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JPL releases 20000 Mars Images

Posted by Hemos on from the eyecandy dept.

Barbarian writes "The Jet Propulsion Lab has released 20000 new unprocessed Mars image to the public (both processed and unprocessed images may be found at the link). You can also read the press release. The importance of this is that previously images were not released in this quantity or without pre-processing and captioning. Stories also available online: MSNBC, Associated Press. "

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. MSSS, NOT JPL by The+Dev · · Score: 5
    Actually it was Malin Space Science Systems(MSSS), and not JPL that released the images. This is significant because MSSS has been holding the data from everyone (including NASA/JPL) for a year before releasing it. It is great to see MSSS take a more open and timely approach to mars data.


    It is sad however that a private contractor like MSSS could control the release of this data in the first place. All scientific data from planetary missions should be immediately released on the Internet.

  2. In related news, by jesser · · Score: 5
    In related news, NASA has announced a $10,000 prize for the first discovery of evidence of alien life within the images. Distributed.net's Jeff Lawson said he plans to participate in the project, code-named "redplanet colonyfind five". $1000 of the prize money will go to the winner, and $1000 will go to the winner's team (or to his cow if he doesn't have a team). $6000 to a non-profit organization, which will be decided by vote, but is likely to be Microsoft due to a confusing but popular abbreviation of the Mars Society's name.

    Distributed.net will use the remaining $2000 to pay for efforts toward its next project, a non-commercial system that will compete with geek news site Slashdot for control of a dangerous weapon that Slashdot owner Rob Malda is rumored to not only have invented and built, but have tested repeatedly on friendly webmasters. World Wide Web leaders have previously met to decide whether it is better for one group to entirely control the weapon or for there to be a balance of power between two or possibly more groups, but no conclusion was agreed upon. The United States, where both Slashdot and distributed.net are located, has not yet signed treaties banning all tests of the weapon.

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    The shareholder is always right.
  3. Data available from NASA by waldeaux · · Score: 5
    Actually, quite a lot of data is available from NASA. There's the Astronomical Data Center which has several thousand catalogs of objects obtainable over the WWW or on CD-ROM at a very reasonable price (I paid $5, it might be a little higher now).

    Also, if one is a Guest user of NASA facilities, one only has "rights" to the data for six months, after which it is available (unprocessed) to anyone who asks for it. Archives for different missions are available at different NASA sites.