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The space shuttles run on five AP-101 computers, originally designed in 1969. The started with 32 kilowords of magnetic core memory for radiation protection, since upgraded to semiconductor memory. These computers were chosen due to their success in the Apollo, Skylab, and B52. For science and personal work the astronaut specialists usually bring personal laptops which are thousnds of times more performant.

The CPU is fabricated to withstand the radiation, a brief summary can be found here or by googling

they already have... :)

There is no current plans for a nuclear propelled Mars spacecraft. There is a plan for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO). This spacecraft will use a nuclear reactor coupled with an ion engine. The nuclear reactor assembly makes electricity and the ion engine uses it to propel the spacecraft with the scarce propellant that it brings with the spacecraft. Note that this is very much unlike the direct nuclear propulsion idea of using a propellant in the nuclear reactor as coolant and venting it to space after it is heated by the reactor. This second idea will produce alot of thrust for a very short time (as propellant is rapidly depleted) compared to the ion engine producing little thrust but for a very long time.

Since neither idea requires that the nuclear reactor ever start up prior to enterring space, there will be very little radioactive fission products in the reactor core. What this means is that the only really radioactive item in the core at launch (the stuff that can go into the atmosphere if the launch fails) is uranium. Since uranium has a long half life (7e8 years for U-235, and greater than 1e9 years for U-238), the cooresponding radioactivity will be that much less.

Note that JIMO will be the second US nuclear reactor placed in space (the first in 1965).

The Rovers do use RTGs; for heat:

Like the Sojourner rover, Spirit and Opportunity will use radioisotope heater units inside the rover electronics box in order to keep the rover battery and electronics warm and operational during the extremely cold martian nighttime.

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original PDF

You are correct.

Not quicktime, but the main page has Flash.

Are we? I could have sworn that we figured out nuclear engines back in the 60s. In fact, I do believe we even fired a 75,000 pounds of thrust engine with 1000 Isp.

I certainly hope Spirit can be rehabilitated; that in itself would be a triumph. On the other hand, ith the Rover's lifespan of 90 days or so, each day on Mars costs several million dollars. Each nonfunctional day makes the mission a day shorter and that much less successful.

I'm sure you're not suggesting that these things shouldn't be reported, so what's the problem?

Notice on this website of the actual raw footage from the most recent panoramic picture from opportunity.
See the pictures that have large squares missing? Well, Nasa is taking out the spots where martians get in the frame. They really don't want to start mass hysteria. Can ya' blame em?

Notice on this website of the actual raw footage from the most recent panoramic picture from opportunity.
See the pictures that have large squares missing? Well, Nasa is taking out the spots where martians get in the frame. They really don't want to start mass hysteria. Can ya' blame em?

Notice on this website of the actual raw footage from the most recent panoramic picture from opportunity.
See the pictures that have large squares missing? Well, Nasa is taking out the spots where martians get in the frame. They really don't want to start mass hysteria. Can ya' blame em?

Sure, someone could turn it off if they were there. Then they'd freeze to death when it actually did get cold. For that matter, NASA could probably do that now, from Earth.

Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others. Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards. Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.

Well, it's already been done - remember Voyager? Check out this hot action that was among the images sent out into space on the Voyager spacecraft!

found a good link that helps to put plane changes in perspective:

If you took all the fuel that the Shuttle has on board to adjust its flight orientation (attitude) plus all of the fuel it has to do adjustments to its orbit for a whole mission and used it for one plane change burn you would only get about a one degree change! If that same amount of fuel were used to increase the altitude of the Shuttle over the Earth the altitude could be raised by about 250 kilometers.

Keep in mind that the ISS and Shuttle planes were not 1 degree apart, but 12.6 deg. These numbers are for shuttle, but you would experience the same type of dramatic difference for Soyuz.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/kerwin.h tml

Read the actual report of the investigating team. It's written in a very accessible style and comes to the conclusion that a rescue mission would have been possible if the problem had been discovered before reentry.

Who's going to volunteer to plant them?

I tried to develop a
remote-controlled planter using spare NASA parts, but it has problems with its flash memory.

Do check out the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report at http://www.caib.us/. Or, after February 1st, go to the main NASA site and look for the links to the CAIB report.

Management and political leadership did kill.

There's also a Columbia crew memorial on Mars now.

However, the forward RCS rockets, RCS fuel tanks, GPCs, and avionics bays are located in the nose. That makes the nose the heaviest portion of that part of the orbiter, ensuring a nose down descent. If the thermal insulation was changed to let the crew compartment survive heating, and if the RCS rockets were powerful enough, and had enough fuel to retro fire the module to a sane speed where parachutes were usable, It might be possible. Though none of the shuttles systems were designed with something like that in mind.

To see what's in store for planetary probes, have a look at this excellent index of missions. First, note the large number of operating missions - good. Now let's take a closer look at the rather smaller number of missions in development:

Hubble SM4 is cancelled. Herschel, Planck, and Rosetta are European; Astro-E2 and Solar-B are Japanese. Most of the NASA missions are near-earth: AMS, Cindi, Glast, Gravity Probe-B, Sofia, Space Tech 5/6/7, Swift, and Twins. Stereo is a solar observatory. That leaves just 4 missions that could be considered "planetary" probes: Deep Impact (cometary), Mars'05 Orbiter, Messenger (Mercury), and New Horizons (Pluto).

Now watch where the budget axe falls next... Messenger and, hopefully, Deep Impact should be too far along to cancel at this point, and anything with "Mars" in its title should be safe, but I do fear for New Horizons. Their problem is that flight time to Pluto is just too damn long for any president to care about. Perhaps they could arrange for a Mars fly-by and re-name the mission "Mars and Beyond"...?

Be that as it may, that (plus Cassini which thank God is already en route to Saturn, and Stardust's sample return) is *it*. Yes, there are many exciting missions under study, but given the new budget priorities set by Dubya, "under study" will buy you nothing unless it's got the Moon or Mars in it. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I foresee many, many worthwhile science missions, large and small, getting squeezed out. If we're lucky, ESA and Japan will take up some of the slack.

- nic

To see what's in store for planetary probes, have a look at this excellent index of missions. First, note the large number of operating missions - good. Now let's take a closer look at the rather smaller number of missions in development:

Hubble SM4 is cancelled. Herschel, Planck, and Rosetta are European; Astro-E2 and Solar-B are Japanese. Most of the NASA missions are near-earth: AMS, Cindi, Glast, Gravity Probe-B, Sofia, Space Tech 5/6/7, Swift, and Twins. Stereo is a solar observatory. That leaves just 4 missions that could be considered "planetary" probes: Deep Impact (cometary), Mars'05 Orbiter, Messenger (Mercury), and New Horizons (Pluto).

Now watch where the budget axe falls next... Messenger and, hopefully, Deep Impact should be too far along to cancel at this point, and anything with "Mars" in its title should be safe, but I do fear for New Horizons. Their problem is that flight time to Pluto is just too damn long for any president to care about. Perhaps they could arrange for a Mars fly-by and re-name the mission "Mars and Beyond"...?

Be that as it may, that (plus Cassini which thank God is already en route to Saturn, and Stardust's sample return) is *it*. Yes, there are many exciting missions under study, but given the new budget priorities set by Dubya, "under study" will buy you nothing unless it's got the Moon or Mars in it. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I foresee many, many worthwhile science missions, large and small, getting squeezed out. If we're lucky, ESA and Japan will take up some of the slack.

- nic

To see what's in store for planetary probes, have a look at this excellent index of missions. First, note the large number of operating missions - good. Now let's take a closer look at the rather smaller number of missions in development:

Hubble SM4 is cancelled. Herschel, Planck, and Rosetta are European; Astro-E2 and Solar-B are Japanese. Most of the NASA missions are near-earth: AMS, Cindi, Glast, Gravity Probe-B, Sofia, Space Tech 5/6/7, Swift, and Twins. Stereo is a solar observatory. That leaves just 4 missions that could be considered "planetary" probes: Deep Impact (cometary), Mars'05 Orbiter, Messenger (Mercury), and New Horizons (Pluto).

Now watch where the budget axe falls next... Messenger and, hopefully, Deep Impact should be too far along to cancel at this point, and anything with "Mars" in its title should be safe, but I do fear for New Horizons. Their problem is that flight time to Pluto is just too damn long for any president to care about. Perhaps they could arrange for a Mars fly-by and re-name the mission "Mars and Beyond"...?

Be that as it may, that (plus Cassini which thank God is already en route to Saturn, and Stardust's sample return) is *it*. Yes, there are many exciting missions under study, but given the new budget priorities set by Dubya, "under study" will buy you nothing unless it's got the Moon or Mars in it. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I foresee many, many worthwhile science missions, large and small, getting squeezed out. If we're lucky, ESA and Japan will take up some of the slack.

- nic

To see what's in store for planetary probes, have a look at this excellent index of missions. First, note the large number of operating missions - good. Now let's take a closer look at the rather smaller number of missions in development:

Hubble SM4 is cancelled. Herschel, Planck, and Rosetta are European; Astro-E2 and Solar-B are Japanese. Most of the NASA missions are near-earth: AMS, Cindi, Glast, Gravity Probe-B, Sofia, Space Tech 5/6/7, Swift, and Twins. Stereo is a solar observatory. That leaves just 4 missions that could be considered "planetary" probes: Deep Impact (cometary), Mars'05 Orbiter, Messenger (Mercury), and New Horizons (Pluto).

Now watch where the budget axe falls next... Messenger and, hopefully, Deep Impact should be too far along to cancel at this point, and anything with "Mars" in its title should be safe, but I do fear for New Horizons. Their problem is that flight time to Pluto is just too damn long for any president to care about. Perhaps they could arrange for a Mars fly-by and re-name the mission "Mars and Beyond"...?

Be that as it may, that (plus Cassini which thank God is already en route to Saturn, and Stardust's sample return) is *it*. Yes, there are many exciting missions under study, but given the new budget priorities set by Dubya, "under study" will buy you nothing unless it's got the Moon or Mars in it. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I foresee many, many worthwhile science missions, large and small, getting squeezed out. If we're lucky, ESA and Japan will take up some of the slack.

- nic

Did you watch his speech or read the text of it?

He talked about robotic missions like the Mercury and Europa missions and proposals along with the manned operations as well as the new Space Telescope.

Yes, I did read the text. And no, he didn't talk about Messenger or Jimo. He talked about precisely three kinds of robotic probes:

1) those which *in the past* have greatly increased our knowledge of the solar system,

2) the Mars rovers *in the present*, and

2) those which *in the future* will "blaze the trail" for humans to "mars and beyond".

(my emphasis on past/present/future)

He also talked about funding a project estimated to cost several 100B$ to the tune of 1B$, and about NASA finding another 11B$ for it (out of their 15B$/year overall budget) - all without cutting any of the missions he *didn't* mention? Dream on.

(He then talked about his recent visit with Santa on the North Pole, balancing the budget, and cutting more taxes. With that kind of vision, you just gotta vote for that man, dontcha think? Just kidding.)

Far from constituting a revolutionary new vision, this speech actually just continues the time-honored tradition of presidents twisting NASA's arm for reelection purposes, creating gigantic white elephants in a pork barrel ("unifying visions" in president-speak) at the expense of real space science and exploration. It did work like a charm the first time around (Apollo) but then went steadily downhill (Shuttle, ISS, mars or bust).

I call it "mars or bust" rather than "mars and beyond" because given the evidence so far (esp. the proposed funding), "bust" looks far more likely to me than "mars", let alone "beyond".

- nic

Did you watch his speech or read the text of it?

He talked about robotic missions like the Mercury and Europa missions and proposals along with the manned operations as well as the new Space Telescope.

Yes, I did read the text. And no, he didn't talk about Messenger or Jimo. He talked about precisely three kinds of robotic probes:

1) those which *in the past* have greatly increased our knowledge of the solar system,

2) the Mars rovers *in the present*, and

2) those which *in the future* will "blaze the trail" for humans to "mars and beyond".

(my emphasis on past/present/future)

He also talked about funding a project estimated to cost several 100B$ to the tune of 1B$, and about NASA finding another 11B$ for it (out of their 15B$/year overall budget) - all without cutting any of the missions he *didn't* mention? Dream on.

(He then talked about his recent visit with Santa on the North Pole, balancing the budget, and cutting more taxes. With that kind of vision, you just gotta vote for that man, dontcha think? Just kidding.)

