it's a weird place. It's because of how spicy it is that close to. I miss this fall line. Is it this little weird thing? Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. You can kind of see it.

There's like a, it's like a horseshoe shape almost or like a, what you call that, bathtub shape? The beagle, bigel, rupes? Rooops, bigel rupes. Biggle roops. Yeah, and then the one creator named after Scott Manley out there. Yeah, definitely Scott Manley, not some other manly. That's a big, that's a big achievement, you know?

It is, yeah. Yeah. So wait If you're in the chat Let us know how that conversation Wait so this is a fault line Just like a stress fracture Kind of situation

That's weird shape Yeah like some sort of tectonic Because like Even though it's like really close to sun Mercury is on the long time skills Getting colder right Because everything just kind of approaches Entropy in the long run

So it's getting it's getting colder and colder and that kind of shrinking, I don't know, because it doesn't get any smaller, I guess. I don't know. And so it's kind of like the cross just getting stretched over the surface and it kicks cracks and whatever. This is highly, yeah, I got a video. Should we watch a video of it?

I haven't seen the same. I haven't either. Let's check it out. I pulled up a bunch of links and I was like, I'm not going to spoil it. Let's live commentate the flyby. Yes. Oh, go.

Oh, this is new. I haven't seen this one yet. I was like, is it going to be a slideshow of the three pictures? No, it's the same base, but I mean, this is got all of them though.

So this is still, remind me the schedule here. There's like another couple flybys, right, before they pull into the next phase? Yeah, I think it does a total of six Mercury flybys before it enters orbit. But it's getting, we're getting closer now because now it's going to do like,

it's going to start turning the gas on with the, the, I turn of the gas on or whatever, you know, for the electron thrusters. I missed this 3D presentation. It's the back half of this video trick. Okay. So here we go. Yeah.

This is like, bigel roops. They played with Aero browser and they were like, yeah, are these the Bigel Roops? Yeah, right there you can see it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Biggle Roops. Um, yeah, so I think it, I think it comes by another flyby late next year and then 25 or 26 it finally starts.

The actual science mission in orbit, yeah, it's pretty wild. Mercury is hard to get to, even though it is, isn't that kind of funny? So, Mercury is on average the closest planet to us. Just because it's always like flying around the sun, yeah. Venus spends too much time on the other side of the sun from us. Mercury's like right as we, it's gone, it's back again. Here I am, here I am. Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of wild to think about going around. the sun in 88 days. Like when you think about it, you know. I've been reading a lot of the... Well, it's been getting back into the nerdy baby space, which is an excellent book. I did get them the little... Does it have a good pace puddle in it?

Well, it has a dragon. I got the little... I've ordered the matchbox dragon twos. Did you see that these were released? No. But in nerdy baby space is one of the... There's a dragon two picture. And so, you know,

we're reading through those and trying to explain orbits and whatnot. He's got a big picture on the wall where he could point out the planets and all that. Basically just like Saturn at the moment and Earth. Earth. Earth. That's it. Yeah.

But he keeps getting confused about Mercury and Venus. So, but it is, like, 88 days, it's funny because on the solar system scale, it's like, man, that thing's moving, but then the exoplanets we know, it's like, that's really slow.

Like, these other suckers are hole in ass around their sun in like four hours or whatever. Yeah, what's the Trappist One version of Mercury doing it? Like, you know, it's like a week or something like. Yeah, those little like, was it like a red dwarf the star, right? The small ones, yeah, they're tiny, right? Doesn't the whole Trappist One system fit inside their orbit of Mercury?

I think that's the stat. It sounds right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to Google for the visualization of that. Anthony Google. Yeah, Anthony Google stuff. Yeah, I mean, here we go. This is a good visualization.

Thanks to insider.com for this one. Credit out to insider.com. I don't really understand what's going on here. That doesn't look to scale over here. So figure this visualization out. Are the Jupiter wants to scale? It's much more similar to the Jupiter system. as a scale size, right?

Pretty much. Wow. Yeah, some of these planets look like you can just throw an object between them. Look at that thing. Imagine what it looks like on this little blue planet here in the middle. What does it look like when the other two come by? You know what I'm saying? Like, you've seen the visualizations of like what Saturn would look like in the sky of Titan or whatever, like those kind of things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This one, when these two planets come flying by you and you've got like, two gigantic things in the sky. Pretty epic. Yeah, it would look good. That might be close enough where you can see, like, it's no longer a point of light. Like, you can actually see some shape to it.

Yeah, and then you can have multiple of those in the sky. That's wild. Yeah, because we only have moon scale and then Venus, right? Like that, we have nothing in the middle ground. Moon scale and stars that don't blink. But it's kind of interesting to think about somewhere in between when you got like a little bit of surface detail. Like if you could if you could make out just the red the great red spot

But nothing else on jubiter with your own eye like that would be kind of sweet Yeah yeah yeah hmm I feel like that would do a lot for scientific outreach You know you want to have a really fun counterfactuals like what would that have done to like all early science because we would have had less trouble proving that those were planets you know like how much of human history was like those are just stars that move right but then what then what like

we figured that out earlier but we still were struggling at the transportation bit okay next show idea what if what if all right I'm in

what else we got anything else we got mercury any mercury feelings in the chat I feel like people not not very moved by Mercury no Mercury

doesn't have a lot of friends it's higher up my list than I even personally give it credit for. Yeah. So. Yeah. All right. What have we got?

