Telltale history/milestones/News
The Telltale experiment was developed, constructed and delivered in an unusually short time compared to what is usually the case with scientific equipment for Mars missions. In April 2005 there existed only a concept of the experiment, and in February 2007 it was delivered fully tested and calibrated. In the meantime, the team had the experience of failing testing, and redesigning the experiment.
Below is listed the story of the Telltale experiment (in reverse order)
Summer 2008: Landed operations in
Tucson
,
Arizona
. After many years of planning, testing, redesigning and further testing the Telltale has finally reached it’s final destination on Mars. During the summer the Telltale team will work on analyzing the incoming data from Mars to determine wind speeds and directions. This will help classify the diurnal wind cycle and support sample delivery to other instruments on the
Phoenix
lander.
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Animated gif showing a series of 5 pictures taken within an 8 minute time period on Mars. The pictures were taken on Sol 8, the eighth day of the mission, just after 1 pm, local lander time.
Download GIF (520 kB)
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25th
May 2008:
Phoenix
landed on Mars!
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Celebrations
were in order as
Phoenix
landed safely on Mars after 10 months of cruising through space. The
Telltale was imaged the next day and the team could confirm that it is in
fine working condition.
Full resolution JPEG
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Fall 2007: Preparations for landing operations (Operational Readiness Tests). The Telltale team is working hard on determining the optimal way of delivering wind information from the surface of Mars.
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Animated gif showing a series of 4 pictures taken roughly minute apart. The clear movement of the Telltale is observed, probably due to the air-condition at the science operation center.
Download GIF (69 kB)
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4th August 2007: Launch of Mars
Phoenix
toward Mars
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The
Phoenix
lander was launched on a Delta II rocket in the morning hours of August 4th 2007.
Despite unfavourable whether forecast in the days before the launch, the sky was extremely clear, allowing us to witness the burnout of the first stage and observe when the second stage was ignited. As a bonus, the rocket fumes made a colourful display in the skies until sunrise.
Image credits:
Kennedy
Space
Center
Full resolution JPG (218 kB)
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The fumes from the rocket illuminated by the tower lights and morning sun. A member of the team came up with the following:
There’s a ghost in heaven
dressed in blue and white
it’s the smoke left over
in the dark of night
And now the dawn is coming
shedding reddish light
Out of sight the Telltale
goes on her steady flight
BMC
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An amateur video taken by Tim Sloth Andersen on his mobile phone. Though not the professional type of work, it captures the experience on
Cocoa
Beach
during the launch.
Download Quicktime (1.6 MB)
QuickTime Player can be downloaded here
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Spring 2007: Detailed analysis of calibration data
February 2007: Delivery to
University
of
Arizona
, Telltale mounted onto the Lander, Delivery of End Item Data Package (EIDP)
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Picture of the Telltale taken during installation at Lockhead Martin in
Denver
with the SSI.
The reason for the reduced quality of the picture is that the SSI was at room temperature which results in noisy pictures. On Mars, the temperature is well below 0oC, and there will be no noise in the images.
Full resolution JPG (205 kB)
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January 2007: Calibration, Thermal cycling, Sterilization and packing
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Haraldur Páll Gunnlaugsson holding the Telltales immediately after sterilization and packing into closed plastic bags
Full resolution JPG (104 kB)
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The package sent to
USA
. The boxes with the Telltales are within an aluminium frame, with shock sensors mounted on the outside
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Picture of the setup used for thermal cycling of the Telltales.
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December 2006: Vibration testing at iABG,
Germany
, successful.
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Film strip showing the performance of one of the tested units at iABG under the vibration levels that can be expected during launch and landing.
Download mpg (33 Mb)
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October 2006: Vibration testing at iABG,
Germany
, partly successful.
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The Test setup at iABG. A plate with the Telltales is mounted on a L converter that is on top of the shaker system
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Summer 2006: Redesign of the experiment, to take into account vibration levels during launch and landing
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Computer drawing showing the comparison between the old and the new design of the Telltale. The metal structure has been strengthened. And , as some parts have been made simpler
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May 2006: Total failure of the Telltale under vibration testing in
Ottawa
,
Canada
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Picture taken of the Telltale after vibration failure. Vibration levels at the top of the mast were considerably higher than had been anticipated.
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April 2006: Critical Design Review (CDR) held in Århus
Oktober 2005: First delivery of a engineering qualification model (EQM) to
Canada
.
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Team picture taken in Oktober 2005, where the team delivered the first telltale for testing. From Left: Egil Hald, Svend Knak Jensen, Jon Merrison, Folmer Lykkegaard, Haraldur Páll Gunnlaugsson, Henrik Bechtold, Jens Jacob Iversen and Per Nørnberg
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Summer 2005: Testing of different designs in the Århus Wind tunnel.
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Picture taken during a test of different designs of the active part of the Telltale in the Mars wind tunnel. Two major problems were identified and solved:
(1) The design would have to be extremely light, in order for the Martian wind to have any change of moving the object in a predictable way. The solution is to form a tube of extremely thin Kapton foil
(2) Damping has to be included to avoid uncontrolled oscillations. This was solved by hanging the Kapton part in braided Kevlar fibres, that have intrinsically damping properties.
Additionally, it was found that a mirror was needed to get reliable directional information.
The lower picture shows the first sketch of the Telltale structure based on the test data
Full resolution JPG (51 kb)
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April 2005: Meetings with officials from NASA and the
University
of
Arizona
in
Copenhagen
. Among the items discussed was the potential that the Mars Simulation Laboratory would design and construct a passive wind indicator (called Telltale) based on simulation work performed by Carlos Lange.
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Carlos Lange’s test setup with Telltales. The tests were performed at Earths gravity and pressure, but scaled to Martian conditions. These tests suggested that it would be possible to construct such a simple experiment
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14th century:
