NASA's Perseverance captures challenging flight by Mars helicopter:
Ingenuity is currently prepping for its 16th flight, scheduled to take place no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 20, but the 160.5-second Flight 13 stands out as one of Ingenuity's most complicated. It involved flying into varied terrain within the "Séítah" geological feature and taking images of an outcrop from multiple angles for the rover team. Acquired from an altitude of 26 feet (8 meters), the images complement those collected during Flight 12, providing valuable insight for Perseverance scientists and rover drivers.
Captured by the rover's two-camera Mastcam-Z, one video clip of Flight 13 shows a majority of the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft's flight profile. The other provides a closeup of takeoff and landing, which was acquired as part of a science observation intended to measure the dust plumes generated by the helicopter.
"The value of Mastcam-Z really shines through with these video clips," said Justin Maki, deputy principal investigator for the Mastcam-Z instrument at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Even at 300 meters [328 yards] away, we get a magnificent closeup of takeoff and landing through Mastcam-Z's 'right eye." And while the helicopter is little more than a speck in the wide view taken through the 'left eye," it gives viewers a good feel for the size of the environment that Ingenuity is exploring."
During takeoff, Ingenuity kicks up a small plume of dust that the right camera, or "eye," captures moving to the right of the helicopter during ascent. After its initial climb to planned maximum altitude of 26 feet (8 meters), the helicopter performs a small pirouette to line up its color camera for scouting. Then Ingenuity pitches over, allowing the rotors' thrust to begin moving it horizontally through the thin Martian air before moving offscreen. Later, the rotorcraft returns and lands in the vicinity of where it took off. The team targeted a different landing spot—about 39 feet (12 meters) from takeoff—to avoid a ripple of sand it landed on at the completion of Flight 12.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @03:25AM
In other, more relevant news, someone reported that RMS’s farts are quite fragrant.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @03:52AM (11 children)
APK's spam has been modded up in the linked story [soylentnews.org]. I received leaked info from a staff member that 60 mod points were spent by the accounts Fuck You Niggers 3 through 8 to mod up APK's spam. This is not the only time these accounts have been used to mod up APK's spam posts. The accounts are obvious sock puppets. We also have a very strong hint who controls these sock puppets [soylentnews.org]. The evidence raises the question of why the admins have allowed these sock puppet accounts to spend hundreds of mod points to mod up APK's spam. There is zero effort to disguise the sock puppets so the admins surely must be aware. Hmm.....
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @05:16AM (8 children)
Very interesting. Perhaps SN was a false flag operation from the beginning? NCommander's protests on the Stallman affair and TMB's departure do not support that theory. But, the recent attacks on all left wing, pro-science soylentils does support a somewhat later take-over, of a distinctively British flavor. Have we been co-opted by MI-6? FatPhil, Janrinok, both British operatives, and decidedly of a Tory bent.
And as for this topic, did I not see an actual submission from a real community member, that has been rejected in favor of this "in-group" IRC submission? Bad form, eds, bad form.
And, have never gotten a definition of what constitutes "bad posting", other than it pissed off TMB. Who is the TMB now?
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:18AM (7 children)
You might as well simply post this under your username - everyone can see immediately who you are.
Temporarily blocking an IP or sub-net is an automatic response to attempts to spam the site. The message that you receive is also automated. This is not an "attack on all left wing, pro-science soylentils". Change your VPN or, better still, simply log in and the messages will probably cease.
You really are distraught about your sock-puppets being closed down, aren't you? Just post as a normal community member. There is no "take-over". Our 2 most prolific editors have personal reasons which prevent them from contributing as much as they did only a few months ago. Others are contributing more to fill in the gaps. The only thing that has changed is that you are unable to skew the discussions due to the loss of your sock puppets.
What kind of fantasy land do you exist in? How about we simply want a site where we can discuss topics without some commentators trying to turn everything into a US-biased political argument, and where the responses are from real individuals and not from false accounts? Additionally, you most certainly have your political assessments of us well wide of the mark.
Why should you be complaining about a submission by another community member, I wonder? How do you know that they are 'real'? How do you know that it has been rejected and that we did not ask for clarification? What makes you think that it wasn't merged with the published story on the same topic?
However, when selecting submissions there are lots of things that come into play. If 2 or more submissions on the same topic are from different sources and therefore contain slightly different content or viewpoints we might merge them. If they are essentially the same report we can chose the one that best explains the item or is already edited by the submitter. Or we could choose the most recent as that will probably be the most up-to-date. There are also other factors that come into play that can lead to a submission not being used e.g. those that have been excessively edited to include the submitter's own political bias or viewpoint, those that are simply cut and pasted from other similar sites to our own, those submitted by false accounts (we are approaching 16,000 different accounts only a small proportion of which are genuine community members), or are from businesses and therefore self-promotional, those from sock-puppets etc.
Finally, on the submissions page it clearly states : "grousing about declined submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally." This is not your personal site, although you are welcome to go and create one if you wish. We have offered several times to give you the software for free.