We're not to an earth science missions, right? Venus update, Rocket Lab. How they doing? They're not. They're not going? We were joking about this the other day. It's like, remember when the Venus Lifefinder mission was supposed to launch in May? And then it would just, like, no one just said anything.

It's just like, I feel like I called an errant tweet about it. Like, oh, yeah, it's delayed. Yeah, it was like very, very, not, not, uh, uh, uh, uh, out front kind of communications, right? It was like, just kind of casually mentioned at the end of a, of a, you know, side conversation after an interview somewhere,

you know, just sneak it out somewhere and out of the trash. So, yeah, it'll be a while for that. Here's a good. I think they have to wait. Was it,

it's late next year is the next window, right? What did we look at up? You told me it was like 25 or something. It's like, every 19 months is what you said. Yeah. So we're saying it's next year then, right?

Yeah. So now we're into the range of like, all right, offnom.com slash Discord, get in the Discord, support the show, get in the Discord and make some predictions. An interesting one would be, what's it called, LifeFinder? Life Finds Awayer, I think. Yep. They should have a Jurassic Park sticker on this thing. Yeah. Like, that's, all right, one more delay, right?

And we're looking at, eh, just fly it on Neutron. So a good bet would be does this fly an electron or neutron? What do you think? Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Well, the dovetail question from that is like, if neutrons on the table, do we scale it up a little bit and add a little two extra bells and whistles? Yeah. Like, they did make some compromises.

there was like an early design. And then they were, you know, trying to, you can do the review and you're like, oh, actually, we don't have as much mass as we thought basically how all planetary missions go. So they desoped a bunch of stuff. And I wonder if they would, you know, consider putting that stuff back in. Even if you don't have to redesign the spacecraft, just add the instruments back or something. I don't know, maybe. It's an interesting bet because now, like, when the idea was floated, right?

Peter Beck's a Venus guy, I guess, so he's just into it. But I felt like a lot of the positioning was, look what we can do with small rockets and small satellites and small this and small that. And now it's like, look at our gigantic new, that small rocket. That's for hypersonic tests. This new big one is for the space stuff. Like, look at this big rocket. So the marketing sheen of it is going. Well, again, if we upcharge the military for flying them in the atmosphere the whole time?

Great. But so that marketing sheen is kind of, or not even sheen, but like the motivation to say, look at how good our small satellite planetary missions are doing. That is less motivating at a certain point. Certainly if you're looking at 2025, and even if Rocket Lab is off by a year or two on Neutron, you are one Venus launch window away from Neutron being a thing. Yeah, because if you say, so the next one, window is like whatever, December 24, neutron won't be ready by then. So you would need to go 19 more

months, which would be like, you know, is that March 26? Mid 26, yeah. Yeah. Later than that, it would be like summer 26. Northern summer. Uh, 19, no, 19 months is seven. Yeah, okay, yeah, right. Yeah, there's some math in there. It's a math. Okay, so call it mid, mid 26. Yeah. I don't know. Was it ready by then? Three years from now. It's a rocket, you know? Like, it's a rocket.

It's not a super newfangled rocket. All right, so there's your next prediction. Does Neutron fly before June 26? Yeah, well, what's their current? I mean, I don't know. I'm probably more confident that life finds a way will fly on Neutron than Neutron will fly by 26. So I might make both bets and we'll see where the endorse and denouncements fall.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. Anyway, I don't think I'll go to wrap. I'm the pessimist on that one, as usual. You don't think any of them will fly by then? I think the Venus mission may fly. I think, but I think by next one, it should be able. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Nice. It's a lot of margin. Like if you were planning for May 23 and you miss it, it's just like, here's 19 months of margin that you just get, right? And so even if you just like immediately swallow half of that in like rescoping and testing or whatever you want to do,

like you still have tons of margin to. So, yeah, we'll see. It's not, it's not that complicated of the spacecraft. Like, shots fired.

You know? Life finds a way crew. Hit us up. Jake's coming at you. Tell me, I'm wrong. It's not that complicated. Change his mind.

Sarah Seeger, if you're in the chat, let me know how wrong I am. All right, what do you got for Mars? Where do you want to go first? This is your old, we brought you out of retirement. So give me how this works for you. What do you do? When you're looking at what's going on Mars, what's your process? I have to dust off the old links and be like, what's going on this next in here?

Oh, hey, look at that. They got like a thing going. Oh, right. Yeah, it was nice. I've definitely taken a break, though, because holy smokes, I pulled up the maps. That's usually where I start is like, where did I remember it being last and where is it now? And I'm like, whoa, look at these things.

They're just like, we're gone. Right? Yeah. The rovers move very, very slowly on a day-to-day basis and much quicker on a long-term basis than you expect. So you're a map driven guy first. It's good context to start with, right? Because then you know where you've moved to like the land. marks and then when you pull up the photos you go oh yeah that's that that's that that's that and

you're you're good to go right so um i don't know pull up like curiosity's map do you have those maps want me to link them to you yeah i mean you've got them on speed dial i don't really yeah i do i still have them in the old uh in the old uh is it the where is the rover now uh page uh yeah it's a really epic URL slash where is the rover Oh, yeah, Perseverance has got a better rumor. This guy, right? That's what I'm talking up. URL, sorry.

