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Maybe you're thinking of Mimas.

This is actually part of a very large network of control-it-over-the-internet rovers, called Red Rover. There's a handful listed here:

http://planetary.org/rrgtm/Rrsites.php

I dont believe any project has the equipment to detect a typical TV broadcast off-planet. SETI is banking on another SETI-like program on an alien world which sends radio waves out seeking seekers, as they are not (to my knowledge) capable of detecting the kind of thing you're suggesting. Which makes it even more of a gamble and means no one is going to find anything through "stupidity."

Also, considering the "WOW" signal from a few decades ago it seems that perhaps the odds are against us. Maybe there was a SETI-like project, they sent the signal, and no one caught it properly and the next one won't be for a long time, if ever. Also, it may very well be that the WOW signal was of human origins anyway.

Not to mention an encrypted signal or laser light signal would go undetected.

link here

With 5 billion to choose from you would think this really stood out from the other billions of possible candidates.

Compression also makes a signal look like noise, but I don't think the SETI people are counting on accidentally picking up WiFi signals. Their search is designed to find signals that the originators want them to hear.

My apologies; looking at the spokes image, it looks like they put a voyager image up there on the Cassini site for comparison; that's a voyager image, and not a Cassini image. Nonetheless, Saturn's magnetic field is irregular; there've been lots of surprises that may well be related to this, such as Saturn's radiation belts.

Of course, on a more basic level, since the spokes are driven by Saturn's magnetic field, it is only reasonable to expect notable changes in them depending on how the planet and its field are oriented with respect to each other.

These launchers do fail occasionally, just like any other launcher in the business. In fact, this specific type of launcher has failed on the previous attempt to launch a solar sail by the same group!

...it did fail us on July 20 when the 3rd stage motors failed to provide the necessary velocity change and the rocket computer shut overrode the command to separate the spacecraft from the booster...

Yes, it will most likely be visible. You can see satellites every evening. The sail is bigger than the solar panels of most satellites.

The analogy to sailboats is "tacking," but a solar sail is really a very different device than a conventional sail.

First of all solar sails do not use solar wind. Instead, they rely on the pressure generated by photons striking (and reflecting off) the solar sail. "Solar Radiation Pressure" is 1,000 to 10,000 times the strength of the solar wind. (See this site for more on the principles of solar sailing.)

In terms of maneuvering, sailboats use the differential pressure caused by wind flowing over their sails to create lift and direct it using a keel into forward motion. To sail in to the wind a sailboat zigzags at angles to the wind in order to keep its sails full and still make progress.

A solar sail utilizes its thrust in a rather different way to sail towards the source. If you are familiar with orbital mechanics you will know that if you increase your velocity in the same direction as your current orbit (prograde), you will "climb" to an orbit of a larger radius. Likewise if you decrease your velocity along your orbital path (retrograde), you will descend into an orbit of smaller radius. Though a solar sail cannot position itself for prograde or retrograde thrust because it is perpendicular to the Sun, it is equally easy for it to orient its thrust to increase or decrease its orbital velocity. Thus, not only can a solar sail travel towards the sun, but it can do so as easily as it can go away. In fact, since the intensity of solar radiation varies inversely with the square of distance, getting closer to the sun will actually provide more thrust.

Thats no moon...

sorry, sorry... I'll get my quote, I mean coat.

The 15m figure is the length of one of eight triangular vanes that make up the sail. According to the FAQ the total area is 600 square meters.

The Planetary Society is planning to launch their Cosmos 1 solar sail later this year. It was built in Russia, and will be launched from a Russian submarine, aboard a converted SS-N-18 ballistic missile. The Cosmos 1 solar sail has multiple triangular vanes, and looks a little like a windmill.

The Planetary Society is planning to launch their Cosmos 1 solar sail later this year. It was built in Russia, and will be launched from a Russian submarine, aboard a converted SS-N-18 ballistic missile. The Cosmos 1 solar sail has multiple triangular vanes, and looks a little like a windmill.

It's also not correct that solarsails can't be used to reach other suns, because the sun there gives an oposite force. It's quite trivial, when using adaptive (rotating) solarsails, which have only one higly reflective side, to slow down or accelerate when nearing a solarsystem. And even withing a solarsystem; for an interesting project in that regard, see the planetary society where they plan to launch the first non-gov solarsail-powered probe.

So, let's hope he doesn't screw this one up! Don't press the red button....whatever it does, don't press it!

Here's an article with a bit more info than the quoted CNN story:

http://planetary.org/news/2004/messenger_ready-to- launch_0715.html

"Also assuming that all intelligent life evolves along a similar timeline, we can assume that these other planets will emit radio signals for only a brief period of time."

Regarding ISS, the Russians aren't the only ones doing expensive and tardy messes.

sorry about that - had someone behind me, and forced me to submit before ready - anyways - the link is for the 4 year mission plan

here is the There is a distant Flyby of Titan, but for the most part until the end of the year - all it is is setup for hte Huygens mission.

Devon

6EQUJ5

BTW, in the spirit of great-minds-think-alike, the idea of sending a microphone to Mars was first suggested by the late, lamented Carl Sagan.

As JPL stated here they think they may get about 250 sols out of these rovers, which is the approved duration of the extended mission (of course, I'm sure they'll keep extending it until they die, but there is a ten day communications blockage from the sun at about that time).

Mr Sagan probably said it better than any of us can.

Reminds one of Carl Sagan's words:

Pale Blue Dot ... Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

• Info (src: Athena)
• Tech Briefing (PDF 52 KB)
• Info (src: Planetary Society)
• Info (src: NASA)
• Info (src: Caves of Mars).
• Filter Specs (showing approximate color swatches in browser).

Latest theoriy is it had to many files in the flash memory. To many files can pressure the ram rather high depending on the OS and filesystem. I'd also take it an embedded OS such as vxWorks isn't optimized for _lotsoffiles_.
Some more here

Can anyone explain to me why all the pictures look like they're taking through a fisheye lens? Why couldn't they have used a better camera?

The pancam has a field of view similar to a human being. It is 16.8 deg x 16.8 deg (0.293 x 0.293 radians).

The navcam has a wider field of view for use during driving, and to look at the immediate surroundings. It is 45 deg x 45 deg (0.79 x 0.79 radians).

You are seeing pictures from both of these cameras, because they are using both of these cameras. The navcam gives the appearance of a "fisheye" lens. The Pancam is in fact an extremely sophisticated and detailed digital camera, and it has two eyes to create stereoscopic (3D) images that make you feel like you're on Mars. Wait a few days and you'll see some more of these images. Click the link below to see some of the good ones from Spirit.

P.S. Anybody know how to make a degree symbol in a slashdot post?

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

Can anyone explain to me why all the pictures look like they're taking through a fisheye lens? Why couldn't they have used a better camera?

The pancam has a field of view similar to a human being. It is 16.8 deg x 16.8 deg (0.293 x 0.293 radians).

The navcam has a wider field of view for use during driving, and to look at the immediate surroundings. It is 45 deg x 45 deg (0.79 x 0.79 radians).

You are seeing pictures from both of these cameras, because they are using both of these cameras. The navcam gives the appearance of a "fisheye" lens. The Pancam is in fact an extremely sophisticated and detailed digital camera, and it has two eyes to create stereoscopic (3D) images that make you feel like you're on Mars. Wait a few days and you'll see some more of these images. Click the link below to see some of the good ones from Spirit.

P.S. Anybody know how to make a degree symbol in a slashdot post?

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

The Pancams have two "eyes", as you noticed. Each has its own unique set of filters. Read more about the Pancam here.

The reason you are seeing mostly single shots now is because they are doing a lot of "real work" at the same time as streaming back pictures, and they need to conserve bandwidth and battery, as well as keeping the commands simple for now until they can run full diagnostics.

Another poster already mentioned it, but check out Hazy Hills Opportunity Stereo Images. It's nicely arranged for eye-crossing stereoscopic fun. There will be many more to come, but they're just getting started now.

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

The longer example also contains some punctuation. This is a bit of a clue.

The plaintext is a commercial dead tree book, but there's several web pages with (mostly the same) excepts online. The plaintext is amid most of those web pages.

The hints page also pretty much tells you how to convert via octal.

Having located the known plaintext, it's a case of picking through looking for repeated bits that make up words, snippets of words, etc etc. Having found "the" and "there", for example, you can spot "re" in other bits, and eventually break it into "th", "e", "r", etc etc. Finding "this" lets you break up "th" and "is", and so on. Eventually you can break all the patterns down to single letters.

Obviously you can start at the start, and after some of the bits of punctuation. I put "=" at each of the known "start points", then used perl regex like:
$msg =~ s/=1234/th=/g;
(In other words "if 1234 occurs at a known start-point, replace with "th" and move on the known start-point.)

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Now I've got a bit of perl that converts the long example code into the (found) plaintext. I've just got to manually transcribe the "-" and "l" from the 'orrible fuzzy images (which is apparently the worst bit :-( ), guess at which way up they're supposed to be, and run them through the same perl. If there's any unparsed letters in it, I'll have to make a good guess.

Has anyone cracked this yet?

-bk.

• NASA Info on Pancam
• Athena Pancam Info
• Athena Pancam Technical Briefing
• Planetary Society Pancam Info

Before you're shocked and appalled for NASA technicians giving quasi-religious names to scientific equipment, maybe you should read how NASA came up with these names.

And I quote from the winning child's essay that named the rovers:

I used to live in an Orphanage.
It was dark and cold and lonely.
At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better.
I dreamed I could fly there.
In America, I can make all my dreams come true.....
Thank-you for the "Spirit" and the "Opportunity"

-Sofi Collis, age 9

Heaven forbid that NASA names the rovers after the things that make America great. Oops...probably shouldn't have mentioned Heaven :P

Info here fourth paragraph

I would like to point out that one's bucks/euro's can go to something else then a governemental sponsored space-effort. For those that care, they can privately sponsor space-exploration with the planetary society, for instance. They are the only non-commercial, non-governmental origanisation that actually give a shot at spacetravel, that I know of.

http://www.planetary.org/

I believe there was also another microchip on another of the mars probes, where your name got on it if you were a member of the Planetary Society but I can't seem to find the link at the moment. I just vaguely remember printing out a certificate a few years ago.

You're quite right apart from one detail, it's the 7th and not the 4th.

See here for evidence

See this for a rundown on NASA's Astromaterials Lab, with an interview of it's head.

There's a site that JPL maintains with information, but it's been tough for me to maintain a link to it because they keep reorganizing their file directories. As of the current nano-second, more information is available via the Stardust FAQ.

Also, if anyone would like to get their own name onto one of the next missions (or see if you're already included), here's where you can enter/search for your name aboard the Deep Impact probe, which is heading out to meet with a comet in 2005. Keep in mind though that January 2004 is the deadline for entering new names. For more info, check here for the Deep Impact fact sheet.

Elonka :)

Yes, this is real. You can actually control your own rover through the web, and see live images. These aren't replica's, but made of lego's to drum up interest in the "Red Rover Goes to Mars" bit sponsored by The Planetary Society, a group over 20 years old that advocates space exploration and planetary science, founded (in part) by the great Carl Sagan.
Go to http://www.redrovergoestomars.org/Rrsites.php and control your own rover!

First, the facts from the Planetary Society:
http://www.planetary.org/learn/missions/marsmissio ns.html

I saw this one in a comment the other day to a related article... Not sure I believe it myself but some of the pictures and points raised are interesting nonetheless...
http://yorkshireufoinfo.homestead.com/PhobosPlatfo rm.html

During one of the last times that Berkeley throttled their bandwith the SETI@home project moved to a different hosting location. They are now situated off campus and have their own pipe to the net. The Planetary Society has a good artical about the bandwith problems.

My source for the following:

He [was] the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." Dr. Sagan received the NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public Service twice, as well as the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named after him. He was also given the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society, the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award, the Konstantin Tsiolokovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonautics Federation, and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 12 years, he was Editor in Chief of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was the co-founder and first President of The Planetary Society and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. At the time of his death on December 20, 1996, he served as the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University.

Science needs more people like him. I've been trolled, haven't I?

Use this and get truly large distances.

I want my backups to last a billion years. The cool case is a plus as well.

"What is sorely needed is a public champion to advocate for increased NASA funding, as part of a commitment to keep America at the forefront of technological leadership worldwide"

You mean like this one?

... is when Mars transits. This is when Mars is at it's highest point above the horizon. The above link has rise, transit, and set times for various locations arount the world. (Near Chicago, this would be around 1:09 in the morning. And no, bright city lights don't detract from planetary viewing, since the brightness of the planets with respect to the sky background is so high.)

The reason it's better for an object to be as high above the horizon as possible is to avoid the extra layers of air the light has to go through before entering your telescope. Less air means a better chance of getting a stable image.

The sun will swell to become a red giant until it engulfs Earth.

Actually, it's been recently shown (1, 2) that Earth could survive Sol's expansion, though it would be really frickin' hot!

-l

Let's look at the links in this article:

• "skymap" points to the astrobio article
• "most promising" points to the skymap
• "project" points to a past slashdot article about SETI@home
• "these" points to a description of the signals SETI@home looks for

"An Astrobiology Magazine article today presents the skymap of where in the night sky to find the most promising SETI@Home signals, along with the research plan for the March Stellar Countdown project that produced it. The dedicated use of the Arecibo Telescope to revisit the most promising spikes, pulses, and steady signals, focused on 166 star candidates. Those 166 were pruned from the five billion signals that have been found since 1999, depending on the signal's persistence, closeness to a known star, and frequency. The next step is particularly fascinating, if a signal appears to have increased since the first observation put that star on the checklist."

I used to think we were simply looking into outer space with the SETI project and hearing complete silence. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case. Even in the 'relatively quiet' radio bands, there's still a whole lot of signal going on, and by and large we can't tell it from noise.

The article mentioned is a bit humble when saying 'oh yes, there were more than 166 candidates'. Yes, there were a 'few' more, and it was pretty tough to pare the list down to something the Arecibo could be solidly used for, according to the Planetary Society

Nor is the search in the radio band the be-all end-all to all the observation techniques; to that effect, there are a number of other observations and techniques underway.

I suppose the "saddest" thing at the moment is that we honestly cannot currently tell the difference between "nobody's out there" and "ten billion civilizations are out there", due to our narrow and infrequent observation bands, our simplifying assumptions, and our limited processing power (think of the difference another 50... or even 10 years will make to that).

I suppose an additional question we might have to face if we hear an ET signal: how many people will play it backwards and hear Elvis or the Devil?