Messages such as this can originate from several actions. Unusually it is that the submitter took too long to actually write and send their submission and the software times out to prevent it being blocked by malicious submissions that are being edited but never actually submitted. More usually, it is seen if an IP address changes during the submission process. This can occur naturally if you are using TOR as it can reroute your connection. It will also occur if you request TOR to provide a new routing in an attempt further mask your identity - the 'reskey' is linked to a specific IP address. There are other causes but they should not happen if you have a single identity and are using the site as intended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:22AM (5 children)
Why are you so harsh on Runaway1956, janrinok? Can't you just tell us what is going on?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:28AM (4 children)
How would you know about Runaway's accounts? You should be looking closer to home, idiot. This was a pretty poor attempt at diverting my response to you towards somebody else.
This discussion is closed unless you have something more intelligent to say. Or should I get in my James Bond car, grab my Glock, and do something more like a 'British operative' might do? You have lost your grip on reality and such comments as yours only confirm what many people have long suspected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @08:39AM (3 children)
James Bond would never, never, use a Glock, unless it was the last resort against sharks with lasers on their heads. This example points out how corrupt you have become, janrinok. No real
ScotsmanEnglishman would ever suggest such at thing.(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @08:49AM (2 children)
In early 2013, British armed forces received a new standard sidearm. The Glock 17 was brought into service, replacing the venerable Browning L9A1 after over 40 years in the Mod inventory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @09:00AM (1 child)
And they wonder why the sun has set on the Empire. Even US troops don't use the Glock! The design is fundamentally flawed, the safety system unreliable, and there were bribes to get it accepted. US standard issue is Beretta M9, much safer. What ever happened to the Webley?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 21 2021, @12:33AM
strange that a hoplophobe like ari knows so much about weapons
maybe it's because he is dishonest about everything he posts
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Frigatebird on Sunday November 21 2021, @10:02AM
Um, excuse me, but I do not see immediately who this is supposed to be. Could someone enlighten me?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @12:06PM (1 child)
You had to go back 2 years to find these sock puppets, and they haven't been active since? I'm busy watching the sock puppets that are trying to get established today. The role in the past was nothing to do with the editors, this is something we have had to take responsibility for in recent months.
We have identified lots of sock puppets that have existed at some time in the last 7 years or so, but the priority are the one's that are active now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @05:03PM
I hope you get it under control soon. I walked into the bedroom this morning, and a pumpkin orange sock started talking to me. It had a weird accent, like maybe a Greek was trying to fake a Dutch accent. I suspect aristarchus, but I have no proof.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @06:33AM (7 children)
https://soylentnews.org/~Fuck+You+Niggers/ [soylentnews.org] and there are seven more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:23AM (6 children)
There are a lot more - we can disable them eventually but as new accounts are being created by bots in significant numbers daily it is a huge drain on resources.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:28AM (3 children)
How many have been around long enough to gain moderation points? How many have up-modded APK? How about some due diligence on this site?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:34AM (2 children)
How about some more volunteers who are prepared to do the work and not hide behind 'Anonymous Coward'?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @07:45AM (1 child)
Well, if we weren't runaway by hostile attitudes of the current crew, which has long been attested to in the last poll. No longer and excuse. Time to listen to soylentils, jan.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @10:25AM
After Buckfeta, now a call to listen to soylentils is modded "offtopic". Well, that is that, I guess. SuckFoylent!
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @08:34AM
Fourteen years, and we have yet to break a UID over 16,000? And we are overwhelmed? Thank goodness this is not an actual website on the internets!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 21 2021, @02:36AM
I find the idea somewhat abhorrent, but have you considered implementing some kind of captcha for account creation? Slashdot uses reCaptcha, which I despise because it effectively appoints Google as the gatekeeper for account creation. However, it might cut down on the bots creating accounts, and that might help. I'm not sure what it would take to add that to the site's code, so that might be an issue. I'm wondering from a long term perspective if it's better to invest the time now to add a captcha for account creation instead of having to disable so many bot accounts. Maybe it's still not feasible, and I understand if that's the case. I also completely understand about not wanting to use captchas, and I hate the idea. I just want to offer a constructive suggestion, though I understand that there are very good reasons why your answer might well be no.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @08:41AM (3 children)
Cool that Ingenuity got recorded in flight. This is only here to have at least one post that is on topic. Carry on.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @08:59AM (2 children)
and one reply.
yes it is cool, now if they could manage to have the orbiter, spot the two below, wile the copter films the rover that would be something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 20 2021, @09:07AM (1 child)
From orbit, both are almost invisible. This is why we have to have cameras on the ground! There is no substitute for Space Force!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 20 2021, @05:11PM
We haven't designed the Mars Boots to put boots on the ground yet. I think Calvin Klein was in the lead on bidding. Carhartt and Wolverine are in there, but probably won't be considered because they aren't offering enough kickbacks. After we have fashionable Mars attire, we'll put people on Mars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday November 20 2021, @12:31PM
What an awesome thing it must be to tell your neighbors that your job is to fly a helicopter on Mars.
Does anyone know if those colors are actual or enhanced?
Washington DC delenda est.