Yeah. So this is, like, this is pretty cool because they're finally making their way up Getis Valis, which is like that big, you know, a big gash in the side of that, yeah, that area there. So I've been kind of staring at that valise for a long time. And now it feels like we're actually getting into it, which is pretty exciting. It's pretty neat. Previously on Red Planet Review, we were in the Verrauban Ridge area. Where did you leave off?

Oh, you were in the green hue pediment, right? You were somewhere. Yeah, so like, if you look kind of like just north of where the rover is now on that map, there's like a big peak. Mm-hmm. That one big there, which is the Navarro Mountain, I think. That whole area of the left there, that was the spicy area where I kind of left. So things were just like really, really choppy and sharp. And they had some really fun driving in there.

It was a little dodgy from there. from day to day. So they were getting lots of cool science, but it was nice to get past that, I'm sure. And what were they doing all the way out here? That's where they had to turn around because they couldn't go any further. They wanted to go all the way across that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the top of the pediment. So it's like, it's like a raised scar. And it's just, it's like if you had a flat board and then just put a bunch of nails pointing up on it, that's basically what driving over that is because the rocks are just all awful. And it was,

it was faulting like every drive. just like, we're up, stop, call home for help. We're not fun. It was not fun. So they made it that far, and then they turned around and said, nope. And came back. So, yeah. This looks sweet. I mean, when you zoom out, like, I don't know, man.

Sorry, I zoomed out too far. This looks like, this looks like what you think of when you're like, I'm going to put a thing that drives on another planet and I'm going to drive up that valley. Like, this is what. Yeah. This is the idea, right? Because this looks sweet. We got it. All right. Now we're going to flip over area browser. And is this what you do next? Which I'm jumping ahead. I'm jumping ahead. Yeah. No, that's a good one just to like get some like if you want to get some context, right? So like what are the one of the general themes? It's hard. It's hard to go through these photos because they will stop somewhere and take like 1,000 photos of the same rock.

You're like, okay, I need to I need to get to the next thing in the list. So this is useful for like kind of browsing at a high level. There's some good photos of, so in that map, there's like just south of that big peak. There is two smaller peaks that they drove right through. Yeah, right, a little further north. Yeah, right there. So that is Deepdale and Bolivar, I think. I think it's named for that guy, Simon Bolivar.

For that guy. Yeah, he's like, oh, that's a whole revolution named after himself. Yeah, yeah. Kind of a big deal in Latin America. Who's Deepdale, though? I don't know. Deep Dale sounds like some sort of forgotten realms, Dungeons and Dragons thing to me, so I don't really know where it came from.

I hang out in Shadowdale most of the time, so I don't really know about it. Shadowdale, yeah, the Dales, right? Forgotten realms. Shout out to all my D&D nerds. So I don't know where that's coming from. I'll be totally honest with you. But, yeah, there's some good photos. I'm trying to find the actual shot that I meant to take to show you instead of just talking.

Talking about the details. This is now Jake Googling song. Jake Googles names of things, too, or images. What can I just go to the day? Can I just do it? Yeah, but there's, no, there's a. Um, curiosity, uh, press release on it.

Hmm. On the deep data. On, uh, on JPL's news site. I'm trying to find that because it had a really nice photo looking back to all of this. To all the Dales? Which I think is good. Holy smokes. This is a terrible.

I'd had this open like an hour ago. I mean, I'm here on the day. So we can kind of get a sense for the Dales. It was a mosaic though. So it's not going to appear there. That's the problem, right? Excuse me. for trying to fill some time here and look at some pictures.

I know, I know. It's terrible. Okay, I sent you the link. Bring that up there. It's got one of those cool slider things, too, so you can see the names of the features. So if you look like way down in the middle there, you can see Deepdale and where you are.

Yeah, so like that's how far they come this further way now. But that was really cool. There was like a big sand trap in there, and they had to like skirt around the outside of the pass. And it was pretty nice. So this is a good, good photo. You got some sunset action happening. Oh, yeah.

Love it. I like mountain outside Gale Crater. That's pretty boss. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty boss. Unnamed peak. Yeah. Man, this is cool, though, because I remember, like you were saying, it's, it moves very

slow, but then you kind of zoom out and you're like, man, I remember when it was, the initial images are coming down and we're like, Mount Sharp is like way out there. Like that is so far away. I can't even imagine they're ever going to get there. And now they're like pretty much climbing the map dots at this point. Yeah, yeah. But you zoom out though. Look how big Mount Sharp is.

Like, it's still like, oh, yeah. You're like, you're never going to get anywhere close to the top of that thing. No. No. Man. Curiosity's still doing its thing. Not being known to show too much, huh? Yeah, yeah.

They got a big software upgrade too. They got like a, they took some of the perseverance to navigate. code and I don't know. They optimized something, but the thing can do better, like, thinking while driving, so it can take pictures as it's going and then rewrite itself a little better, which Perseverance can do, which is why it clips across the surface so quickly, but perhaps it couldn't for a while. Man, that's an interesting direction to try that out.

Let's backport it. You'd figure, I mean, I guess they wanted to get some time on the surface before they screw up. perfectly good spacecraft? I mean, so like the navigation story in curiosity was like kind of tragic, right? Because it came, it was supposed to have like all this like really good navigation stuff. And then yeah, and then they had the problem with the wheels were just like wearing down. And the auto nav was like causing it.

Right. Like this, the auto nav was like a really, I don't know, aggressive driver or something. But it was like tearing up the wheels. And so they had to turn that off and like be a little more cautious. And then they had all the computer problems, right? So there's like two computers on, two flight computers on curiosity. And they've been like switching back and forth trying to pick the worst, like the least worst computer each time because like this one has a fault.

So they go to B and then B's like, oh, I have a different fault. And they're like, wow, this one's actually worse than the other falls. Let's go back to A. And they just like keep trying to, you know, get around it. And so it's challenging. But I don't know, they figured something out because it's JPL. That is a really funny like thing to consider auto-navd. Where the hell are you going?

Why are you going that way? No. It's exactly how you would imagine like our first version of that would work, you know? Yeah, yeah. It keeps turning right into these bumps. Like it really wants to drive on the bumps. Yeah, really wants to make friends with this big sharp rock

and I don't know why it wants to do that. It's like that looks like an interesting rock. Let me drive over there and see what's going on. It's going on. Stupid rover. Oh, man. Yeah. So when is it getting chat, GPT,

though. So just send back the useful stuff. Yeah. I mean, do we even need it over or can we just ask Chad GPD what happened to the water on Mars? Yeah. I mean, I would definitely hit regenerate response a couple times that it sounds like listening to most of talk about the water on Mars. Warm and wet, what is it, warm and wet or cold and icy or something? What is that? Is that place to be in. Hey, Jack, GBT, you write me a JPL press release finding water on Mars. I bet you it would be so. good. Probably would be good.

And send it to us. So that's your best one. I need to tweet it. Yeah. No lie. I've been using the shit out of chat GPT this week doing like formatting filler data for some stuff I'm building. Like I'll make one item and it's got programmer real quick, but I'll make like an item

of an array and I'm like, make me 25 of these and vary those fields by this and make sure these are within 5% of the initial value. I'm like, I don't know how that one works. I understand how, like, statistical modeling of what word comes next works, and I have no idea how it's doing what I'm telling it to do. At all. It's a complete mystery to me, but it's great. I signed up for a GitHub co-pilot, which has been, like, hot-of-computing my coat now.

And it's pretty good. It's pretty fun. I'm still trying to figure out how to, like, best use it. But it's neat. It's cool stuff. Well, soon we'll hear some press releases about the next rover, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. wait you send me a major software upgrade post is there anything else to talk about this

that's what just said that's the navigation software it's a sweet pick so it's cool yeah is that i think that's one of those mountains that's that's that might be it's bolivar yeah yeah i think they should have the picture they should have used is uh rocks that the other auto nav decided to drive over that they shouldn't have that's what they should have had here Here were a series of bad things to drive over. Yeah, yeah. Well, you just pull up some of those green new pediment pictures, man. They were scary.

There was some spicy stuff up there. Spicy. That might have been the case. Maybe that's why they had to wait this long. They drove up there and said, now we have some good test data. Don't drive here. Okay, ship it. That's why they take 1,000 photos each day, Jake.

They're feeding this machine learning algorithm. Turn 180. Go forward. So good. Yeah. All right. Well, moving on to the new hotness. Percy? Yeah. Persky.

I'm still sad they named it Perseverance. Are you still sad about this? I don't feel like we ever talked about that. I mean, you know what I was trying to get it named. I don't remember. Gritty. Gritty. Oh, yeah, gritty.

Gritty. Spirit, opportunity, curiosity. Gritty. It would have been great. Like that would have totally fit in and they would have captured the cultural moment of the time. What were you pulling for? Which one did I, you know, I can't remember them now, but I almost wanted, I think it was an I word. I wonder if it was like ingenuity. That would have been really funny. That was the one.

Or maybe it was like, you know, like in. Independence or something. Independence. I don't know. Something like that. But I know, I'm just mad because perseverance is hard to say and spell. So, yeah. Yeah.

That's my only reason. Yeah, you're right Well, what do we got going on here? I see a rock in a in a in a wheel here What's going on? That's been there well, right? Well, it's gone now Oh, okay Yeah, this is older but that rock that rock finally

We took that rock like on early in the mission It snuck into a wheel or something And it's just been like My remember my not clumping along as it goes the whole The whole damn time But it finally fell out here That will mystify some future Martians They'll be doing some research

you're like, how did this rock get here? Yeah, it totally will. So that's why you can't depend on float rocks, all you budding geologists. You've got to find the bedrock to know what's going on. That's what I always say. That's what I always say. Don't depend on the float rock. No, so this rover's up on the delta now.

So this is like the, you know, the exciting part of the mission because it was like it landed down the bottom and it had to make its way up and blah, blah, blah. But it's now finally up on top of it. And so they started that science campaign early this year, I want to say, because they dropped the sample cash off, that contingency one in like January, December, somewhere along there. And then they climbed up. And they've only taken one sample up there so far. So they've just kind of now, like, started to get back into it. But it's like much, much fewer samples, which is kind of interesting.

Much fewer samples than you were expecting them to have taken this in this phase? Yeah. Well, I mean, they took 23. or something in the first couple years and then this this year, 2023, I think they've done one.

So, yeah. Are you have any conspiracy theories about that? No, not yet. I'm not deep enough into it anymore. I don't have all the undercurrents, all the news, right? Are they refactoring so that they don't get another atmosphere example? They feel like

they got enough from that spot and are ready to get up the Delta? Maybe the rocks just, Just bad rocks. Yeah. Just shit rocks. And they don't want, yeah. You never know.

Remind me though, the cache, right? So there's the cache of samples that they left on the surface. Half of the ones that they took, right? And then the other half are in the rover still. So they're doing a surface cache here, and then there's one later on in the mission, or is this the only surface cache? No, this is the backup, right? So the first, you know, the first, was it 23, maybe it was 22, but the first, you know, bulk of samples, they took two of each one.

Right. And then they split it in half and they dropped one there. And then that's if the rover like breaks tomorrow. Right. Then we can fly there and we can get those first 10 that are whatever, right? But if the rover doesn't break tomorrow, they're going to keep collecting, add to those first 10, add all the new ones, and then there'll be like a primary cash to retrieve. And that's, that's the no, you know, notional mission plan.

And that'll be all of the ones that they've already collected, plus all the future ones. Yeah, yeah. So they're only collecting a single each time from here and out? Correct. Yeah, now they're just getting one. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so you just build that.

And they left this one in a good spot for helicopters? Oh, they sure did. It's like a, it's like a soccer pitch. It's like just a big flat area. And it's, they got it, they drove around it like 15 times to get all the pictures and all the coordinates. I know exactly where each one of these things is. So, yeah. If they have to go.

there. But I mean, hopefully you don't have to go there. That's the idea. Right, right. But we should at some point, if we get cheap enough and we got some helicopters, why not? Yeah, you know, if there's like a little bit of extra money in the budget one day. Extra 1.7 billion wouldn't hurt us, you know? Seems like that's, we're flush with cash these days, right, Jake? Yeah, just to get a copy of the same samples we already have, me as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, were there two atmospheric samples? There were, yeah. There was two of them. I thought there was just one of them. I think there was one on purpose, they went by accident.

it wasn't there? Okay, so they were like, well, we got this one, so now we got to have that's pair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because there was the actual witness tube that they had like planned to take and then there was the one that was like, we took the drill and then we put it in the tube and then we closed it up and then we went, oops, there's no rock in there. It's a bad rock. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bad rock. So, yeah, so I don't know, they're going to try and get the good one. And I think that's all we really know at this point. But they're going to, maybe use

helicopters? I don't know. It looks like perseverance is that's the notional plan now is perseverance is going to just stick them right in the rocket, but that's a... What happened? Helicopters. That's always been the backup plan. The helicopters are the backup? The tube retrieval.

Yeah, again, it's if the rover. If they land far away or if the rover can't get there or whatever, right? That's the idea. I'm a little skeptical about this storyline. Yeah, I have to be honest. If you're building two helicopters and you're sending them to Mars, someone wants to use them you know well I'm sure they'll have some cameras or something on there for

for science so they'll have a primary mission hopefully I don't know I it's one of those I don't know it's one of those things where it's like they're really cagey about it there's like it's not it's a backup plan it's a backup plan but then they're just like pouring money into it and you're like okay and they're developing like this like hexacopter thing so six rotors all coming down to like a central chassis with the science instrument so it's like a science helicopter and Yeah, so I don't know. We haven't heard the end of the story on that yet, but that's the public.

My theory is that JPL is just pissed off they don't have the coolest helicopter in development. Could be true. That's my true. A little bit of rivalry, a little bit of APL, JPL rivalry. Or, alternatively, they were tired of Bill Nelson calling it the little helicopter and they were like, we clearly need more rotors on this. We need a real big one. We need a real big one. We need one that he will not mistake. for being a tiny little helicopter.

On the topic, ingenuity's kicking ass, though. 50 flights. As of two months ago, right? Yeah. What's the status now? I haven't seen it in my RSS feed lately, so maybe that's where they're still at.

Ingenuity flight log. Let's bring it up. I love that they have this flight log. It's maybe the best part of the website. You tell me? Flight log. 51 they've done. Yeah.

That 50th flight, too, was like an altitude record. Well, they hit 18 meters on that, which is pretty crazy. That's high up. 91 minutes of flying. Right? That's pretty good. It's crazy. Yeah. This is like on the scale of spacecraft that have outlived their mission,

where are we at on us? Like, in surprise value, or yeah from a ratio perspective we've got to be approaching like Voyager levels here right like that's what I'm wondering

what's the power ranking I mean they've 10 X their flights right so there you go that's that's your that's your baseline now opportunity has got to be up there right

opportunity 90 days to 15 years that's 45 times that's a good ratio yeah so Voyager probably probably the goat 60 times for opportunity opportunity probably

The Voyager was supposed to last quite a while because it had to get all the way to, you know, to Uranus, right? Or to Neptune. That's relative to where it is now. That's not that far. That's like right there. It's left the solar system five times, Jake. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty far.

Yeah. What was the Voyager? What's the word I'm looking for? The planned mission? What's the primary mission? Prime mission. Prime mission. All right.

What was the duration? Because you're right. Maybe it, maybe that isn't. Because it launched like 706. When did it launch? 78. 77. So, and that they were hitting Neptune in the late 80s, weren't they?

Wasn't it like 88 or 89 that they got to the last planet and the tour, right? So from a time perspective, it's like five extra its flight plan. Right. But that's no opportunity. No. So is Opportunity the goat? Sounds like it, yeah. Here, let me make a firm argument for opportunity being the goat.

What opportunity is doing is way harder. Voyager's just flying until it runs out of whatever. It's not getting stuck in sand. It's not doing dust storms. It's not driving over bad rocks. It doesn't even, like, Earth doesn't even move from its vantage point anymore. Like, it's just like, it just points at the antenna at one spot and just goes, hi. Hi.

Hello. I'm still here. Yeah. So I'm taking the firm stance that it's it's impressive, but like, you know, it's got nuclear power. Yeah. So I'm going to say opportunity firmly the goat in outliving itself. And I'm actually going to give ingenuity in the number two spot, I think. Because again, level of effort. I'm a big level of effort guy in this regard, I guess, you know? And, 51 flights, like all of the stuff involved. Taking off. Finding your way to where you're going. Landing on not bad rocks that set you up for another takeoff. Charging batteries, outliving dust storms. It's put in a lot of work.

All on like a pixel one or whatever. Yeah. And like one of the lipstick batteries. Like nothing, you know, it's got nothing on it. So. Oh, man. And it was getting downplayed the whole time. So yeah, it was.

They played the expectation game perfectly with ingenuity. Yeah, they really did their JPL thing and said, landing on Mars is really hard. All right. Now let's do the inverse, Jake. Most underwhelming. Insight? I don't think insight. Yeah, Galileo.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking of ones that like went fine up until they were on their mission. Galileo didn't exactly have the best history. leading up to it being launched. Yeah, yeah. Struggled a bit, right. Yeah. Like, I feel like we screwed that one up on Earth before it got a chance to screw itself up in space.

That's my dividing line. It all led back to that, so, yeah. I don't know, I guess Mars Climate Orbiter, I don't know. Mars 96. Yeah. That's a future topic. Most underwhelming planetary missions. Because that could mean anything.

That could mean a really embarrassing failure as you're laying out. Or just like, we thought this would be a really interesting mission and like we found nothing interesting. It turns out we didn't find much there. The Mars Orbiter mission, the Indian one. It's like this whole amazing thing. They did it for like 15 bucks in a pack of a labat or whatever. And then they fired it off there and it's just like, yeah, so we actually don't really have any

instruments, so we're just sort of orbiting perpetuity and taking the same picture over. Listen, I'm fine with that. Those are great pictures. I love those pictures. I'm a fan of those pictures. Yeah, yeah. It turns out when you when you cheap out of the spacecraft, you don't put any instruments on it, it doesn't really do a lot of stuff for you. I just remembered one that might make its way into the first list. Didn't Dawn have like a significantly extended mission beyond what was expect in terms of destinations uh yeah because it left didn't leave and come back that's what i'm looking up about the the route that it took yeah isn't it the first spacecraft it launched went to vesta like orbited a planet twice like it went there then went to series

was an orbit of series wasn't didn't stay there though no i thought it left and then came back What am I remembering? No, it's not that one. What are you remembering? Oh, two different, yeah, okay. Two different. Yeah, there you go. The first thing to orbit two different planets, yes, yeah.

So it invest. That's a pretty boss record. Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Now, again, if I'm factoring my level of effort, if you're in the asteroid belt, like, that's like being impressed by flying between two different geostationary satellites, you know?

That's like you spit one direction and you wait half a day and you spit the other direction and you're back at another satellite on that totally different side of Earth. Then North of Grumman MEV team just unsubscribe from our podcast. Totally true. That's hard, man. That's hard. Have you ever done it? Which to their credit.

No, that's why I have a podcast. Yeah. You guys do the hard stuff. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, that's Mars. There's some rovers and stuff there. Late break in over over.

deliverer Osiris Rex because that just couldn't eat enough, that couldn't eat enough sample. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. All right. I buy it.

All right. Hit me with the drama that we're facing. So we're going to like jump way out. Okay. So I mean, we're going in out and there's not very much pass bars right now. Let's be honest. Juno's, June is doing its thing. Juno is great.

But it's, we got to wait until. another year before the next flyby. So like the next moon flyby. Right now it's just doing it's whatever. So yeah, we're going to jump way out to New Horizons as far as we can go almost for planetary missions. So it's very spicy right now because they submitted like a, if you remember last year, there was like a round of all the missions were, you know, doing their reviews and proposing their extensions.

And they put in a plan for three years. But NASA said, ah, this sign. science isn't that compelling. And they said, we'll give you two. And then we're going to let you, we're going to hand you off to the heliophysics department. And you can just take pictures of the sun for the rest of your life because we're not really interested anymore. And so... I have to imagine that discussion went like when, uh, now I'm blanking on names of characters. But Ed, uh, from From mankind gets assigned to Apollo applications. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd rather be at a desk in Siberia. Like, like, like, buck guy at a desk. Like, yeah. That's how that feels. That's exactly it. So, yeah, so they're like not happy. You know, the New Horizons team is not happy about that.

Uh-oh. Hold on. You're coming back. Jake's fighting through some clouds down in Mexico. Wait for it. I can hear you a little bit. And we're back. Okay.

My second is better now. There's a little glitchy, but we can hear you at least. Okay, okay. Yeah. So, like, the New Horizons team obviously is our. that they have lots of good science to do. That's their job. But I don't know.

Like there's not much else out there. Like it's a big, big, empty space at Kuiperbilt. And it sounds like the chances of another flyby are slim to none. Like they're just not going to find one because this is so far away now. And they're at the point now where like all the ones that they're looking back towards Earth, like if they're going to do like long range astronomy and looking sideways or back to get like different vantage points, they're not really competitive with like ground-based telescopes anymore. because it's just so far away now.

So it's kind of a raw deal. So I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see where that goes. But there's a little bit of a little bit of spice there. There was like some rumor of some meeting where Ness is like, we're just going to turn it off in two years. And that was not happy either. And then, yeah, apparently the Heliophysics department does things like really differently.

So the plan would be like you'd break apart the new horizons team. And then the instruments would have like stand up teams that don't really talk to each other. And they just kind of like get silo off into nothing. and the whole strategy behind the mission would kind of go away and it would just be part of a greater, you know, their heliophysics observatory or whatever. So, yeah, it's drama. I don't know.

What else is, but it also kind of, I kind of feel like that's the right decision. Like, yeah, if you can't find a target that's like that close, then I would say that the team should be like, New Horizons is without additional drama we'll go down as a great planetary mission because the Pluto images were incredible

the amount of stuff that we learned from them was amazing there was another flyby two flybyes how many other ones just one right? Oh yeah Pluto Pluto plus Aronoff or whatever yeah so like let it be an epic mission

that is now flung out into the solar system beyond the solar system I don't know I just feel like the Voyager team was probably like yeah we did our stuff and we're just gonna see

how far goes and do the same you know like you'd still be beloved if you do that I think Alan's turn is going to become like Ed Stone

just like the one guy at a desk at APL who just logs in every day and goes and what are the bits like today and that's his job until he's like a 106

and he gets to do like a retirement ceremony yeah I mean why not like yeah Yeah, it's interesting. But I mean, I think, yeah, we have to remember, like, it launched 17 years ago.

Like, it's... Wait, really? Yeah, 2006 was a launch. The big green checkmark, guys, you nailed it, like you did it. And the Pluto was... Plutify by it was 2016. 2015, yeah, nine years later, yeah. So...

Wow. Man, and yeah, because then you think about how long it was, between that and Arrochoth. It's been past Pluto for eight years. It's almost as far as time-wise as it was before. Also, is part of the calculus, like, so I don't know how to say. Is it Arachoth, Arokoth? Aracoth.

Aracoth. Yeah. Great pictures, super cool. We learned about like the, that was like two distinct parts that were gravitationally attracted or whatever. Was there a lot else there for us? Turns of return, scientific return? I think so, because it's like the first context we have for a piece of rock out there.

It would never been that close. It's the only, it's the only one. It's the baseline. Everything else is going to be compared to this, right? All right, it's fair argument. Yeah, it's pretty good. Well, how about a mission yet to be launched, Jake? We've given it some crap over the last few months.

We've talked about its Christmas party at length. Yeah. I'm wondering how the Memorial Day barbecue went for the team. Did they swap some stories? Things went well. They were chatting by the grill. They were flipping burgers. And they were like, yeah, actually, we're on target here.

We're doing great. Yeah. Yeah. What did you got on this? Yeah. So, I mean, nothing. It sounds like JPL actioned everything and got it back on track. They call out the margin.

They should have lots of margin, but they still have lots of margin. So I think we're going to have a great, great Falcon Heavy launch with a metal asteroid mission on October. So that is awesome. I'm excited for that. Can I ask a question about the timeline here between scathing review and the all-clear signal? Seems really fast to make changes sweeping enough to have the review team be like, everything's going so great.

Well, you got to remember, like, when the first scathing news came out, it was already way past when JPL knew about it, right? So that was like the report. Right. So like there was, you know, JPL knew there was shit going down. They started working on stuff. And then the review results came out like months later, right? So they actually had time.

And they said that even when they, when the first one came out. Yeah, this is the new one. But when the first one came out, JPL was like, yeah, we knew this was coming. We've already done this, this, this, this, this is this. So I think it makes sense. Okay. You're saying that the lag between paperwork

and what the team's working on is long. It turns out a big government report actually takes a little bit of time together. And even an organization like JPL can move faster than that. Yeah. And then presumably this report was, faster to put together than the initial one trying to figure out what was going on. Probably, yeah, because it's just like, we asked you to do this.

