Doug Ellison
banner
dougellison.bsky.social
Doug Ellison
@dougellison.bsky.social
Dad, Husband, Mars Rover Crew Chief. Opinions and views expressed are my own. Not a NASA account. Contains strong language. He/Him
I met a surgeon in the 90s called ''John Alexander Williams'....but everyone called him JAWs.
November 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
I once had to address someone who was both a military general and a knight of the British empire….. “General Sir Michael”. I’m considering adopting it myself.
November 11, 2025 at 5:56 PM
The last time I heard of an animal breaking into a zoo, it was a mountain line that broke into the LA zoo to snack on a koala bear
October 22, 2025 at 12:17 AM
We have more to do. More things to discover. More art to inspire. So much more to do. I hope I get to continue doing it for many years to come, and I'm giving it everything I've got. Those who got us here but don't get to be a part of it any more deserve nothing less. For them, we persevere.
October 16, 2025 at 12:09 AM
On Tuesday I had to wait half a day to get an email to tell me if I was lucky, or unlucky. I got lucky. Most of my MSL family got lucky. Some were not, and my heart breaks for them. But those of us still fortunate enough to call this project home will keep on keeping on.
October 16, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Everything else was replaceable. Even if it got broken by some other person packing my stuff into boxes....it was all replaceable. But the bowl isn't. It's unique. It's one of one. It's a little piece of art inspired by the science we do and the new landscapes we seek with our rover.
October 16, 2025 at 12:09 AM
We are all so incredibly tired. The cuts keep coming, the damage to our teams keeps compounding, yet we somehow keep the missions going. Ashley, Abby and I were all on shift together on MSL today. I hope it wasn’t for the last time.
October 14, 2025 at 6:34 AM
It still exists. Its ‘modernization’ has made it unusable. It’s criminal what has been done to content like this. :(. I still can’t get over the older mission websites just wiped out of existence.
October 5, 2025 at 3:26 PM
It was the last functional web presence of the agency - I’m gutted :(
October 5, 2025 at 1:31 PM
I think we can all agree that the primary reason she made it is her time as an MER ECAM PUL ;). I'M SO HAPPY FOR HER :D
:D :D :D :D
September 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM
That particular hike is SO GOOD. I’ve done it before sunrise a couple of times :)
September 14, 2025 at 6:18 PM
We could give it to climatologists to model the environmental impact of that much compute
September 8, 2025 at 5:31 PM
I wish I’d appreciated it more in the moment. I was a teenager growing up in the peak Blur v Oasis summer of ‘95. It was incredible.
August 29, 2025 at 2:38 AM
I’m gonna say something that’ll make you very jealous. I was at Knebworth. YEAH. I KNOW.
August 29, 2025 at 2:30 AM
It’s painfully obvious they’re using much of the space imagery I’ve worked on as a JPLer, and long before as an enthusiast, and the output is shamefully incoherent garbage.
August 10, 2025 at 1:39 AM
If the cat was called Avi Loeb however. ..
August 9, 2025 at 2:04 AM
The short version is - wheel wear isn't a limiting factor and - even if one got REALLY bad - a technique to shed it and carry on has been tested :) ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp....
Rimmed Wheel Performance on the Mars Science Laboratory Scarecrow Rover
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover experienced increasing wheel damage beginning in October 2013. While the wheels were designed to operate with considerable damage, the rate at which damage was occurring was unexpected and raised concerns regarding wheel life expectancy. As of Sol 2555 (10-14-19), there are two broken grousers on the left middle wheel, and one broken grouser on the right middle wheel. One possible scenario, albeit remote, is that enough grousers break on a wheel such that unconstrained portions of the wheel could contact the cable running from the rover motor controller assembly to the wheel's drive actuator. If the cable to a drive actuator is damaged, that wheel may no longer respond to commands. To make progress towards a navigation goal position, that wheel would need to be dragged. To mitigate the risk of damaging a cable running to a wheels drive actuator, the unconstrained portion of a wheel could be strategically shed by performing driving maneuvers on an immovable rock. What would remain after wheel shedding is a rimmed wheel (the outer 1/3 of the wheel). We studied the feasibility of remotely commanding the rover to perform the shed maneuver on one of its front wheels. To inform whether or not to shed the wheels, we tested the performance of driving on one or more rimmed wheels in flight. This led to a two-month test campaign in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars Yard using the Scarecrow testbed rover. Driving and steering performance was characterized on a variety of terrain types and slopes in a worst-case rimmed wheeled configuration. Test results indicate that if wheel shedding could be successfully executed in flight, Curiosity could continue to drive indefinitely on rimmed wheels.
ieeexplore.ieee.org
August 4, 2025 at 8:24 PM