Far from constituting a revolutionary new vision, this speech actually just continues the time-honored tradition of presidents twisting NASA's arm for reelection purposes, creating gigantic white elephants in a pork barrel ("unifying visions" in president-speak) at the expense of real space science and exploration. It did work like a charm the first time around (Apollo) but then went steadily downhill (Shuttle, ISS, mars or bust).

I call it "mars or bust" rather than "mars and beyond" because given the evidence so far (esp. the proposed funding), "bust" looks far more likely to me than "mars", let alone "beyond".

- nic

Jupiter's core is under such intense heat and pressure that it is speculated that it consists of metallic hydrogen, in either liquid or solid form. This theory helps explain its powerful magnetic field.

Sorry I couldn't RTFL, but it timed out. I'm wondering if it discusses just how close Jupiter is to becoming a star?

If so, I wonder how many more probes (mass) we have to send to it in order to get the furnace started. ;-)

Probably depends on what you mean by "major project" :-) I've seen Excel VBA used as the indispensable core component of an industry-leading spacecraft design center. JPL's Project Design Center used to run on an Excel/VBA platform (although I believe that they may have migrated to something else recently).

I suggest the NASA site as reading material.

Jupiter is just a (humungous) ball of gas, there is no land to land on, nor sea to splash in. Just lots and lots of atmosphere to fly through.

Jupiter's core is under such intense heat and pressure that it is speculated that it consists of metallic hydrogen, in either liquid or solid form. This theory helps explain its powerful magnetic field.

If you could find a few dozen people willing to spend months understanding a near-unique and tightly integrated hardware/software combination.

I thought we never landed on Venus

Depends on your concept of "we". The Russians had an extensive Venus orbiter/lander program - absolutely thrilling stuff considering the difficulties Venus presents. These guys were pioneers, the first to land a probe on another planet. The moon as well.

I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury.

Why adopt Dubya's limited vision? The really juicy planetary science targets are Jupiter's icy moons, and Saturn's Titan. As has been pointed out, all of these, along with Mercury, are underway.

Alas, it looks like Dubya's "mars or bust" program will drain the funding from many of the most exciting future space science missions, just as the "look mom, I'm (barely) in space" ISS did before, and the space shuttle (the Swiss army knife of spaceflight: does everything, but nothing well) before that. I'm so glad for those missions whose probes have been launched already - harder (though not unheard of) to axe those.

to try and land/splash on Jupiter

Been done.

Jupiter is just a (humungous) ball of gas, there is no land to land on, nor sea to splash in.

There are certainly going to be phase transitions to liquid and solid (aka "sea" and "land") somewhere in that humongous ball of gas. Operative question is how to design a probe to withstand the enormous pressure at the depth at which these phase transitions occur.

Best,

- nic

I thought we never landed on Venus

Depends on your concept of "we". The Russians had an extensive Venus orbiter/lander program - absolutely thrilling stuff considering the difficulties Venus presents. These guys were pioneers, the first to land a probe on another planet. The moon as well.

I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury.

Why adopt Dubya's limited vision? The really juicy planetary science targets are Jupiter's icy moons, and Saturn's Titan. As has been pointed out, all of these, along with Mercury, are underway.

Alas, it looks like Dubya's "mars or bust" program will drain the funding from many of the most exciting future space science missions, just as the "look mom, I'm (barely) in space" ISS did before, and the space shuttle (the Swiss army knife of spaceflight: does everything, but nothing well) before that. I'm so glad for those missions whose probes have been launched already - harder (though not unheard of) to axe those.

to try and land/splash on Jupiter

Been done.

Jupiter is just a (humungous) ball of gas, there is no land to land on, nor sea to splash in.

There are certainly going to be phase transitions to liquid and solid (aka "sea" and "land") somewhere in that humongous ball of gas. Operative question is how to design a probe to withstand the enormous pressure at the depth at which these phase transitions occur.

Best,

- nic

I thought we never landed on Venus

Depends on your concept of "we". The Russians had an extensive Venus orbiter/lander program - absolutely thrilling stuff considering the difficulties Venus presents. These guys were pioneers, the first to land a probe on another planet. The moon as well.

I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury.

Why adopt Dubya's limited vision? The really juicy planetary science targets are Jupiter's icy moons, and Saturn's Titan. As has been pointed out, all of these, along with Mercury, are underway.

Alas, it looks like Dubya's "mars or bust" program will drain the funding from many of the most exciting future space science missions, just as the "look mom, I'm (barely) in space" ISS did before, and the space shuttle (the Swiss army knife of spaceflight: does everything, but nothing well) before that. I'm so glad for those missions whose probes have been launched already - harder (though not unheard of) to axe those.

to try and land/splash on Jupiter

Been done.

Jupiter is just a (humungous) ball of gas, there is no land to land on, nor sea to splash in.

There are certainly going to be phase transitions to liquid and solid (aka "sea" and "land") somewhere in that humongous ball of gas. Operative question is how to design a probe to withstand the enormous pressure at the depth at which these phase transitions occur.

Best,

- nic

The cool thing about space exploration at the moment is a lot of that stuff you mention is being done now or about to be done.

It's a bit easier to land on Venus than Mars as the atmosphere is so thick - apparently the landers didn't use the parachutes that much to slow down. On the flipside - existing in -25 degrees is easier than +500 degrees.
The Messenger spacecraft will be on its way to Mercury via Venus soon.

The Galileo Atmospheric entry probe hit the atmosphere of Jupiter in '95. In the future we may see the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and possibly a Europa lander and submarine - depending on whether the sub surface ocean exists.

The Huyghens probe attached to the Cassini (Saturn orbiter) will analyse the atmosphere of Titan for about 2.5 hours and may work on the surface for 5 minutes or so (arriving July 2004).

Cheers

The cool thing about space exploration at the moment is a lot of that stuff you mention is being done now or about to be done.

It's a bit easier to land on Venus than Mars as the atmosphere is so thick - apparently the landers didn't use the parachutes that much to slow down. On the flipside - existing in -25 degrees is easier than +500 degrees.
The Messenger spacecraft will be on its way to Mercury via Venus soon.

The Galileo Atmospheric entry probe hit the atmosphere of Jupiter in '95. In the future we may see the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and possibly a Europa lander and submarine - depending on whether the sub surface ocean exists.

The Huyghens probe attached to the Cassini (Saturn orbiter) will analyse the atmosphere of Titan for about 2.5 hours and may work on the surface for 5 minutes or so (arriving July 2004).

Cheers

The cool thing about space exploration at the moment is a lot of that stuff you mention is being done now or about to be done.

It's a bit easier to land on Venus than Mars as the atmosphere is so thick - apparently the landers didn't use the parachutes that much to slow down. On the flipside - existing in -25 degrees is easier than +500 degrees.
The Messenger spacecraft will be on its way to Mercury via Venus soon.

The Galileo Atmospheric entry probe hit the atmosphere of Jupiter in '95. In the future we may see the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and possibly a Europa lander and submarine - depending on whether the sub surface ocean exists.

The Huyghens probe attached to the Cassini (Saturn orbiter) will analyse the atmosphere of Titan for about 2.5 hours and may work on the surface for 5 minutes or so (arriving July 2004).

Cheers

The Soviet Union landed a few probes on Venus - check out some of the images they sent back (they are seriously cool!).

Every scrap of data from NASA science missions get released through the Planetary Data System, eventually. It's just the science teams that actually propose and run the missions get first crack at the data.

If you think this isn't fair, stop for a moment and think about the years of blood, sweat and tears that go into these missions. Do you think it is fair then that the scientist with the best internet connection gets to analyze the data first, just because he has a great internet connection? I guarantee you that would end space research because there's no payback for the teams who actually design the missions.

And if you think they did a crappy job with the analysis, well, eventually all the raw data is released and everybody gets a crack at it.

successful mission upon successful mission

No.

btw, I like this excerpt, about the 'Spirit' lander:

>Encouraging developments continued for Opportunity's twin, Spirit, too. Engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory
>hardware is functional,strengthening a theory that Spirit's main problem is in software that controls file management of the memory.
>"I think we've got a patient that's well on the way to recovery," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

...don't they kinda wished that they ran linux on it?
and if it where buggy, they'd at least have a patch within a couple of hours ;-)

Not only that, but they were already planning new space telescopes, such as James Webb Space Telescope.

The data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 12,000 bits per second to 3,500 bits per second (roughly a third as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the orbiters is a constant 128,000 bits per second (4 times faster than a home modem). An orbiter passes over the rover and is in the vicinity of the sky to communicate with the rovers for about eight minutes at a time, per sol. In that time, about 60 megabits of data (about 1/100 of a CD) can be transmitted to an orbiter. That same 60 megabits would take between 1.5 and 5 hours to transmit direct to Earth. The rovers can only transmit direct-to-Earth for at most three hours a day due to power and thermal limitations, even though Earth may be in view much longer.

This is another good source of images, here organized by date. It doesn't have all the raw images, but it has all of the press release images and some extra ones on top of that. Generally images get posted here several hours before they are attached to press releases.
JPL MER2004 Image Archive
--

For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Here is the picture I was referring to in my original reply (the first reply, as AC) to the "peculiar channels and grooves" comment.

This, in my sub-expert (but getting closer to expert) opinion is jointed bedrock. I'm still trying to convince myself that it does or doesn't have a platy sort of structure -- that impression might just be an artifact of the jointing pattern. A good up-close view will tell us a lot more! The joints have a couple of general trends as shown in the photo, and maybe shown a little more clearly in this photo. At any rate, none of these features is enough to say much about that particular outcrop of bedrock because any of these features can be present in almost any broad category of rock.

This Picture is also insteresting because it gives a good, fairly clear, image of slightly disturbed and undisturbed ground right next to the lander.

I didn't realize that a lot of people might not readily suspect these marks as being from the airbags. My bad -- I should have noted which pictures I was talking about.

Here is the picture I was referring to in my original reply (the first reply, as AC) to the "peculiar channels and grooves" comment.

This, in my sub-expert (but getting closer to expert) opinion is jointed bedrock. I'm still trying to convince myself that it does or doesn't have a platy sort of structure -- that impression might just be an artifact of the jointing pattern. A good up-close view will tell us a lot more! The joints have a couple of general trends as shown in the photo, and maybe shown a little more clearly in this photo. At any rate, none of these features is enough to say much about that particular outcrop of bedrock because any of these features can be present in almost any broad category of rock.

This Picture is also insteresting because it gives a good, fairly clear, image of slightly disturbed and undisturbed ground right next to the lander.

I didn't realize that a lot of people might not readily suspect these marks as being from the airbags. My bad -- I should have noted which pictures I was talking about.

Here is the picture I was referring to in my original reply (the first reply, as AC) to the "peculiar channels and grooves" comment.

This, in my sub-expert (but getting closer to expert) opinion is jointed bedrock. I'm still trying to convince myself that it does or doesn't have a platy sort of structure -- that impression might just be an artifact of the jointing pattern. A good up-close view will tell us a lot more! The joints have a couple of general trends as shown in the photo, and maybe shown a little more clearly in this photo. At any rate, none of these features is enough to say much about that particular outcrop of bedrock because any of these features can be present in almost any broad category of rock.

This Picture is also insteresting because it gives a good, fairly clear, image of slightly disturbed and undisturbed ground right next to the lander.

I didn't realize that a lot of people might not readily suspect these marks as being from the airbags. My bad -- I should have noted which pictures I was talking about.

Here is the picture I was referring to in my original reply (the first reply, as AC) to the "peculiar channels and grooves" comment.

This, in my sub-expert (but getting closer to expert) opinion is jointed bedrock. I'm still trying to convince myself that it does or doesn't have a platy sort of structure -- that impression might just be an artifact of the jointing pattern. A good up-close view will tell us a lot more! The joints have a couple of general trends as shown in the photo, and maybe shown a little more clearly in this photo. At any rate, none of these features is enough to say much about that particular outcrop of bedrock because any of these features can be present in almost any broad category of rock.

This Picture is also insteresting because it gives a good, fairly clear, image of slightly disturbed and undisturbed ground right next to the lander.

I didn't realize that a lot of people might not readily suspect these marks as being from the airbags. My bad -- I should have noted which pictures I was talking about.

It's true! Aliens abducted my sister and forced her to take them to CVS to buy Listerine. They wouldn't take the cheap generic brand stuff though, and they seemed to prefer Original over Mint.

Interestingly, if you look at NASA's budget reports, they have quite a bit allocated to toiletries...could it be a listerine conspiracy?