Explore Mars with Maestro

The Maestro Team writes "NASA has released Maestro, a public version of the primary software tool used by scientists to operate the Mars Exploration Rovers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Anyone can download Maestro for free from mars.telascience.org and use it to follow along with the rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro containing the latest images from Mars."

Torrent?

[linux_user_31337]

The site is sluggish already (darn subscribers), any chance of getting a torrent? I've already grabbed the files, I'll be glad to send them to anybody with a static IP willing to set up a tracker.

This looks like a lot of fun, though. Big thanks to the folks on the Maestro Team!

Re:time zones

[ChrisCampbell47]

Yeah, it lands at around 4:35 GMT. Things start happening at 4:00 GMT.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/031 231edl.jpg

The "L" in that graphic is the landing time.

Re:Torrent?

[adpowers]

Use my tracker: http://andrewhitchcock.org:6969/

I was downloading the Windows version (since I already saw a Linux version) but the server crashed in the middle of the download.

Torrent for Windows version

[adpowers]

http://torrent.andrewhitchcock.org/files/Maestro-W in.exe.torrent [andrewhitchcock.org]

That is all I have been able to grab so far. I'll try to grab the OS X and Solaris(?) ones next. Someone already posted a Linux mirror, so that is less of a priority.

If anyone already has the files, you can use my tracker if you like:

andrewhitchcock.org:6969/

Andrew

Re:Torrent?

[linux_user_31337]

Thanks man!

Linux torrent (since the mirror seems to be bogus) here [uiuc.edu].

great Maestro!

[Janek Kozicki]

that is the best reaction to slashdotting I ever saw. I'll paste it here, so we will be able to see it, even when they put back the original site:

Maestro Headquarters

We've been Slashdotted! We'll bring up our original website as soon as we can. Meanwhile, here are links to Download Maestro:

• Maestro for Windows XP, 2000 [telascience.org]
• Maestro for Mac OS X Panther (requires Java3D) [telascience.org]
• Maestro for Linux [telascience.org]
• Maestro for Solaris [telascience.org]

Maestro email [mailto]

Re:Installers

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Before the Slashdot crowd came and crashed the site, I posted on the forums there the problems with the installer and how to get around them. This has nothing to do with Linux being somehow inferior and everything to do with whomever created the file not knowing/caring enough about making Linux installation work. Its no different if some Linux programmer wrote this and made a faulty Windows setup.exe that crashed with a blue screen of death.

For those interested, the installer script is called 'install-Maestro' and has a few bugs in it. For one it wants 'rsync' but it does not properly check for its presence. Then if not found it will try to use 'rsync' that it thinks is included in the tarball. Alas whomever packaged it did not include rsync. Then it tries to use 'pwd' and combine its output with the $install variable which produces things like '/home/user/./R2004_01-Public-Linux/SAP/bim' path names. The '.' in the middle kills the process. When you edit the script to make it call rsync properly (you have to get your own rsync installed) it will install. Then you have to make sure that /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2 is on your system because the included Java VM wants one. I just symlinked my /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 to it.

Beware though, this is a Java application and performance is predictably terrible even with OpenGL accelleration.

Ok, Slashdot, we're ready for you now

[JPL-Jeff]

We backed off to a REALLY simple single page site that will allow you to download the software (and that's it). The site seems to be holding up to the traffic, so if you got scared off by a dead server before, come on back! Big thanks to the people who put up BitTorrents for us - this is our first slashdotting and we clearly didn't know what were getting into. We're making arrangements for a bigger pipe and more mirrors, and we'll be back for another Slashdotting when we make the first data release. Jeff Norris Jet Propulsion Laboratory

IRC channel: #maestro on irc.freenode.net

[JPL-Jeff]

Come chat with the Maestro developers and other users in #maestro on irc.freenode.net. We're landing in just a few hours - come celebrate with us.

Jeff

FYI: Java3d download for Mac OS X Panther

[oaklybonn]

Is here http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120 289 [apple.com].

Re:Software Updates for Images?!

[QuantumFTL]

What a poor design! They have to update the software in order to get new images? That's got to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time. Did they forget that the Internet exists where you can update images and indexes automatically? Sheesh.

Disclaimer: I'm a junior member of the Maestro Development team, however most of my work was on the mission version (SAP), not the public version.

The original specifications for Maestro (originally called WITS) contained an automatic updating client called MECS (Multimission Encrypted Communications System). I worked heavily on this the summer of 2002, and it was really great. It was going to work a bit like CVS in that it used deltas to transfer changes between versions of files, and had intelligent merging of XML content, etc. However due to funding constraints, the plug was pulled on MECS so there are no automatic updates.

There is a scientist version of SAP for use on personal computers that uses something called SAP-SYNC that automatically updates everything by comparing what's on client with server ahnd using LFTP, however it was theorized that the load on JPL's servers would be far to great to do that for all of our fans out there.

It was decided because of the massive budget cuts, little funding, and of course the fact that our staff has dropped down to all of three people to keep things simple. Doing things this way makes it possible to bittorrent things (I actually told them to bittorrent this for slashdotting about a year ago, however things have been so hectic here I"m not surprised they didn't!)

If you're interested in the design of MECS and how it was supposed to function, check out this paper [nasa.gov].

As for the people complaining about the design, we don't really like it either! Write your congressman, get NASA outreach more funding, and we'll have things to really engage the population!

Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers

Re:Miles Or Kilometers?

[QuantumFTL]

When creating the activity plans, is it miles or kilometers? Wouldn't want to crash into anything All distances are in meters. (UYnless marked otherwise). All angles are externally in degrees, internally in radians.

Rotations are quaternions I believe.

Cheers
Justin
Science Activity Planner / Maestro Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers

Re:Loaded software, need help...

[QuantumFTL]

I've loaded Maestro and tried out "Go to ISIL test facility" with success, but when I go to "Go to "Spirit's Landing Site", I get "you have not yet loaded data from Spirit, return to Maestro website to download ...". What do I do now? Where do I get the data?

There has not been a sprit release yet. There is one coming in a few days. You can't go to Spirit's Landing Site yet.

Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner / Maestro Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers