Crumpler Countdown (-up), bSol 2674

I'm a few sols late, but what the hell...

Crumpler Countdown (-up), bSol 2673

250 *meters* (98.7%)

120 meters on the dot on sol 2674. (Ironically, our long-distance "blind" drives are the ones whose distance we can predict with the most accuracy, as opposed to "blind+AutoNav.")

In the queue for sol 2676 is another 120 meters. This will put us within spitting distance -- or one long-distance drive -- away from Spirit Point. We likely will not be doing that, but rather carefully navigating inward. We're taking our foot off the pedal a bit. It's time to get back into the science collection mindset.

From this post-drive Pancam, Matt Golombek thinks those subtle bumps to the right on the near horizon are something close to Spirit Point.

I'm working on a "Day In the Life" for sols 2676-7, an interesting planning day from my perspective, but let's let the pre-launch-everybody-have-a-panic-attack fever pitch for Juno settle down a bit.

Crumpler Countdown (-up), bSol 2673

0.3 km (98.5%)

The 69-point-something meter drive on sol 2671 (recent to 2673, since we didn't move on 2672 or 2673), which we all seem to be aware of, has placed us within 0.3 kilometers.

In the queue for bSol 2574: 120 more meters. Looking forward at the limitations placed on us with the afternoon relays and uplink/handover times, we'll have drives about the same size on sols 2576 and 2578 (planned Wednesday and Friday, respectively). This will, essentially, put us… there.

In actuality, we'll probably pull short on Friday and take a couple drives to really approach a nice spot. But starting about Wednesday, the views will be spectacular. To keep you lions at bay, here's some fresh meat -- a Pancam of Cape Trib and a sloppy Navcam mosaic of Cape York:

Back on the train.

A Day In the Life, bSol 2669 (and a Crumpler Countdown [-up])

The days that I'm the TAP/SIE on tactical duty, I’m usually the first one in to the MER-B sequencing room. It’s partly because I might be carpooling with my roommate, who likes to leave before 7 in the morning, though I usually avoid carpooling on these days because of the 50-50 potential of the day going long. Really, it's mostly because I’m a morning person anyways, which scares people. 

The first thing I do when I walk into the sequencing room is turn on the lights. By default they come on at full tilt, and I hate it. I use the dimmer controls to bring them down to something bearable — 10 or 20 percent of normal. (Really.) I’m one of those people who hates bright lights, one of those people who has to stare at a computer screen most of the day, one of those people that downloads F.lux. I’m more at peace with the lights on low.

This is all the result of my early and consistent use of a computer in my life. The people who didn’t grow up with computers — you know, those old timers — tend to like to read things on paper. (One of my friend’s all-time biggest pet peeves: “When someone who doesn’t understand the Internet asks me to print out a web page for them instead of linking it to them. You know, like a smart person would.”) For this whole "reading" thing, they need more light. For this, I reluctantly allow them to beam up the lights in the back of the room, leaving my corner — the TAP/SIE's corner — just dim enough. 

Thank the gods for multiple light sets.

Ah yes, the TAP/SIE corner. Farthest from the entrance to the room, it’s place from where small-voiced requests emanate throughout the course of the day: “RPs, I need you to redeliver your sequences. You broke my stuff.”; “TDL, what’s the magic sol?”; “Where is the coffee intern?”; etc.

I think it’s best this way, with the TAP/SIE all by his (her) lonesome, the RPs dominating the other side of the room, and the TUL and Mission Manager piloting the room from the center conference table. The TDL is the floater: they run back and forth between the other engineers’ offices, their own computer terminal in the corner adjacent to mine, and the center table. Everybody gets their space. Everybody is happy.

Today was just the same. Door open, lights on, butt in chair. I sit down in my corner and set up shop. Laptop -- on and cranking. Phone -- headphones in with some Derek and the Dominoes to start my day. Notebooks -- out and ready for action. Go time.

Wait, hold your horses — an email from the Mars Express mission planning folks just came in. I’ve got to generate some sequence products for them, so it’s off to the races for 20 minutes. 

