Kurt's Weblog

Headlines - White Stuff on Mars [The Daily Show]







Coming soon: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Pay Dirt: Martian Soil Fit for Earthly Life

Our Eyes on Mars: How the Phoenix Lander Sees

...
Scientific American spoke to Patrick Woida, who helped develop the
imager to learn more about what makes the device see as we do. Woida
is the SSI downlink engineer for the Phoenix lander, as well as a
senior staff engineer at the University of Arizona's Lunar and
Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. An edited Q&A transcript based on
telephone and e-mail interviews follows.
.
How is the way the Surface Stereo Imager sees similar to the way that
a human would see the surface of Mars?
.
Well, the imager is two meters off the ground, so that makes it about
my height. [Woida is six feet, seven inches tall.] Also, the imager
has two lenses that are set apart like eyes are on our faces. This
arrangement allows for the imager to have depth perception like we
have. Also, we aren't recorrecting the colors in images when they get
sent back here to Earth. In other words, if you were standing there on
Mars looking out, that's what you would see.
...

Thanks to Phil for this link: Buzz of the Week: Striking PR gold on the red planet [FCW]

...
NASA has also learned how powerful its images from Mars can be. The
space agency provided the public with an online view via NASA TV. NASA
also broadcast video via Second Life, the virtual world created by
Linden Research. Second Life users can view an avatar-sized full-scale
model of the Phoenix launch vehicle, the Delta 2 rocket. The video
feed included uninterrupted views of space, the Phoenix rover and
mission control.
.
The space agency and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which handled
coverage, did not provide a commentary track. Viewers got to listen to
all the commands and drama of mission control unfiltered and
uninterpreted. NASA also had public relations officials live-blog the
process.
.
NASA headquarters spokesperson Dwayne Brown said the multimedia
approach to covering the Phoenix landing gave the public a new
perspective on how space missions work. "This is how you get the
public excited and have them feel a part of something wonderful,"
Brown said.
...

Hmm, I have to say that I don't know anybody that is very excited about this Mars Second Life stuff. However the twitter and blogs are popular. Would like to hear of articles that actually go into peoples' experience with the Phoenix 2nd life area.

Thanks to Jeff for pointing me to this amusingly titled article.

Penguins on Mars?, Phoenix chemistry set discovers that Mars's soil is like Antarctica's by Katharine Sanderson [nature news]

Should we be looking for penguins on Mars, rather than little green
men? Just a week after finding definitive signs of water ice just
beneath the surface, news of another remarkable scientific discovery
has been beamed back to Earth by the Mars lander Phoenix.
.
This time it's about muck. The soil under the lander was scooped up
into its onboard chemistry lab just a few days ago, and subjected to a
round of prodding, poking and other analysis.
.
And the results? Martian soil is like Antarctic soil. "This soil
appears to be a close analogue to surface soils found in the upper dry
valleys in Antarctica," says Sam Kounaves of Tufts University in
Medford, Massachusetts, leader of the 'wet chemistry' portion of the
Phoenix mission.
...

I've updated my python template file. I copy/paste from this file all the time when coding python. Suggestions are always welcome... there is always room for improvement. This version adds svn propset notes, exceptions, time formats, warnings, and command line choice options.

template.py

Monica talks about processing the data from the tide station at Maine Maritime Academy: Tide data filtering and the mysterious filtfilt issue [The Moni-blog]

... used the convn function in Matlab in order to apply a
convolution to the data. This filter can cause a phase distortion,
however, by specifying the shape as 'same', the central part of the
convolution is returned and the distortion is minimized.
...

Sam K. on the Today Show

Martian soil good enough for asparagus: NASA by Jean-Louis Santini [yahoo news]

...
Kounaves said his team was "flabbergasted" at the results that came
back.
/
"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements of the
nutrients to support life, past, present or future," said Kounaves.
...

Ground Control to Farmer Tom: asparagus on Mars? [UK times online]

Will NASA Ever Find Life on Mars? by Jeremy Hsu of space.com

...
But in the parlance of treasure hunters in the movie "National
Treasure," this looks a lot like just another clue that will lead to
other clues, and still more clues. The big question still hangs over
NASA: Is there life on Mars? And just as important: Can NASA ever find
the evidence for it?
.
Getting to that answer will require the right mission with the right
tools in the right places - not to mention some serious digging beyond
the capabilities of Phoenix. The next Mars missions include NASA's
Mars Science Laboratory, an SUV-sized rover set to launch in 2009, and
the European ExoMars rover that would wield a drill capable of digging
6.5 feet (2 meters) down. It is set to launch in 2013.
...

Powerpoint is a fine tool for making presentations, but people always wonder why I tell them not to use ppt to transfer images. Here is an example that I have from yesterday. I crafted this image that is now released as: PIA10915: Phoenix's Wet Chemistry Lab



Here is the original that I had with a serious white dot problem. I traded this for a color problem with export or copy/paste that would have been uncorrectable.



As you can see in the final, I got rid of most of the white dots, but I ran out of time, so I didn't get to the ones at the bottom.



Moral of the story: Don't give me a power point of the figure that you worked really hard on. Give me the original source images. Also, Illustrator PDF layer files are good, but if you make a PDF from PowerPoint that is even worse. PowerPoint is afflicted with a clipping plane problem where it puts in 50 billion clipping planes that I have to hunt down and remove/alter to transform a figure into a public web ready figure.

NASA's Phoenix Lander: 30 Days on Mars by Tariq Malik [livescience.com]

Minerals Needed for Life Found on Mars [space.com]

...
The results of both the TEGA and MECA tests are showing
scientists that it's possible Mars may indeed have hosted, or be
hosting, some form of life.
.
"Over time I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about
Mars is not that it's an alien world but that it's actually very
Earth-like," Kounaves said.

Mars lander finds salty environment in taste test by Alicia Chang [AP/Boston.com]

...
"There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems
very friendly," mission scientist Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University
said of the soil. "There's nothing about it that's toxic."
.
Phoenix so far has not detected organic carbon considered an essential
building block of life. Last week, the lander found evidence of ice
below the soil. Scientists generally agree that liquid water, a stable
energy source and organic, or carbon-containing, compounds are
required for a habitable zone.
...

For firefox 3 users: about:robots

If you have Windows, give our GeoCoastPilot a try:

GeoCoastPilot [ccom.unh.edu]

I run loaded it up onto a 12 inch Lenovo tablet and here it is in tablet mode:

Mars Soil Appears To Be Able To Sustain Life [slashdot]



Phoenix sol 30 update: Alkaline soil, not very salty, "nothing extreme" about it! [planetary.org]

Phoenix Finds Earth-Like Soil On Mars [aviationweek]

The Phoenix Mars lander, in its first series of soil chemistry tests,
has discovered that Martian soil is remarkably Earth-like and could
support a wide array of plants and organisms.
.
"I am flabbergasted by this data," says Samuel Kounaves, from Tufts
University, the lead investigator on the Phoenix wet chemistry
investigations. "If the data is sustained by other measurements, it
will be an historic discovery relative to the search for life on
Mars."
.
The highest scientific priority for Phoenix is to determine if the
planet is habitable, at least in local areas, for the types of exotic
plants and organisms that live in extreme environments on Earth. The
mission has essentially achieved that goal with the first wet
chemistry tests, Phoenix investigators said.
...

Minerals Needed for Life Found on Mars [space.com]

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander found evidence of mineral nutrients
essential to life in Martian dirt, mission scientists announced
Thursday.
.
After performing the first wet chemistry experiment ever done on
another planet, Phoenix discovered that a sample it dug of Martian
dirt contained several soluble minerals, including potassium,
magnesium and chloride. Though the data is preliminary, the results
are very exciting, scientists said.
.
"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements for
nutrients to support life," said Phoenix's wet chemistry lab lead, Sam
Kounaves of Tufts University. "This is the type of soil you'd probably
have in your backyard. You might be able to grow asparagus pretty
well, but probably not strawberries."
.
Asparagus, which thrives in alkaline soil, would like the Martian
dirt, which Phoenix measured to have a very alkaline pH of between
eight to nine. Strawberries, meanwhile, like acidic soil, he said.
...

Hiw to Trace an Image Using Photoshop [wikihow.com]

>>>import datetime, time
>>>d = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
>>>d.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z')
'2008-06-25 14:59:48 '
>>>t = time.localtime()
>>>time.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z',t)
'2008-06-25 08:02:52 -0700'

In order to see the time zone, you need a timezone aware object. Confusing.

strftime behavior [python.org]

There are a number of image grabbers for the isight (built in or external) out there for the Mac. It seems very strange that Apple doesn't provide a simple command line image grabber. DarwinPorts has a package of iSightCapture, but that comes from the dmg. Today, I found isightGrab that provides the source code, but is a little weird in the licensing. It says in parts that it is the same as telekinesis, so that would be the Apache License 2.0. If that is true, that I am just about good to go to package it for fink as is, but I am not happy with the current interface. For now, here is how to get and build the program:

svn co http://telekinesis.googlecode.com/svn/external/isightGrab
cd isightGrab
echo << EOF > Makefile
LDFLAGS := -framework Cocoa -framework QuickTime
SRCS:=${wildcard *.m}
OBJS:=${SRCS:.m=.o}
isightGrab:  ${OBJS}
EOF
make
./isightGrab > foo.jpg

But the code is setup as a CGI, so it returns MIME type info that I ripped out with emacs. This really needs two things. The first is a command line interface (say using gengetopt or something similar). The second is a clean python binding that returns a useful object type. Those two things would really help out a number of projects.

The license info:

// brian whitman brian.whitman@variogr.am 
// uses Tim Omernick's CocoaSequenceGrabber which appears to have no license
// license granted to whatever telekinesis uses

CocoaSequenceGrabber

A milestone for the Phoenix mission success panorama [Planetary Society Weblog] By Emily Lakdawalla

Phoenix camera team leader Mark Lemmon cautioned me that the mission
success panorama isn't really quite done. 

In Photoshop CS3, Image->Adjustments->Shadow/Highlight. Then I did 50% shadows and 0% highlights.

Phoenix sol 29 update: Anomalies here and there, but minimum mission success is on the horizon By Emily Lakdawalla [Planetary Society Weblog]

I just got off the phone with Phoenix mission manager Barry Goldstein,
who filled me in on what's been happening with Phoenix over the last
few sols. In a nutshell:
    * The sol 22 anomaly is now understood; it was a two-part bug, the
      first part of which was fixed with a software update uplinked
      yesterday, so they may allow the scientists to start using flash
      again today (in their plans for sol 30).
    * They now think they understand the problem with the TEGA doors,
      that it is a mechanical problem, that an assembly "was not
      fabricated to flight specifications." However they still think
      they can get samples in, and plan to try it on sol 30 or 31.
    * The spacecraft went into safe mode and had no operations on sol
      27, but they recovered fast and were back to normal on sol 28.
    * They will probably deliver the first sample to the wet chemistry
      lab nextersol (sol 30).
    * Analyzing a second TEGA sample is the last item on the list for
      minimum mission success, so that should be done by the end of
      next week, and they're on track for full mission success by the
      end of July.
...

Read on for a very detailed report.

I now run macs all across the country. Updating them with remote desktop can be less than fun with all sorts of firewalls and such. Apple does provide a way to ssh into a box. First, see what needs installing:

% softwareupdate --list
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * AirPortUtility_Leopard-5.3.2
        AirPort Utility (5.3.2), 10780K [recommended]
   * iDVD702-7.0.2
        iDVD Update (7.0.2), 22390K [recommended]
   * iMovie712-7.1.2
        iMovie Update (7.1.2), 19780K [recommended]

Now do the install all (none of the above says it requires a reboot. You can specify the name instead of -a to do just one.

% sudo softwareupdate -i -a
waiting AirPort Utility 
waiting iDVD Update     
waiting iMovie Update   
Installing AirPort Utility      0..20..40..60..80..100
Done AirPort Utility    
Installing iDVD Update  0..20..40..60..80..100
Done iDVD Update        
Installing iMovie Update        0..20..40..60..80..100
Done iMovie Update      
Done.

I got this from this site, but it works for normal (non-server) macs: Mac OS X Server: How to remotely install software using the softwareupdate command-line tool

And if you have to use remote desktop, here it the command to restart the program on a remote computer when the agent freaks out (which it seems to do on some computers)

% sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -restart -agent

This is from: Apple Remote Desktop: Configuring remotely via command line (kickstart)

Supreme Court to hear case involving whales and Navy sonar

...
The judge's order, which will stay in place for now, says the Navy may
not use sonar within 12 miles of the California coast. Crews also must
tone down their sonar whenever whales or other marine mammals are
spotted within 2,200 yards of a ship.
.
But the justices said they will consider the Bush administration's
contention that the judge overstepped her authority.
.
The case pits military readiness versus environmental protection.
.
On the one hand, the Navy says it needs to train crews in using
high-powered sonar to detect submarines. Restricting the use of this
sonar "jeopardizes the Navy's ability to train sailors and Marines for
wartime deployment during a time of ongoing hostilities," Bush
administration lawyers said in their appeal to the high court.
...

Hi all, I am trying to play movies on a mac that has 5 projectors creating a 6400x1024 screen. I seem to be running into all sorts of trouble with QuickTime and VLC. I get white screens when playing and full screen is just screen 1. JPEG compress renders visably but is just too bulky to play back. H.264 and MP4 are white.

What is the best way to make and play movies for this size screen with a 10.5.3 mac? I have movie frames on disk. This works, but is not a good solution:

xv -wait .25 -wloop -nodec frames*

Big news for AIS monitoring away from shore: Wikipedia on Orbcomm

Ship-Tracking Satellite Launched

... The satellite, launched from Kapustin Yar, Russia, was
equipped with automatic identification system technology capable of
tracking and identifying ships...

Russia launches US satellites [ukpress]

ORBCOMM Announces Successful Launch of Six Satellites [business wire]

...
The Coast Guard and five Quick Launch satellites will be positioned
optimally to augment the existing ORBCOMM constellation, providing
additional capacity and improved message delivery speeds for current
and future ORBCOMM users. In addition, these satellites are equipped
with Automatic Identification System (AIS) payloads which will enable
them to receive and report AIS transmissions to be used for ship
tracking and other navigational activities. ORBCOMM has been working
closely with the US Coast Guard on the AIS project, and also intends
to market AIS data to other U.S. and international government
agencies, as well as to companies whose businesses require such
information.
...

PTR Group Developed Flight Software On-Orbit With ORBCOMM Multiple Satellite Launch [tmcnet.com]

...
The Coast Guard Demonstration and Quick Launch satellites have the
capacity to enhance ORBCOMM's network performance. The satellites were
launched into an optimum orbit to augment current satellites that
would provide faster message delivery for the ORBCOMM's new and
existing customers, said the company.  Both the satellites are
equipped with Automatic Identification System (AIS) payloads which
enable them to receive and report transmissions from AIS-equipped
maritime vessels. AIS payloads is an important component of the Coast
Guard's monitoring; hence for the security and protection of nation's
ports and waterways. The PTR Group, owing to its expertise in the area
of VxWorks(R)-based real-time flight software development, worked
closely with ORBCOMM systems engineers on the development of both the
AIS and network communications software for these satellites.
...

A few years back, I went all to check out this out when Sib was a judge. Pretty darn impressive what these students pull off! Well worth seeing if you have the time and are in the area. Underwater Robot Competition [hydro international]

Nearly 60 student teams from all over the world will compete in
underwater missions using underwater robots that they designed and
built themselves. The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE)
Center's seventh annual international remotely operated vehicles (ROV)
competition, hosted by the Ridge 2000 program at Scripps Institution
of Oceanography at UC San Diego, will take place from 26 to 28 June at
the Canyonview Pool on the UC San Diego campus.
...

Can the Martian arctic support extreme life? by Alica Chang, AP.

LOS ANGELES - Bizarre microbes flourish in the most punishing
environments on Earth from the bone-dry Atacama Desert in Chile to the
boiling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park to the sunless sea
bottom vents in the Pacific.
.
Could such exotic life emerge in the frigid arctic plains of Mars?
.
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft could soon find out. Since plopping down
near the Martian north pole a month ago, the three-legged lander has
been busy poking its long arm into the sticky soil and collecting
scoopfuls to bake in a test oven and peer at under a microscope.
...

The article uses a photo from this 2004 NSF press release: Discovery Of Microbes and Mars, Desert microbe discovery has extraterrestrial implications

The driest parts of Chile's Atacama desert get rain once every few
decades, yet microbial life exists a mere 8 to 12 inches below the
parched terrain. Researcher Jay Quade, shown here in a test pit,
samples the Mars-like landscape for soil carbonates.  Credit:
Julio L. Betancourt, U.S. Geological Survey.

The article:

In truth, the similarities between the Atacama and Mars are striking.
The surface of Mars has apparently been dry for millions or even
billions of years.  But the driest "absolute desert" region of the
Atacama is not much moister; it rains there maybe once every other
decade, though nobody bothers to measure it.  In fact, the desiccated
vista of dirt and rocks is so Mars-like that NASA uses the area as a
model for the Red Planet.
.
Yet despite its inhospitable qualities, a team of Arizona scientists
has discovered microbial life about a foot below the rough
terrain. "We found life, we can culture it, and we can extract and
look at its DNA," said Raina Maier, an environmental microbiologist at
the University of Arizona in Tuscon and co-author of the work.
.
This finding, published as a letter in the November 19, 2004 issue of
the journal Science, contradicts a previous report asserting that the
Atacama's absolute desert is too dry to support life and is
essentially sterile.
...

The Atacama desert is pretty wild, but I have only been there through the cameras of the CMU/NASA Nomad rover in 2007. That was a fun project where I found the the first fossil found remotely with a rover while sitting in the back of the room paging through images.

Martian Weather Report

The Mars weather reports are updated regularly as soon as data is
downloaded from the Phoenix Mars Lander. Due to technical
considerations, the reports may not be available on a daily basis.

Phoenix made slashdot again: Water Ice On Mars



based on this article: SpaceWeather

I've been meaning to push my skills with python regular expressions (regex) for a while and parsing AIS USCG NMEA strings looked like a good way to practice. I've created a 'verbose' regex that saves each of the fields such that they can be easily accessed. The kodos regex tool made this a lot easier to accomplish. Here is the sample code I ended up with:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import re
#
rawstr = r"""^[!$](?P<prefix>AI)(?P<stringType>VD[MO])
,(?P<total>\d?)
,(?P<senNum>\d?)
,(?P<seqId>[0-9]?)
,(?P<chan>[AB])
,(?P<body>[a-zA-Z0-9<>\?\'\`]*)
,(?P<fillBits>\d)\*(?P<checksum>[0-9A-F][0-9A-F])
(  
  (S(?P<slot>\d*))?
  | (,s(?P<s>\d*))?
  | (,d(?P<signal_strength>[-0-9]*))?
  | (,T(?P<time_of_arrival>[0-9.]*))?
  | (,x(?P<x>[0-9]*))
  | (,(?P<station>(?P<station_type>[rb])[a-zA-Z0-9]*))?
)*
,(?P<timeStamp>\d+)
$"""
#
matchstr = """!AIVDM,3,4,,A,14hv0F8000Jrht<H?9Oaw2f`00Rn,0*44,s27706,d-102,T43.56976333,x155601,r003669945,1214092819"""
#
compile_obj = re.compile(rawstr,  re.VERBOSE)
match_obj = compile_obj.search(matchstr)
#
print '         prefix = ', match_obj.group('prefix')
print '     stringType = ', match_obj.group('stringType')
print '          total = ', match_obj.group('total')
print '         senNum = ', match_obj.group('senNum')
print '          seqId = ', match_obj.group('seqId')
print '           chan = ', match_obj.group('chan')
print '           body = ', match_obj.group('body')
print '       fillBits = ', match_obj.group('fillBits')
print '       checksum = ', match_obj.group('checksum')
print '           slot = ', match_obj.group('slot')
print '              s = ', match_obj.group('s')
print 'signal_strength = ', match_obj.group('signal_strength')
print 'time_of_arrival = ', match_obj.group('time_of_arrival')
print '              x = ', match_obj.group('x')
print '        station = ', match_obj.group('station')
print '   station_type = ', match_obj.group('station_type')
print '      timeStamp = ', match_obj.group('timeStamp')

There are a few fields that can use better representations, but this is a good start. Here is a sample run:

% ./retest.py 
         prefix =  AI
     stringType =  VDM
          total =  3
         senNum =  4
          seqId =  
           chan =  A
           body =  14hv0F8000Jrht<H?9Oaw2f`00Rn
       fillBits =  0
       checksum =  44
           slot =  None
              s =  27706
signal_strength =  -102
time_of_arrival =  43.56976333
              x =  155601
        station =  r003669945
   station_type =  r
      timeStamp =  1214092819

That's a pretty hard to read block of regular expressions, but it already works lot better than the code I have in noaadata, which is getting very painful.

Kodos has a help page and I also used the Regular Expression HOWTO. I don't have time to totally explain the above, so it is left to the reader as an excercise to walk through the regex.

Ice on Mars by Ned Potter [abc news]



And it references the phoenix twitter site. Finally I am subscribed to marsphoenix

Scientists believe Mars lander exposed ice crumbs [boston.com/AP]

Phoenix Mosaic - Aviation Week Cover

The cover of the June 9, 2008 Aviation Week & Space Technology
features a mosaic of the area around one foot of the Phoenix Mars
lander. Dr. Ken Kremer, one of the figures who prepared the mosaic for
the magazine, kindly provided us with this close-up of the image. The
caption that appears in AW&ST follows:The Phoenix Mars lander footpad
to the left of an apparent large block of water ice, which was cleared
of topsoil by descent rockets, indicates the spacecraft literally
touched down on top of the primary sampling objective of the mission
near the Martian North Pole on May 25. A wider version, with more
elements of the false-color mosaic, is above...

Joel H.'s shadow removal makes Aviation Week: Phoenix Lander Confirms Martian Water Ice



Phoenix Press Conference Update: Proof of Water Ice [universe today]

I lightened this image of the scoop material with photoshop. Astronomy Picture of the Day - 2008 June 8

What surprises are hidden in the soils of Mars? To help find out, the
Phoenix Lander Phoenix Lander which arrived on Mars two weeks ago has
attempted to place a scoop of soil in Phoenix's Thermal and
Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Pictured above, the dirt-filled scoop
approaches one of TEGA's eight ovens. Once in the oven, a soil
material will be baked and the emitted gasses categorized by a mass
spectrometer. Quite possibly, some of the light colored material
visible in the scoop has the same composition as the light material
imaged near the foot of the Lander, which may be ice. Phoenix is
scheduled to spend the next three months digging, baking and
chemically analyzing its immediate surroundings to better understand
Mars and whether the boundary between ice and soil was ever capable of
supporting life.

Answering Mars Phoenix Commenters: E.g. "How Do You Know It's Not CO2 Ice?" [wired science]

...
How do you know it's not CO2 ice?
.
There is a lot of CO2 ice on Mars in the winter. However Phoenix
landed in the Martian arctic during the summer (because it is solar
powered). In the Martian summer it is much too hot for dry ice to be
solid. It would be like trying to keep water ice from melting on a 140
degree day here on Earth.
.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) will freeze on Mars at -125 C. Today's weather
report from the Canadian weather station on Phoenix shows a low of -80
C -- way too hot for dry ice to stay solid right now. (Note the
largest "pebbles" were seen to stay solid for a day before
disappearing).
.
Why not send instruments to detect life?
.
If you are going to make a claim like, "I have found life on Mars,"
you have to be prepared to show that there is NO chance your sample
was contaminated with Earth bacteria before launch. To do that takes
an incredible amount of sterilization (don't worry they are already
doing a TON of sterilizing). But to REALLY be sure they would have to
go to extreme measures to be able to rule out any contamination, doing
that would drastically increase the cost of the mission beyond the
budget the scientists have access to. So they make missions that look
for water and the conditions of life etc with the budgets they have
now.
...

Yep, it's ice! by Emily Lakdawalla [planetary society blog]

The Phoenix mission confirmed it this morning: the disappearing act
pulled by those chunks of bright material in the Dodo trench pretty
much nails the identification of the bright material as ice, which is
great news for the mission. Ice is what Phoenix went all the way to
Mars to study; it's what the team has been aiming for all these
years. They expected to find it, but all this time, doubters and
worriers (myself among them) have been asking, privately and publicly,
what happens if they get there and can't reach ice? Well, that worry,
it seems, has been dismissed. "This is final proof to our science team
that we are looking at ice, and not some other substance," Peter Smith
said in a teleconference today. Mark Lemmon said "I can verify from
imaging data that we've found exactly what we went to Mars to look
for. We can reach out and touch the ice on Mars now."
...

And she noticed the Tega door 5...

Attempt to open TEGA door 5
Two images were taken of the TEGA instrument on sol 25, before and
after an attempt to open the doors of oven number 5, adjacent to oven
number 4, which had been opened previously and used for the first
sample. The left-hand door of oven 4 never opened properly. It now
appears that neither door on oven 5 has opened properly.
...

Alex pointed me to this article: Where Are They? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing. By Nick Bostrom [MIT Tech Review]. I have to think about this one for a while.

...
If we discovered some very simple life-forms on Mars, in its soil or
under the ice at the polar caps, it would show that the Great Filter
must come somewhere after that period in evolution. This would be
disturbing, but we might still hope that the Great Filter was located
in our past. If we discovered a more advanced life-form, such as some
kind of multicellular organism, that would eliminate a much larger set
of evolutionary transitions from consideration as the Great
Filter. The effect would be to shift the probability more strongly
against the hypothesis that the Great Filter is behind us. And if we
discovered the fossils of some very complex life-form, such as a
­vertebrate-­like creature, we would have to conclude that this
hypothesis is very improbable indeed. It would be by far the worst
news ever printed.
...

Proof! Water Ice Found on Mars [space.com]

Scientists said today they have "found proof" of water ice on Mars
away from the polar ice caps, a discovery made by NASA's Phoenix Mars
Lander.
.
The finding is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground
on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires
water. Now scientists can get on with the business of studying the
chemistry of Mars dirt in more detail.
.
When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before,
scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material
had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried
under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to
the air.
.
"It's with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found
proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other
substance," Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the
University of Arizona, Tucson said at a briefing Friday.
...

As a part of today's release Joel did another shadow removal.



I incorporated his previous shadow removal into a location figure. This is a tough team to keep up with. Always so much going on!

Probable Water Ice Sighted On Mars [slashdot]

Mars Phoenix Tweets: "We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!!" [wired science]

Mars Probe Loses Some Data in Memory Glitch [space.com]

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has lost some science observations in
an odd glitch after generating too much housekeeping data, mission
managers said Wednesday.
.
Phoenix engineers are investigating why the anomaly, which affected
only unessential science data, occurred. It shouldn't be a problem
today, they added, because they've planned activities for Phoenix that
do not require the probe to store science data overnight.
.
"The spacecraft is healthy and fully commandable, but we are
proceeding cautiously until we understand the root cause of this
event," said Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
...

noaadata 0.39 is out... The package is starting to get a number of users that have been reporting bugs as they find them. I think this puts it at about 6 people who have giving bug reports. Many thanks to all of them. I think this version is back to working.

• ais.nmea module gone. bbm.py moved to scraps for now. This was causing major bugs.
• ais-port-forward now might actually work. Exception reporting more better
• new file: scraps/tideconvert.py for the tide3 station data processing
• new file: timetest.py
• ais_normalize.py can now treat A and B AIS channels as the same for USCG feed (-t)
• ais_normalize.py removed the stripDecimalTime option code
• ais_normalize.py - better station handling

Um, this is weird. If XML is the bottle neck, what not use a different encoding. Hardware for XML routing seems strange. But it should work, but yikes. How about a binary flexible format like XML that is packed tighter, is designed to make routing fast, and has a 1-to-1 mapping to XML? I spent a lot of time with RTI's NDDS 2.x (now DDS) and it was my first big networking middleware system that I used, so my brain is wired differently I guess. Tibco and Hardware Acceleration [magmasystems blog]

... Tibco was really paying attention to the shots fired across its
bow by companies like RTI, 29West, and Tervela. Because of this, Tibco
would try to breathe some new life into [Rendezvous (RV)], after
spending so much focus on EMS.
.
Hardware-based routing of XML packets would seem to fit in well with
Morgan Stanley's CPS message bus. It would also fit in well with CEP
engines that like to deal with XML, such as Coral8. Imagine a
hardware-based XML-to-Coral8-Tuple processor. ...

NASA Mars Lander To Dig; Team Probes Flash Memory

June 18, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission generated an unusually
high volume of spacecraft housekeeping data on Tuesday causing the
loss of some non-critical science data.  Phoenix engineers are
analyzing why this anomaly occurred.  The science team is planning
spacecraft activities for Thursday that will not rely on Phoenix
storing science data overnight but will make use of multiple
communication relays to gain extra data quantity.
.
"The spacecraft is healthy and fully commandable, but we are
proceeding cautiously until we understand the root cause of this
event," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
.
Usually Phoenix generates a small amount of data daily about
maintaining its computer files, and this data gets a high priority in
what gets stored in the spacecraft's non-volatile flash memory. On
Tuesday, the quantity of this data was so high that it prevented
science data from being stored in flash memory, so the remaining
science data onboard Wednesday, when the spacecraft powered down for
the Martian night after completing its 22nd Martian day, or sol, since
landing, was not retained. None of that science data was high-priority
data.  Almost all was imaging that can be retaken, with the exception
of images taken of a surface that Phoenix's arm dug into after the
images were taken.
.
To avoid stressing Phoenix's capacity for storing data in flash memory
while powered off for overnight sleeps, the team commanded Phoenix
Tuesday evening to refrain from any new science investigations on
Wednesday and to lower the priority for the type of file-housekeeping
data that exceeded expected volume on Tuesday.
.
"We can continue doing science that does not rely on non-volatile
memory," Goldstein said.  Most science data collected during the
mission has been downlinked to Earth on the same sol it has been
collected, not requiring overnight storage, but on some sols the team
has intentionally included imaging that yields more data than can fit
in the afternoon communication passes. This has been done in order to
take advantage of the capacity to downlink additional data during
communications passes on the following Martian mornings. In the short
term, while the root cause of the unexpected amount of housekeeping
data is being determined, the science team will forgo that strategy of
storing data overnight.
.
Meanwhile, extra communication-relay opportunities have been added to
Thursday's schedule, so the science plan for the day will be able to
generate plentiful data without needing overnight
storage. Trench-digging, imaging and weather monitoring are in the
plan.

Ghost Ships of the Black Sea. Where was Roland when this picture was taken?

Ballard and Trembanis:

Make the switch to object-oriented COBOL programming more quickly and easily than you ever thought possible. Standard Object-Oriented Cobol

To get the power and benefit of COBOL's hot new object-oriented
features and syntax, you'll have to learn a fresh approach to
design. This fresh approach is exactly what this book gives you. Ned
Chapin begins with a review of the traditional design approach. Then,
building on what you already know about using COBOL, he guides you
step-by-step across the great divide separating traditional design and
modern design for object-oriented COBOL. He demonstrates how the same
jobs can be tackled using the new standard object-oriented COBOL. He
also shows how to combine using object-oriented and traditional COBOL.

Funny how I never even saw COBOL in school or since.

The stereopipeline (STP) made a nice model of the Dodo-Goldilocks trench shown here in Viz:

PIA10904 [JPL Planetary Photojournal]

Steve showed me that Photoshop CS3 has a tool for weaking shadows.



Here is an example of turning the knobs:



Photoshop pros will have better ways of handling this process, but the shadow adjustment will give quick results. We have a pro on staff to do the really hard ones. jhagen's handy work that was just released as today's press image:

Mars team ponders whether lander sees ice or salt [boston.com]

Is the white stuff in the Martian soil ice or salt?
.
That's the question bedeviling scientists in the three weeks since the
Phoenix lander began digging into Mars' north pole region to study
whether the arctic could be habitable.
.
Shallow trenches excavated by the lander's backhoe-like robotic arm
have turned up specks and at times even stripes of mysterious white
material mixed in with the clumpy, reddish dirt.
...

Mars Phoenix "Shovel" Hits Hard White Layer Just Below Surface [wired science]

Bonitz, Shiraishi, Robinson, Arvidson, Chu, Wilson, Davis, Paulsen, Kusack, Archer, Smith, "NASA Mars 2007 Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm and Icy Soil Acquisition Device", JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, E00A01, doi:10.1029/2007JE003030, 2008.

Article

Abstract
The primary purpose of the Mars 2007 Phoenix Lander Robotic Arm (RA)
and associated Icy Soil Acquisition Device (ISAD) is to acquire
samples of Martian dry and icy soil (DIS) by digging, scraping, and
rasping, and delivering them to the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer and
the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer. The RA
will also position (1) the Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe
(TECP) in the DIS; (2) the TECP at various heights above the surface
for relative humidity measurements, and (3) the Robotic Arm Camera to
take images of the surface, trench, DIS samples within the ISAD scoop,
magnetic targets, and other objects of scientific interest within its
workspace. The RA/ISAD will also be used to generate DIS piles for
monitoring; conduct DIS scraping, penetration, rasping, and chopping
experiments; perform compaction tests; and conduct trench cave-in
experiments. Data from the soil mechanics experiments will yield
information on Martian DIS properties such as angle of repose,
cohesion, bearing strength, and grain size distribution.

The sample contains almost 1,000 separate particles -- some smaller than 1/10 the diameter of a human hair. [imformation week]

...
"This is the first time since the Viking missions three decades ago
that a sample is being studied inside an instrument on Mars," Phoenix
Principal Investigator Peter Smith from the University of Arizona,
Tucson, said in a news announcement. "Understanding the soil is a
major goal of this mission and the soil is a bit different than we
expected. There could be real discoveries to come as we analyze this
soil with our various instruments. We have just the right instruments
for the job."
.
The sample contains almost 1,000 separate particles -- some smaller
than 1/10 the diameter of a human hair, NASA reported. The soil
contains larger, shiny, black specs and smaller reddish particles and
scientists said they have found at least four minerals in the
sample. NASA said the particles look like those found in airborne
dust.
.
"We may be looking at a history of the soil," Tom Pike, of Imperial
College London and Phoenix co-investigator, said.
...

Haven't ever talked to these people at all and only know of this through the news paper articles. I don't know of any discussions with UNH about this project.

FEMA to inspect city's underwater security system [seacoastonline]

...
A federal grant in the amount of $1.18 million is paying for the
project. Pease Development Authority Finance Director Irv Canner said
about $990,000 of that money has already been spent.
...
The system was developed by Sonatech Corp. of Bedford
...
Sonar detectors are being placed on either side of the Sarah Long
Bridge and in other locations to scan near the Interstate 95 bridge
and Memorial Bridge.
...
Woodsum said terrorists are close to having the ability to use divers
to attach bombs to ship hulls and bridges
...

I think this is the company: sonatech.

When properly using timestamps in python, you can indeed get UTC time. No fancy conversions needed. All that is need is for NTP to actually be working (doh!)

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
import time
import datetime
import os
import sys
#
print '     date now: ',
sys.stdout.flush()
os.system ('date')
#
print 'utc date now: ',
sys.stdout.flush()
os.system ('date -u')
sys.stdout.flush()
#
now = time.time()
#
print
print 'timestamp:', now
print
#
print '    date from timestamp:',datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(now)
print 'UTC date from timestamp:',datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(now)

Here is a run of the script plus the screen capture from a flight tool that shows UTC. It took me and the computer just over a second to get from running the command to doing the screen grab.

Alex just pointed me at this... it's a 1.5 m ethernet cable for $500. Are there really suckers out there who pay for this? Data is data and the protocol over the wire is running error correction, so you will get the same exact data sent with a plain old Cat-6 cable for a couple dollars.

AK-DL1: Ultra Premium Denon Link Cable [denon] with "woven jacketing to reduce vibration". Huh? We use standard ethernet cables in robots going off road. And... "Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer." They are kidding, right?

Are BER (bit error rate) really that high that normal cables don't give 100% perfect transmission with FEC (forward error correction)? Maybe if you are putting your stereo right in front of an FAA radar station. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Is this just trying to reduce the number of corrupt ethernet packets? And what protocol are these devices using?

youtube seemed unable to get these videos. I went for Google Video and it worked. I've never done google video before. The quality is drastically reduced.



google video link



13xxx_MECA_schematic_sol_19_h264.mov [phoenix.lpl]

I need to be able to convert animated gifs into HD movies. It is possible to using Quicktime Pro if you have Final Cut Pro (FCP) installed on the machine. If you do, you will have these components on the Mac:

% ls /Library/QuickTime/ | grep DVC
DVCPROHDCodec.component
DVCPROHDMuxer.component
DVCPROHDVideoDigitizer.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutput.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutputClock.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutputCodec.component

Then here are the steps. Drop the animated gif on the Quicktime icon. File -> Export.

Here are two pictures of me working last week's Phoenix press conference. I ran the still and animation feed.

Old news discovered by Christiana: Titanic Explorer to Search for Shipwrecks in the Black Sea [shipwreckcentral] Aug 2007.

...
Expedition member Art Trembanis, a marine scientist at the University
of Delaware, said the team will use DOERRI to return to a
Byzantine-era shipwreck in the Black Sea that Ballard and his team
located last year and to search for other wrecks. "We hope DOERRI
... will allow us to discover very ancient shipwrecks, previously
unknown, on the Black Sea floor," Trembanis said. "Along the way,
DOERRI will also give us new insights into the dynamics ... that help
to shape and mold the seafloor."
...

NASA's Phoenix Lander Has An Oven Full Of Martian Soil

June 11, 2008 -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has filled its first oven
with Martian soil.
.
"We have an oven full," Phoenix co-investigator Bill Boynton of the
University of Arizona, Tucson, said today. "It took 10 seconds to fill
the oven. The ground moved."
.
Boynton leads the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer instrument, or
TEGA, for Phoenix. The instrument has eight separate tiny ovens to
bake and sniff the soil to assess its volatile ingredients, such as
water.
.
The lander's Robotic Arm delivered a partial scoopful of clumpy soil
from a trench informally called "Baby Bear" to the number 4 oven on
TEGA last Friday, June 6, which was 12 days after landing.
.
A screen covers each of TEGA's eight ovens. The screen is to prevent
larger bits of soil from clogging the narrow port to each oven so that
fine particles fill the oven cavity, which is no wider than a pencil
lead. Each TEGA chute also has a whirligig mechanism that vibrates the
screen to help shake small particles through.
.
Only a few particles got through when the screen on oven number 4 was
vibrated on June 6, 8 and 9.
.
Boynton said that the oven might have filled because of the cumulative
effects of all the vibrating, or because of changes in the soil's
cohesiveness as it sat for days on the top of the screen.
.
"There's something very unusual about this soil, from a place on Mars
we've never been before," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter
Smith of the University of Arizona. "We're interested in learning what
sort of chemical and mineral activity has caused the particles to
clump and stick together."
.
Plans prepared by the Phoenix team for the lander's activities on
Thursday, June 12 include sprinkling Martian soil on the delivery port
for the spacecraft's Optical Microscope and taking additional portions
of a high-resolution color panorama of the lander's surroundings.

Please pass this along to the people at NOAA that block instant messanger for NOAA staff. I've been using IM with colleagues on Phoenix with great success and find that I get more done with those who IM and have a harder time working with those that do not IM. Especially during big meetings and teleconferences, I can get work done and coordinate tasks without interupting the group discussion.

Study Finds Instant Messaging Helps Productivity

The results of a recently published study of workers' instant
messaging (IM) use shows that IM can actually improve workplace
productivity. This contradicts a widely held belief that IM in the
workplace is a hindrance to productivity. IM is often perceived as an
interruption, and as such, "it can significantly hinder productivity
by disrupting thought processes and work flows, causing individuals to
take longer to complete tasks."
.
Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of California,
Irvine conducted a telephone study by randomly surveying individuals
employed full-time who use computers in an office environment at least
five hours per week. They netted 912 respondents, of which 29.8
percent claimed to use IM in the workplace "to keep connected with
coworkers and clients." Interestingly, the demographics of the IM
users were essentially identical to that of the non-IM users in the
study, with a mean age of 43.7 years old and 53.2 percent
female. Neither occupation, education, gender, nor age seem to have an
impact on whether an individual is an IM user or not. This should
throw out a few more generally accepted beliefs that IM users are
predominately tech-savvy young men.
...

Mock attack targets: tanker, tugboats, bridge By Karen Dandurant [seacoastonline.com]

...
Here is the scenario as told by Chief John Roberts of Coast Guard
Station Portsmouth Harbor:
.
"At 8:54 a.m., we received a call telling us we just looked out of the
control tower window and saw an explosion on a 600-foot tanker,"
Roberts said. "There was no boat, of course, but we launched one asset
to determine what had happened. We learned it was an explosion on the
stern. We also got a report that a local area tugboat operator was
missing and his tug was gone. Another mariner pulled the operator out
of the water, alive, at 9:07 a.m. He said three men had hijacked his
tug."
.
At 9:35 a.m., the Coast Guard was notified of a fire on a tugboat at
the Port Authority. Portsmouth Fire Department took command and dealt
with the fire while the New Hampshire Marine Patrol provided security.
.
"At 10:02 a.m., we were told that there was a vessel pinned against
the Sarah Long Bridge," Roberts said. "It was disabled and the current
was keeping it at the bridge."
...

Terror drill: 'we are one team, one fight' [seacoastonline]

U. S., Canadian forces hold terrorist drill in Portsmouth, Kittery waters [fosters.com]

...
With divers swarming about the busy currents of the Piscataqua and
ships strewn throughout the waterway, exercise "Frontier Sentinel"
officially kicked into full gear. Members of the media were invited to
get a behind-the-scenes look at the training operation.
...

For some code that I have that parses AIS code, I want to know about any errors, but I really want to code to keep going. I wrapped the whole processing of one in a try, but that just hid what was going wrong for some lines. There are occasional bad lines in the data. I added two lines to end of the basic exception example in the python documentation:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys, traceback
try:
    raise Exception('spam', 'eggs')
except Exception, inst:
    print type(inst)     # the exception instance
    print inst.args      # arguments stored in .args
    print inst           # __str__ allows args to printed directly
    x, y = inst          # __getitem__ allows args to be unpacked directly
    print 'x =', x
    print 'y =', y
    # Now write to stderr, where errors should go
    sys.stderr.write(str(type(inst))+'\n')
    sys.stderr.write( str(inst)+'\n')
    traceback.print_exc(file=sys.stderr)

The results now look like:

% ./ex_test.py
<type 'exceptions.Exception'>
('spam', 'eggs')
('spam', 'eggs')
x = spam
y = eggs
<type 'exceptions.Exception'>
('spam', 'eggs')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./ex_test.py", line 4, in <module>
    raise Exception('spam', 'eggs')
Exception: ('spam', 'eggs')

Now I can hopefully log and fix any problems that I run into. For starters, I just ran into the 4GB limit on filesize. Now, I have to process by month or change my code. My norm2008.bash script:

#!/bin/bash
for mon in 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12; do
    echo Starting month $mon
    ~/projects/src/noaadata/scripts/ais_normalize.py -v -t -o 2008-${mon}.norm uscg-logs-2008-${mon}*
done

This image was acquired at the Phoenix landing site on day 16 of the
mission on the surface of Mars, or Sol 15, after the May 25, 2008,
landing. The surface stereo imager left acquired this image at
17:20:23 local solar time. The camera pointing was elevation 37.7223
degrees and azimuth 275.848

This is unfortunately not a sunset. The dots are dark current on the CCD.

Update 6/15: Terrorism drill deemed a success [seacoastonline]

Frontier Sentinel [youtube] video by SeaCoastOnline





Seacoast drill features mines, explosion

...
The drill kicked off about 9 a.m. Monday with news of the shipboard
explosion. The Coast Guard and Navy, with help from the FBI and local
law enforcement, investigated. They pretended to close the port.
.
When they discovered that submerged mines may have been involved,
Canada's Joint Task Force Atlantic stepped in with a seven-ton,
remote-controlled mine detector. Called the Dorado, the device can be
controlled from about three to five miles away.
...

10.6 server lists ZFS as a new feature, but 10.6 user does not! I hope this is just marketing and that ZFS support is available for both the desktop and server editions of Mac OSX 10.6 (snowleopard).

ZFS
For business-critical server deployments, Snow Leopard Server adds
read and write support for the high-performance, 128-bit ZFS file
system, which includes advanced features such as storage pooling, data
redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and
snapshots.

ZFS and better 64-bit support are my two main hopes for 10.6. Oh, and what about building the drivers for 3G wireless networks (e.g. Verizon EVDO). Verizon seems unable to write a decent driver for their card on their own. Maybe if apple stepped up, it would be better.

'Dandruff' could contaminate Phoenix landing site

...
"We will see organics, for sure, because we're bringing them," says
Aaron Zent, a mission scientist from NASA's Ames Research Center in
California. Likely contaminants include skin flakes, dead microbes and
volatile lubricants. "The problem with an instrument so sensitive is
all you detect is your own schmutz," says Zent.
...

This is really strange! I am seeing AIS messages split across channels. Is this really going across the VDL? Is this a receiver bug, logging bug, or something else? Maybe shipdata message is being sent over both A and B channels and the data logging system decides to keep one part from one and another part from the other?

!AIVDM,2,1,8,A,55MtCG01ssMAM9?;W;@l58Ttr2220lu84p00000l18L,0*3C,s24576,d-112,r00370003,1167621101
!AIVDM,2,2,8,B,004@a0>k0H4Sk@CP@00000000000,2*38,s26987,d-107,r00370003,1167621101

By hacking the checksum and forcing both to be the same channel, I created this normalized packaet and decoded it.

% ais_msg_5.py -d '!AIVDM,1,1,8,A,55MtCG01ssMAM9?;W;@l58Ttr2220lu84p00000l18L004@a0>k0H4Sk@CP@00000000000,2*06,s26987,d-107,r00370003,1167621101'
shipdata:
        MessageID:        5
        RepeatIndicator:  0
        UserID:           366941020
        AISversion:       0
        IMOnumber:        8121812
        callsign:         WRS2924
        name:             MARION    MORAN@@@@@
        shipandcargo:     52
        dimA:             9
        dimB:             28
        dimC:             0
        dimD:             0
        fixtype:          1
        ETAminute:        4
        ETAhour:          5
        ETAday:           4
        ETAmonth:         0
        draught:          5.9
        destination:      LA ROMANA@@@@@@@@@@@
        dte:              0
        Spare:            0

I guess they go together, but how to tell? The next version of ais_normalize.py has a -t option to treat A and B as one channel.

Blogging--It's Good for You

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken
off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic
benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and
feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive
writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it
improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces
viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A
study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer
patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt
markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients
who did not.
...
At the University of Arizona, psychologist and neuroscientist Richard
Lane hopes to make brain-imaging techniques more relevant by using
those techniques to study the neuroanatomy of emotions and their
expressions.
...

I don't think they mean the kind of blog that I write

Update: Jenna Hill suggested a simpler command.

dd if=file.sgy conv=ascii ibs=3200 count=1

I didn't realize that dd knows how to convert from EBCDIC to ASCII:

conv=value[,value ...]
  ascii
                       The same as the unblock value except that characters
                       are translated from EBCDIC to ASCII before the records
                       are converted.  (These values imply unblock if the op-
                       erand cbs is also specified.)

Here is a bit of code that will print out the first 3200 character text header of a seismic SEGY data file. It will notice if the text is EBCDIC and convert it to ascii or you can force it to convert. You can also ask it to split at 80 character line boundaries for well formed text headers. Here is an example with a header that seems to be missing some things.

% ./short.py --split-80 0001_2004_026_LF.sgy
C 1 CLIENT                        COMPANY                       CREW NO         
C 2 LINE            AREA                        MAP ID                          
C 3 REEL NO           DAY-START OF REEL     YEAR      OBSERVER                  
C 4 INSTRUMENT: MFG KEL        MODEL 320B/R     SERIAL NO K99403                
C 5 DATA TRACES/RECORD        AUXILIARY TRACES/RECORD         CDP FOLD          
C 6 SAMPLE INTERVAL         SAMPLES/TRACE       BITS/IN      BYTES/SAMPLE       
C 7 RECORDING FORMAT        FORMAT THIS REEL        MEASUREMENT SYSTEM          
C 8 SAMPLE CODE: FLOATING PT     FIXED PT X   FIXED PT-GAIN     CORRELATED      
C 9 GAIN  TYPE: FIXED     BINARY     FLOATING POINT     OTHER                   
C10 FILTERS: ALIAS     HZ  NOTCH     HZ  BAND     -     HZ  SLOPE    -    DB/OCT
C11 SOURCE: TYPE            NUMBER/POINT        POINT INTERVAL                  
C12     PATTERN:                           LENGTH        WIDTH                  
C13 SWEEP: START     HZ  END.    HZ  LENGTH      MS  CHANNEL NO     TYPE        
C14 TAPER: START LENGTH       MS  END LENGTH       MS  TYPE                     
C15 SPREAD: OFFSET        MAX DISTANCE        GROUP INTERVAL                    
C16 GEOPHONES: PER GROUP     SPACING     FREQUENCY     MFG          MODEL       
C17     PATTERN:                           LENGTH        WIDTH                  
C18 TRACES SORTED BY: RECORD     CDP     OTHER                                  
C19 AMPLITUDE RECOVERY: NONE      SPHERICAL DIV       AGC    OTHER              
C20 MAP PROJECTION                      ZONE ID       COORDINATE UNITS          
C21 PROCESSING:                                                                 
C22 PROCESSING:                                                                 
C23                                                                             
...
C39                                                                             
C40 END EBCDIC               

I should have used the python cp037.py for EBCDIC that comes with python, but here is the code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
__author__ =  "Don Perterson did the a2e and e2a functions.  Kurt Schwehr did the UI"
"""
Description: ASCII <=> EBCDIC conversion functions. The arrays were
taken from the Snippets collection.
"""
import sys
e2aG = [
      0,  1,  2,  3,156,  9,134,127,151,141,142, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
     16, 17, 18, 19,157,133,  8,135, 24, 25,146,143, 28, 29, 30, 31,
    128,129,130,131,132, 10, 23, 27,136,137,138,139,140,  5,  6,  7,
    144,145, 22,147,148,149,150,  4,152,153,154,155, 20, 21,158, 26,
     32,160,161,162,163,164,165,166,167,168, 91, 46, 60, 40, 43, 33,
     38,169,170,171,172,173,174,175,176,177, 93, 36, 42, 41, 59, 94,
     45, 47,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185,124, 44, 37, 95, 62, 63,
    186,187,188,189,190,191,192,193,194, 96, 58, 35, 64, 39, 61, 34,
    195, 97, 98, 99,100,101,102,103,104,105,196,197,198,199,200,201,
    202,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113,114,203,204,205,206,207,208,
    209,126,115,116,117,118,119,120,121,122,210,211,212,213,214,215,
    216,217,218,219,220,221,222,223,224,225,226,227,228,229,230,231,
    123, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,232,233,234,235,236,237,
    125, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,238,239,240,241,242,243,
     92,159, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,244,245,246,247,248,249,
     48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57,250,251,252,253,254,255
]
#
def EbcdicToAscii(str):
    if type(str) != type(""):
        raise "Bad data", "Expected a string argument"
    if len(str) == 0:  return str
    newstr = ""
    for ix in xrange(len(str)):
        newstr = newstr + chr(e2aG[ord(str[ix])])
    return newstr
# This could be made faster
def printSplit80(s):
    for i in range(len(s)):
        if i%80==0 and i>0:
            sys.stdout.write('\n'+s[i])
        else: 
            sys.stdout.write(s[i])
#
if __name__ == '__main__':
    from optparse import OptionParser
    parser = OptionParser(usage="%prog [options] files")
    parser.add_option('--force-ebcdic', dest='ebcdic', default=False
                      , action='store_true'
                      , help='Force treating the input files as EBCDIC')
    parser.add_option('--split-80', dest='split80', default=False
                      , action='store_true'
                      , help='Split at 80 character boundaries for well formed header')
    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
    #
    for filename in