Are you doing it? Thank you for the proof. We asked you to do this. Are you doing it? Thank you for the proof. They're like, is your Trello board labeled now? Yeah, there's people assigned to the test now. But last time we talked, you didn't have a chief engineer.

That seemed weird. Do you have one now? Yes. Okay, good. Done. So, yeah. So I'm excited. Epic mission.

It's going to be good. Yeah. Falcon Heavy. Doing its thing, man. It's going to try and not be overrated anymore. It's going to try and not be overrated by actually launching something. It's going to be awesome. I love you.

You're just blatant, bad Falcon Heavy take it. It's so funny. That's so funny to me. It's part of the bit now. I know. It is. Dragon XL isn't real. That's the thing, right?

Yeah. It might not be. I'm happy. You can get a shirt now. Did you see that? I made a shirt for it. Oh, let's do some merchandising. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you are like me and you truly believe the Dragon X-L is not real, not real at all, you can now wear it on your chest. How about that? Jake, have we sent one of these to a certain address in Florida yet? We should. We need to. 100%. I can make that happen. Let us know if you're out there and you know who you are. order when we shipped it to uh i'm going to canada uh in a few weeks i shipped it to my mom's house and wear it proudly it's will be good the question mark is so unnecessary

if i have any design criticism it's the unnecessary question mark that was the hardest part of putting it together too i had to learn how to do like cut out shapes dragon excel isn't real so when you were designing this piece of merchandise uh What is the scenario in which you see someone wearing this shirt in the best possible light where it's received by the most individuals who understand it? It's got to be me wearing it at the Dragon XL launch. That's exactly what I was thinking. On a Falcon Heavy, yeah.

Yes, you need to get a flight jacket that says Falcon Heavy is overrated and wear it over your Dragon XL isn't real shirt. It's like the weird guys at stand around Dealey Plaza and hand out like the Jail. AFK conspiracy stuff. It's the same vibe too, because when you go there and you look up, you're like, yeah, that's where that guy was standing when he shot that gun. Like, it's right there. It's not even far away.

It's right there. And this is that same vibe of like, okay. Yeah, so I'm going to buy a couple of these, keep them on standby. Yeah, we're going to, all right, effort, the effort now is to get this into both teams, the team at SpaceX working on Dragon XL and the team at NASA managing the program. the program that Galey logistics. And if we can get a couple of these shirts into both of them, I think

it would be great. Yeah, yeah. And we can donate half the proceeds to the tax base, I guess, that funds drag nextel. Half the proceeds to the guy who had the idea of her dragging X-Exel. It's a consolation price. Yeah, yeah.

We should get it on a SpaceX live stream, that'd make my day. How's that? Seems doable. I feel like we've, We've made some connections at this point. Yeah. Well, SpaceX is hiring all of our favorite writers. So soon enough, we might work there.

So, yeah. It might just be us doing the live stream. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. Shout out, all the now SpaceX employees. Shout to all of my journalist friends who no longer tweet anything. No longer tweet anything, but can smuggle a shirt into SpaceX headquarters. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Great. Weird world, man. What do we got? Anything else? I think that's it. That's a good tour. I mean, we didn't cover hardly anything,

but, you know, that's how goes with these kind of shows. But it's good stuff. Well, we got a fun one next week, Jake. We do have a fun one next week. We've been, this one we've been working on for a little bit, but it's going to be a, there's going to be some fun stories, I feel like.

So we've got. Did we already announce this one? Probably. Oh, yeah, we did. Scott Poteet was going to come on a couple months ago, but there was some schedule snafus. But he's coming back next week to talk about flying fighter jets. I've got some questions about flying in air shows. I'm pretty sure I saw him fly in an air show because I used to go to the Atlantic City air show.

I still will occasionally, but I have not the last couple years because I've been busy those weeks. But I feel like he's probably flown in that one of the years that I was there. So we'll have to ask him that. It would be. there's clearly some stuff that's on his list of things to do because he's getting ready to fly to space and maybe do a spacewalk. So that would be fun. Maybe do a spacewalk. I thought you were on team definitely doing a spacewalk.

Oh, true. Yeah, I'm being a gatekeeper. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oof, not just the truth. The truth finds a way. God. Yeah, that's the difference.

My mental state and my emotional state about it, I guess. Yeah. Well, ask him. No, I already asked him that. Everyone's doing a spacewalk. You did ask them, yeah, yeah. And they're all like, yep, absolutely. They might have been telling the truth in both ways, though.

Like, I'm still thinking that all four are going outside the hatch as well as sitting in the hatch. But not at the same time, but maybe two by two, you know. So that's where I'm at. Anyway, that's all we got, peeps. That's it. See you later. Come on into the Discord. Make their predictions.

Oh, yeah. Offdan.com slash Discord. vote on my predictions. I'll put them in later tonight. Be there. I need to make some Dragon X-L once probably. You have to, 100%. Dragon X-L still won't be real by.

Just every like six months. Until we see verifiable hardware. That's the that's the madness. We have not yet seen hardware for Dragon X-L and put like one in for every six months. All right, y'all. I'll pat all the seasons. It'll be good.

See ya. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. End of death.