I come jogging (ahem… figuratively — I sprained my ankle pretty badly a week ago and I’m on crutches, which gets me lots of sympathy and rides to and from the parking lot) back in to MER world, still the only one in the room. Somewhat to my surprise, today is a slide sol. Our relayed downlink from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has a bit more latency on it than we're used to for "nominal" planning days. Remember, we don’t like to start our day until we know something about the state of the rover. Odyssey is collecting its own science data, too, which the Odyssey team is always kind to remind us — they’re not just there to relay Oppy’s data. The advantage is that we’re starting an hour later than the usual 8:30am, which means more sleep for the humans. The disadvantage is mostly felt by the remote science folks in the Central and Eastern time zones, where they get out by late dinner time on a normal planning day as is. 

Kevin, a recently-certified Senior Rover Planner (he says, “I can now drive without adult supervision”), comes strolling in to the sequence room. He’s not on tactical today, but he is the MOB/IDD downlink analysis goony for the day. “How much data are we getting back?” he asks. I have no idea; I wasn’t on tactical the day before and didn’t have the number in my head. I’m more peeved that he made me take off my headphones, as “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe His Corn” is playing and I hate having that song interrupted. Hate. 

Noting my hint — a shrug of ignorance — he instead looks at a plot that’s been placed on the center table, and it tells him the answer: 30 megabits in the first chunk, 20 or so after that. The first 30 will contain most of our critical engineering health and safety data, as well as the high-priority images in the assumed drive direction (southeast-ish). Good enough for him. The downlink is coming in right as he scuttles out of the room to go… do whatever it is that MOB/IDD does. 

Soon, Paolo comes in with his "I'm RP today" stride. With him is Albert, today’s SOWG Chair. It's rare to have the SOWG chair in the room. When we do have a SOWG chair right next to us — in a chair, of all places — it keeps us on our toes. He also wore the SOWG Chair hat for the two previous planning days, so he's in the loop. He knows what's up. He's got ideas. Oh, the ideas.

Yestersol’s drive (which, actually, happened only a few hours ago, since it’s 16:50:00 local solar time for Oppy as I type this) landed us on one of the last bands of outcrop before landfall at Endeavour Crater. “A 120-meter approach drive,” Albert laughs. Usually when approaching a band of outcrop or any other target for IDD work, it takes 2 or 3 drives — therefore 2 to 3 sols or 2 to 3 planning days — to land us right where we want. We got lucky today and ended right on top of the outcrop without the need to do additional bump and approach drives. Excellent.

The Navcams and Hazcams have been processed by now (9:15am). Albert was right: that Front Hazcam shows us the outcrop right under our feet.

I enhanced the contrast on this puppy to make Endeavour "pop" out. Oh, by the way, our updated Crumpler Countdown is:

0.50km, 97.8%

125 meters of driving yestersol. We can almost taste Endeavor. 

Our TULs — one prime, one shadow — come in. “Sounds like an IDD day,” they say. They know. They get it, too. Matt Golombek, today’s LTP, comes in next: “Holy cow. A 120-meter approach drive?! Precision if I ever saw it.” The irony of the word "precision" is not lost on him.

The day starts with the Engineering Tagup. I'm not required to be at this meeting, but I keep my ears perked. Meanwhile, I set up my work environment: 14 Unix terminals, 1 Mozilla window, 1 Firefox window (I know), 4 standalone applications, and not enough coffee. It takes about 10 minutes to get it all in lockstep, to get the crank ready for turning after the upcoming SOWG meeting.

The half hour to 10am zips by. It's time for the SOWG meeting. A few PowerPoint charts later, we get Albert's summary: “The three words I’m taking from Matt’s LTP report are: ‘MIs, go wild.’” Meaning, it's a day for placing the IDD on the outcrop and using the Microscopic Imager. According to our database, it's been precisely 58 sols since we last used the MI in this same way (if at all) — sol 2611.

What comes out of the plan is simple, in a sense:

1) MI stack and stereo imaging

2) MB "touches" in between

3) Place the APXS on that damned rock and collect data for as long as we can

4) Get some Pancam images

The devil's in the details, though. And everywhere else. We had to tinker with the activities, the deep sleep duration, and some of the Pancam observations to get the power situation under control. We nuked a Pancam activity to survive the night — we tried a "wake up at 8am LST and do some stuff" kind of thing, and our modeling tools told us, "No." 

Hey, look, a Pancam has come down! The Pancam images usually have lower priority than the Navcams, but they give us range data for the terrain up to about 100 meters. They are what make long blind drives possible. For today, we don't need them... but tomorrow, they'll be handy.

