NASA Mars Visualization Alliance

Meeting 6

Summary

July 9, 2002

10:30 a.m. CDT

Event Scope is welcomed to the Alliance. Event Scope takes data from orbiters and rovers and converts it into 3-D virtual environments, which photo-realistically resemble remote locations. They have been using data from Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder for the past nine months. Event Scope has also started to process Odyssey data. Their goal, with JPL, is to provide classrooms at the middle school level with a telescience experience. Event Scope has done similar projects using Carnegie Mellon rovers, such as a Nomad Rover during the Autocom at Desert Track and the Antarctic search for meteorites. They are developing technologies that will do the same for MER. The software runs on any standard PC with a graphics card. It doesn’t run on Mac at this time. For more information go to www.eventscope.org.

Although JPL’s goal is to have everyone access the MER data the same way the science team does, using FEI (File Exchange Interface), JPL understands that the initial FEI set-up may be difficult. Therefore, JPL has arranged alternative means of bringing the data to the Alliance through an anonymous FTP server. The drawback is that FTP requires the user to initiate the data transfer as opposed to having it automatically delivered via FEI subscription.

The FTP server will be used for the FIDO test, which runs from August 10^th through the 18^th inclusive. However, there is enough time before we land on Mars for the Alliance members to set up an FEI subscription.

For the pre-tests a TAR file will be created. The file will include a directory structure for each of the different camera types. A naming scheme based on the Martian day, like Sol 1, Sol 2, Sol 3.TAR will be set up. Members can grab the files, unTAR them and they will be placed into the appropriate directory structure. There is no substantive difference between the test on July 16^th and the test on the 23^rd.

One obstacle to getting Alliance members set up with FEI is that JPL requires a licensing agreement with each of the Alliance institutions to allow the Lab to transfer the software and install it. A license agreement must be done for all of JPL’s FEI subscriptions not just for purposes of this Alliance.

Each Alliance institution should have received an e-mail from Letty Marquez in JPL’s Office of Technology Transfer, referring to a woman by the name of Janet Fung who has requested the agreement. Letty Marquez is looking for an authorized legal administrator to sign the license agreement.

Please copy both Anita Sohus (JPL) and Paul Andres (JPL) in your responses, so that there is a record, not only of the people designated as administrators, but also as confirmation that the e-mail has been received.

JPL will be creating terrain models but the Alliance will not be receiving them at this time because they have not been generated in the pipeline. Until the models are in the pipeline they will not be available to the Alliance. Rose Center has an interest in receiving terrain models because of their real-time capabilities to have those models and be able to try them out during these tests. Event Scope has an interest in terrain models as well. Other products will be discussed at a later time.