Mars Visualization Alliance
Telecon Summary
March 4, 2003
MER landing will occur in January-February 2004. Preparations by Museum Alliance members are as follows:
Adler Planetarium, Chicago
Chicago is in the process of getting ready for summer, the big topic being aliens and astrobiology. They will be talking tangentially about Mars but real preparation for MER is going to start in the summer/fall. In September and October they will host the “Far Out Friday” programs where they will be concentrating on Mars, talking about the upcoming missions and what is currently known about Mars. It will be a general “what’s up with Mars right now” kind of program. In regards to after MER landing, they haven’t nailed down any of the details. Adler recently opened a DigiStar-3 theater.
Chabot, Oakland, California
Chabot is gearing up for the summer. They have an exhibit planned, and have started to plan a planetarium show that will deal with Mars. The planetarium show will be half live, half pre-recorded. The live portion will be updated weekly with either the latest THEMIS images or news on the rovers on route to Mars. They are anxious to review any MPEGs they can get. (Chabot wants the highest resolution possible but wants to review it in lower resolution first)
Lone Star, Albuquerque
Lone
Star is thinking about sending someone to the launch to report back and to get
a Web site started. For MER landing, they are planning a week of programs. They
have not yet determined what that week will consist of, most likely some short
Web casts and adding photos and other information to the Web site. Loan Star
has a partnership with the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque, which
complicates things. They are trying to put together some exhibits, using the
Web based material as well as a planetarium show. The show will be similar to
the part live, part recorded Chabot show and will be updated as the mission
progresses. Lone Star has been working with a volunteer engineer. They have
been trying to get a model together as a signature piece for the exhibit. They are in fund developing now, to add
plasma to the screen display, or a projection display of data as it comes in.
The theme of the exhibit is a general introduction to Mars and then, the
current missions with Surveyor and MER. MER will be the feature, with what the
rovers are, what their mission is, updating it as the mission develops. (They
have not pulled any THEMIS images down from the servers yet and are not
entirely sure what is going on technically with their facility or what is
needed to have data pushed their way) They have a fold down video system in the
planetarium and are interested in post-carding some 2-D visualizations, videos
and stills into 3-D models and rendering them out for the full dome.
Over the past few weeks EventScope has been doing some experiments, taking Odyssey data and merging it with MOLA data to create 3-D models that can then be linked together into interactive 3-D presentations. This is in the prototype phase, but depending on when exhibits start, museums could probably load the event scope client software and have an interactive 3-D experience. It’s very photo-realistic. It can be navigated at will with full degrees of freedom, similar to a computer game.
The authoring tool for
EventScope is being modified so it can pull in data from the MER rovers. They would also like to train some educators
this summer to use that tool, so that during the mission, they can be adding
content directly to the 3-D worlds. They are trying to be as flexible as
possible to allow users to customize the data and present it in many different
ways. They are hoping to also allow for
a type of screen shot to be available on the Web.
EventScope is for PCs only. Chicago and Exploratoruim are Mac based institutions.
Chabot is PC
based and Albuquerque uses PC in exhibits. Denver uses both Mac and PCs.
Minnesota
Minnesota is trying to capitalize on the high definition visual assets and have a unique opportunity to actually put some production value into the project to distribute to the museums. They are testing the waters with a prototype introduction to Mars and will have it available to for museums to download prior to the first launch. They would like to get feedback from the museum community and also, use the content to assist those that would like to use it. Not to limit it strictly to high definition, they plan to put it out there in some standard definition formats for download as well. The Twin Cities have a first rate editing facility that is willing to do the first front end on a pro bono basis. If it proves to be successful, they are working right now, to see if they can come up with a budget plan, in a PBS style, that would underwrite it and distribute it, free, to the museum community.
Denver
Denver’s major space exhibit, Space Odyssey, will be opening in mid-June. The exhibit is still in the installation phase for hardware and networking. By late April, early May at the latest, they expect to have the infrastructure in place to start testing things like the Mars Odyssey daily updates. They have a number of venues in the exhibit that have high depth projection systems. They will have a number of avenues to get the information out there. Once the exhibit opens there is a dedicated “big space” screen which is a large rear projection system about ten feet diagonal. They expect to use the screen in a combination of daily updated slide shows that will have the latest from Hubbell, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Global Surveyor, and when possible, to switch that off to video clips. They are very interested in Minnesota and the consortium they’re putting together to provide programming, because they will have strong use for it.
Denver is looking at things from previous missions because they want to have ever-changing programming on the screen, specifically HD products done by the SI VIZ Lab at JPL seen at press conferences. In the past, JPL has not been set up to copy any of the in-depth material or provide it to anyone outside JPL. They would appreciate any way to feed that into the folks in Minnesota and distribute it to Alliance members. They feel that would be a very effective use of that material. The launch of the second spacecraft will be their first big live event. They want to have a large amount of programming around that. Denver does have the satellite feed from NASA. They would like to get any launch footage filmed in HD as soon as possible after launch.
There are two alternatives to museums being non-UNIX based when data starts to come down. JPL still has the FVI software, which is UNIX based, but everybody who participated so far, has been able to pull the files over, using HTTP protocol. A large collection of files is created everyday and then made available. JPL will try to link them to times that are very near press conference times. When the mission starts, museums will get the latest and greatest files at or near the time of press conference everyday. Additionally, for those of you who wish to go the more challenging route and try to install the FVI client, those files will be pushed basically as they arrive here at JPL. JPL can try to reinitiate the use of the FVI client for those of you that are interested. Paul at JPL will send out an e-mail and try to get everybody up to speed.
JPL is scheduling Operations Readiness Tests now. These tests will last several days. Michelle at JPL is trying to work with the team to figure out which ones are best for museums to integrate into. As soon as she has that she will let the Alliance know.
Some museums expressed interest in purchasing full-scale MER models. JPL isn’t aware of any group buy, although someone outside JPL in the museum field could certainly take the lead in coordinating one and negotiating with the model makers. A group buy would drop the price significantly. If Alliance members are interested in smaller models, JPL has a commercialization deal going right now. The model is desktop sized, but it’s a commemorative type of model by one of the commemorative “thing” makers. It’s likely to be about $100 and is of very high quality. It probably won’t be available until November. JPL has run into several problems in terms of the materials that one of the model makers has been using. The wheel alloy wasn’t enough to support the weight of the model and it is now being redesigned.
Teleconferencing training sessions seems to work for everyone although video conferencing and other means are possibilities for some. The training sessions will follow the Solar System Ambassador model.
Chicago and possibly others would be interested in products for educator workshops or public events. JPL can send the Earth/Mars comparison posters, and stickers for special groups, after school groups, or other groups, for free, as long quantity is known in advance.
The effort is for JPL to have HD videos that incorporate real data from the surface of Mars and it then places the rover on it, to show without cameras, what the rover did and what it might look like on the Martian surface.
To
keep costs down, JPL is thinking of just having a few loaner HD tapes, either
D5 or HD CAM. When JPL gets the first set of compilations finished they will
let people know. If museums borrow it to make their own dub and then send it
back for the next museum to use that will keep tape costs way down. Some
museums suggested sending a box of tapes with their name on it to be filled
which may be helpful. JPL is planning to encode whatever is put out there.