The day passes rather uneventfully. In this sequence, the RPs are shooting for some five different targets on the ground — Gibralter 1-4 and an extra test spot — with some stuff in between. Enough tool changes to make you forget the right-hand rule and everything you learned about coordinate systems in under 5 minutes. During the walkthrough, the animation follows the RP's cursor in the command-building utility (RoSE), and we get all glossy-eyed.

Despite the large number of "backbone" and "helper" sequences coming from the RPs, and despite some other curve balls thrown in by the TDL, I expect sequence integration to go poorly. This is one of the most tenuous parts of my job, where I stitch together everybody's individual sequences into a single integrated sequence for uplink to Oppy. A few command-line Perl and C-shell utilities do most of the heavy lifting for me, but they spit out a lot of messages. You have to know the precise meaning of them, what is ok to ignore, what is ok to scratch your head over and drag the TUL into (number one rule in ops: if you don't know, ask), and what is definitely not ok to ignore. Of all the longest tactical planning days of my life, 90% or so of them were long because of sequence integration. Too many of the secrets and myths and project lore have been lost in the automation scripts that we've written. We often have to go back into our uplink reports database and search for arcane command-line warning phrases or keywords to see what the tactical team did the last time some error came up.

But today, it all gets stitched together without issue. Our sequence modeling and flight rule checking tool, SEQGEN (developed at JPL), seems to like what we've fed her.

This has been way too easy. Something's wrong.

We get to our next meeting, Sequence Report Walkthrough. We're nearing the end of it — this is going way too swimmingly for an IDD day — when, suddenly, Albert says, "Can you back up to the second MI stack?"

Silence.

"I see a [error]," he says.

Silence.

"Oh, crap," says our RP team, "We screwed that one up."

A simple fat-finger and some room-wide dyslexia just threw a screwdriver in our day.

"Ok, redeliver," say our TULs.

At this stage, "redelivery" means I have to undo all the stitch and modeling work I've already done, and then do it all again. But, hey, this two-fold lesson is one we learn a few times a week:

1) This is why we have sequence walkthrough meetings.

2) Life is tough.

The redelivery goes well. We see the fix. We're happy with the fix. We move on. Life is well. Everybody goes (limps, for me) home.

—————

Today's wrench-in-the-gears was but a hiccup. In light of the 120-meter pseudo-approach drive, and in light of the beautiful MI images we'll get on the ground in a few days, and in light of everything else going well, it's not even a blip on the teams radar. They've adapted to these things. I, on the other hand, am still getting used to these "hiccups" after even a full year of doing this job. I get this sense of panic, a touch of shame, a bit of consternation when something — however small — goes wrong. Sometimes you catch the team on the wrong day, when our collective tolerance level is low. We get frustrated and we continue to make mistakes.

Today, though, was not one of those days. Smooth.

Endeavour Countdown (-up), bSol 2666

0.65km (95.5%)

The drive on sol 2664 was about 148 meters in length, giving us some spectacular new images, like this Pancam mosaic:

Figure 1: Pure, unadulterated awesome.

That small crater to the left (below the inset) has been named Chikyu Crater. The drive that we sequenced today for sol 2667 will give us another 100 meters or so, shooting us past Chikyu and placing us (hopefully) on some outcrop. The science team has expressed the desire to perhaps get some IDD work in on this outcrop, since it's some of the last we'll ever see in Meridiani.

As we approach, most of Cape York will be to the rover's right (image left -- remember, she's driving backwards!). Sol 2667's Navcam imaging will include a complete 360 to see what we can nab along the way.



In other news: This poor TAP/SIE hurt his ankle. Everyone give him sympathy. Now.

Where We Stand Now — Current Rover Status

Right! So! Ok! Time for something to chew on.

Status of Opportunity: Fat and happy. Minus the fat (her diet is mostly carbohydrates and protein). Also minus the happy (she's a robot, she has no emotions but cold-hearted reason.)

The more technical way of saying it: She's GREEN.

Since it's the topic of interest to the audience, I'll mention two important milestones have been achieved just within the last week:

1) Oppy crossed the 20-mile odometer mark. That's 32186.88 meters. The drive that achieved this — sol 2658's drive of 125.2 meters pushed her past this mark, and ended at the 32207.63-meter mark.

2) Oppy is approximately 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the official "landfall" at Endeavour Crater.

Number 2 is an item that has been on the team's radar for quite some time. There are several interesting items that we must know about this crucial "status item." First, it's somewhat ambiguous: the crater's edge is not well-defined; and it's dependent on the definition of the so-called "Pink Path." Since the departure from Santa Maria Crater in March, the Pink Path has been a strong focus in long-term planning. As we truck along in tactical operations, the scientists and mission planners constantly refine this Pink Path to define, when we get to some given spot, where we ought to drive. It is focused on avoiding obstacles (think of the "Purgatories" that caused the team to make Oppy drive west — away from Endeavour — a few hundred sols ago) and on science targets (think of the infamous "Approach Crater").

Continuous ouches here and nudges there have caused some headaches — the RPs end up with multiple Pink Path sources from which to plan drives — but these headaches are few. This Pink Path is not a straight line, so calculating the distance to Endeavour is a little more Arduous. The coolest bit, though, is Ohio State's (led by Ron Li) calculation of this distance as well as the "countdown" to landfall. After every drive, they plot the ending position of the rover and the "percent complete" number. This second number is the percentage of the distance (via the Pink Path — not as-the-bird-flies) between Victoria and Endeavour. Really cool to watch that number go down. This number, displayed with the distance left, gives us the infamous "[Larry] Crumpler Countdown." Currently…

Crumpler Countdown (-up) to Endeavour (07/20/11): 1.0km, 95.2%

Yeah, boy! Until landfall — a month or so, depending on whether or not one is Steve Squyres ("pedal to the metal") — I will update the Crumpler Countdown after each and every drive. By the way, in the queue for sol 2662: 55 meters. 

(Feels a little low, right? We've been blowing by with drives of 120+ meters in the last few sols, so what gives? For sol 2662, it was a combination of the science team wanting to stop short for the next crater set [Stu: it's named Mariner 9! They have a name!] and being limited by the data that had been downlinked by the time the drive needed to be planned.)

The only other really important engineering status item — thought I can feel the rest of the engineers itching to say something about their subsystem — is power:

Power is an item that we constantly model and watch. So much so that it is a critical-path tactical operations decision point. (I often wonder how many lingo terms I can put into a single sentence. My current record is 12.) As the Opportunity Updates webpage tells us, on sols 2627 and 2628, Oppy benefitted from a series of dust cleanings. We were able to support overnight (Mars time) relay communications with the Mars Odyssey orbiter, a rare oddity; we always get the relay in the afternoon (Mars time), but the chance to get back roughly twice the data is always great. The problem, though… Tau (atmospheric opacity) is on its way up as is expected for this time of the Martian year. The reduced dust on the arrays roughly cancels the effect of the dusty air, so we're currently only supporting standard, single-relay operations per sol.

There are the usual concerns of data management (how much is onboard? how much has been sent? how much can we delete? how much will we be using? how much will we be downlinking), thermal (more pre-drive heating, less pre-relay activity), and actuator wear-and-tear, but we'll tackle these tactically and as we run into them.

——————————

This blog is about to take a head-first dive into the tactical deep: I've actually been on vacation in Colorado since last Thursday, and I've been popping these posts out from a comfortable couch! Next Monday, when I return to JPL for the daily grind, I've got myself 3 tactical shifts next week. 

Boom-boom-boom, 1-2-3, right in a row. 

It'll be a little crazy. I can feel it already. I'll have to brush off my 10-day-worn skills.

Until then, a few more days of vacation and 16 hours of driving through sandy nothingness.

Where We Stand Now — Terms and Definitions

(Literally, right now, I'm sitting.)

I'm making the uninformed assumption that my audience consists solely of two types of people:

1) Those who know a lot about MER

2) Those who don't know a lot about MER

For the former: This post will move slow and patience will be rewarded; polish off your skimming skills. For the latter: Time to put your learnin' hats on.

There are, then, two things I want to talk about at this point:

1) Terms and definitions — Engineers live in a world of acronyms, initialisms, and otherwise shortened words. By virtue of the nature of a robotic lander or rover mission, there are many… interesting… ones.

2) Current rover status — Self-explanatory.

These will be split between 2 posts, since the first is rather… big.

Let us begin Operation "LEARN ABOUT MACHINES ON OTHER PLANETS." (Shouting required.)

————————————————

Terms and Definitions

I will keep this one short. Any other terms and definitions that come up in subsequent posts will have a convenient, if hurried, description.

Sol: A Martian day. In Earth time, it is equivalent to 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds, a ratio of 1.027. This small but significant difference is has been a source of pain and suffering for all MER landers and rovers. 

Nominal/Restricted/Slide/Tight (planning modes): This will take some increased wordage. EVERYBODY TAKE A DEEP BREATH. [I deem a carriage return is necessary here]

Pretend that you're a rover. Also pretend that you have solar arrays. It follows that you like to do things during the day when the Sun can directly provide power to your instruments, driving system, heaters, and flight computer. (Or maybe you're a super-rover and you don't need any of that sunlight nonsense. In that case, we call you "the Mars Science Lab.") It then follows that your activities — science and engineering both — are "slaved" to the constraints of the Martian day. 

The similarity in the length of Earth days and Mars days is somewhat of a blessing here, if you're a human operator. You can plan a day ahead while the previous plan is executing, and you can do it all on (something very similar to) the Earth clock. However, that it's a similarity — not an equivalence — is also your Achilles' heel. The 2.7% difference means a drift between Earth and Mars times by that much — almost 40 minutes — every Earth day. Therefore, local solar time on Earth and Mars drift with respect to one another.

(This is a vast oversimplification of time systems for planets.)

So. Right. During the MER prime mission, the MER team worked on the Martian clocks — regular tactical and operations shifts slid by 40 minutes each Earth day. For subsequent extended missions after September 2004, the tactical team created something called "Modified Earth Time" to begin shifting back to Earth time, still planning the rovers' activities in Martian time but constraining shifts to Earth time. Only by the 3rd (and beyond) extended missions in 2005 did they shift to a modified Earth time kind of schedule, with tactical planning only occurring, at most, 5 days a week.

This, then, begs the question: Doesn't this create problems?

Well, yes. But for each problem, the MER team creates a solution. In this case — modified Earth time, 5 days a week — they created several planning "modes"…

Nominal: During Earth day, it is (approximately) Mars night. We plan 1 sol at a time, with the uplink products created just in time to uplink them when the rover wakes up the next Martian morning. At the start of each tactical shift — 8:30am Pacific time — we know the state of the rover for the most critical activities and therefore can accurately plan the next set without trouble. 

Slide: Martian time is drifting! Hold on to your hats! The time at which we uplink is approximately the same every sol, and this is creeping "away" from us in one sense. Therefore, the time at which we know the post-critical-activities state of the rover is also slipping away from us. Therefore, we must slide our start time for building the next sol's plan. We can still plan one sol at a time, and shifts start as late as 12:30pm PST.

Restricted: Now, local solar time on Mars, to which rover activities are slaved, has slipped too much and the time of day on Earth when we would know the state of the rover well enough to plan the next sol's worth of activities is now past our team-imposed limit (12:30pm PST). It's "modified Earth time," remember, and we like to be at work during normal human working hours. Mars day and Earth day are approximately aligned. What we do is "slip backward" — in one sense — and plan multiple sols at once, up to 3 if necessary. By the next planning session — up to 3 days away in Earth time — we don't actually have the latest state of the rover from the latest sol planned. This means any critical activities like driving or instrument arm deployment need to be planned accordingly.

Tight: Now, Mars night is approaching Earth day again, but they're just far enough away from each other that we deem our planning day — a 1-sol plan, by the way — "tight." This means we have limited time in our tactical shift to get the plan ready for the next uplink to the rover.

There are many, many, many subtleties and variables in determining what type each planning shift will be. I have barely scratched the surface here.

Okay, more terms and defs! Science payloads, locked and loaded…

IDD: Instrument Deployment Device. It contains the in-situ science payloads, the ones that require touching the environment — dust, rock, soil, etc. Incidentally, a really cool arm. Incidentally, strong enough to break itself. Incidentally, its "shoulder" actuator is broken. Rarely used, though watch out for increased activity during the Endeavour campaign.

APXS: Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer. Does… science. Commonly used.

MI: Microscopic Imager. Does… really tiny pictures. Rarely used.

MB: Mössbauer Spectrometer. Does… science. Rarely used.

RAT: Rock Abrasion Tool. Does… drilling. Rarely used.

Ecam/Navcam: Engineering/Navigation Camera. Does… engineering and navigation camera stuff. Used almost every sol.

Pancam: Panoramic Camera. Does… panoramic and scientific imaging. All those really pretty pictures? This bad boy, right here. Used almost every sol.

Mini-TES: Mini Thermal Emission Spectrometer. Does… science. Currently not used.

Some planning tools that you'll see referenced every now and then:

Maestro: Science activity planner and image viewer. Publicly available.

MAPGEN: Mixed-initiative Activity Plan GENerator. Integrates science plans from Maestro and engineering plans from the tactical team into a high-level resource modeling scheme. It is a spinoff of another JPL-developed tool, APGEN, combining both algorithmic (time- and logic-dependent) and non-deterministic (constraint-based) planning methods. 

SEQGEN: SEQuence GENerator. Command-level expansion and modeling tool developed by JPL. 

And the tactical team on the uplink side…

TUL: Tactical Uplink Lead. The person in charge. The TUL has authority in making tactical decisions over all persons, including the SOWG chair (see below), unless the decision can harm the rover, in which case the Mission Manager can supersede their authority. The TUL is very experienced on the MER project and requires much training.

MM: Mission Manager. The second person in charge. They are, almost always, the most experienced person on the uplink team. Most MMs have been around since Prime Mission. They are trained to see the "meta-problem," to poke and prod the TUL and TAP/SIE and provide oversight.

TAP/SIE: Tactical Activity Planner and Sequence Integration Engineer. This is what I am. The TAP/SIE is the least experienced member on the team, but (ironically) is one of the most critical links in the uplink chain. Anybody hired onto the MER tactical uplink team starts as a TAP/SIE, shadowing certified TAP/SIEs until they can "drive" the uplink process themselves. The end result of the TAP/SIE's work is the integrated sequence of all science, drive, and IDD activities, ready to be uplinked to the rover.

RP: Rover Planner. Two are on shift each planning day. The end result of the RPs' work is the sequence of all drive and IDD activities; these get delivered to the TAP/SIE for integration with the rest of the planned activities.

PUL: Payload uplink lead. For each instrument, there is a PUL. The end result of the PULs' work is the sequence of all activities related to their instrument; these get delivered to the TAP/SIE for integration with the rest of the planned activities, just like the RP sequences.

And the tactical team on the downlink side…

TDL: Tactical Downlink Lead. Collects the downlinked data from the rover system, analyzes it, and provides engineering sequence deliveries to support the uplink process. They also collect input from subsystem engineers, like the telecom and thermal guys, in the context of plan current in the process of being built by the uplink team.

PDL: Payload Downlink Lead. Collects the downlinked data from their particular instrument and analyzes it.

MOB/IDD: Mobility/IDD. Usually an RP as well, though not for that particular tactical shift. Collects the downlinked data from the mobility (drive) and IDD activities.

And the science team core…

SOWG Chair: Science Office Working Group Chair. They are the overseer of the day regarding the science activities. 

Doc: Documentarian. Documents the tactical uplink shift in grand detail.

KOP: Keeper of the Plan. "Owns" the science activity plans in Maestro, and then delivers this to the TAP/SIE

LTP: Long-Term Planning lead. They collect science team inputs and report what the long-term (days to weeks ahead of now) plan is for the rover.

And the meeting names, in order of their occurrence on a given planning day…

Tagup: Engineering tagup. First thing in the morning. The TUL, TDL, MM, SOWG chair, Doc, KOP, LTP, and others talk about the current state of the rover and the general direction for the sols that they are planning that day.

SOWG: AKA "Uplink Kickoff Meeting." The entire team — uplink, downlink, and science — gather to discuss the Tagup highlights as well as the plans for today's shift. We start digging into the details: what specific science activities we're doing, what engineering constraints must be applied, and all sorts of other goodies.

APAM: Activity Plan Approval Meeting. The TAP/SIE combines the science activity plan with the engineering "skeleton" for detailed resource modeling, like temperatures, currents, voltages, and all sorts of other things. Meanwhile, the RPs develop a the details for any drive or IDD activities. At APAM, the TAP/SIE and RPs present their results.

M/Sm: Master/Submaster Walkthrough. The activity plan created by the TAP/SIE is expanded, or detailed, into commands that the rover actually understands; likewise for the RPs' plan. At this walkthrough, the uplink team walks through the each and every command to make sure that they have been created properly for the plan at hand. Dirty details get discussed here.

SRW: Sequence Report Walkthrough. After the last walkthrough, the TAP/SIE collects the science sequences and RP sequences, integrates them into a single sequence, a single product for uplink. The TAP/SIE then models this single product in the SEQGEN software. At SRW, this integrated and modeled sequence is reviewed by the entire team. 

CAM: Command Approval Meeting. The final sequence products are approved for "radiation" — uplink — to the rovers. 

Ok. Deep breath. Current rover status coming soon.

A Totally Fake and Contrived Interview with the Author

This, then, brings us to the actual introduction of this blog, justifiably titled A Totally Fake and Contrived Interview with the Author. Allow me the poetic freedom — there's that term again — to pretend to be you, my distinguished audience:

>>> Ok, uh-huh, so, right. Who are you?

According to my long-form birth certificate, a human. 

>>> No no no. Like, who are you?

Oh, right! My name and stuff. My name is Matt Lenda and I bench press a reasonable 175 pounds and I like hockey and my favorite guitarist is Derek Trucks and… 

>>> No no no, relevant stuff. What do you do for MER?

Oh, right! 

Starting over: My name is Matt Lenda and I am a Tactical Activity Planner and Sequence Integration Engineer (TAP/SIE) for the MER project. I have been at the Jet Propulsion Lab since July 2010. I am one of the few MER tactical team members that splits their time between MER and other missions, so I stick out like a sore thumb. (More on this later. It is important. I promise.) I do about half my time with MER and the rest of my time with a bona fide melting pot of other missions such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Spitzer Telescope, and Juno. I am in group 317-C, the ever-glorious "Multi-mission Planning and Sequencing Systems" group. We develop, maintain, and use spacecraft modeling tools and processes that are inherently applicable to any kind of deep-space robotic mission — hence, "multi-mission."

(FYI: So-called "flagship" missions like MER, Cassini, and MSL have their own group, 317-B. With the exception of the Rover Planners, almost everyone else on the MER tactical uplink team is in this group.)

>>> What else do you do at JPL?

Lots of stuff. Currently: attitude pointing allocation requirements verification for the Juno mission; mission sequencing for the Spitzer telescope; and some mission planning for MEX. In the past: attitude command and geometry model development for Juno mission planning and sequencing; enhanced downlink analysis and process development for MRO; relay performance analysis for MRO; and about 12 other things.

>>> Where did you go to school?

The University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. You know, the most awesomest (sic) school ever.

>>> What was your major?

Aerospace Engineering. I qualified for and finished the accelerated 5-year combined BS/MS program in May 2010, concentrating in Vehicle Systems and Controls for my MS. I actually studied aircraft autopilot control systems for my MS as a continuation of my capstone senior design project, the Miniature Aircraft Deployment System (MADS) -- think of it as an "airborne aircraft carrier." Including both my undergraduate and graduate curricula, only about half my classes were actually related to space. Excellent program.

(/shameless CU plug)

>>> Where else have you worked?

Since the summer before my junior year at CU in 2007, I worked in Missions Operations and Data Systems (MO&DS) at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), a CU institution about a mile east of the main Boulder campus. There, I did real-time mission operations and engineering health and safety analysis for ICESAT, QuikSCAT, SORCE, AIM, and the Kepler Mission. My job title was "Command Controller." 

99% boredom, 1% sheer terror. Killer gig.

Fun fact: I was the Command Controller on console during the launch of the Kepler Mission, and I was the first person to "talk" to Kepler — a simple no-operation command, but nonetheless, a command. I was driving (ahem, flying) that beast, along with about 15 other students my age. We were the end of the command chain, the ones who pressed "enter" to send up those 1's and 0's. Kepler was also my first experience with a so-called "deep space" mission; all the others are (were, for ICESat) LEOs.

I stayed with LASP from that first summer through my MS graduation in May 2010, moving out to Pasadena for my current gig at JPL a month later. This LASP job is the sole reason, I think, that I got the opportunity (Get it? Get it? GET IT?) to work at JPL.

(/shameless LASP plug)

>>> How much of your education do you use in your job on a daily basis?

Nonsensical question! It rests on the ill-supported notion that engineers don't use much of their education in their jobs. (Whoever is perpetuating this rumor: Stop it.) I'll quote Akin's 21st Law to clarify my experience: "Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which." 

So, about half.

>>> What's your dream job?

Righteous question! As if it even needs stating: Like, duh, to be Joe Bonamassa*. Helping to operate cars on Mars ain't a bad thing to settle for, though.

>>> Can you get Oppy's autograph for my kid?

No.

>>> What about Steve Squyres'?

Also no.

>>> Can I send you my resumé?

Say, that's a nice jacket you have there… 

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*All linked videos are required watching (and please note this blog's Disclaimer!). Non-watchers will be hunted down and… well, actually, I won't do anything about it. I'll just be disappointed. Like a parent.