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NASA's Mars Polar Lander May Have Landed Safely
JabberBoi writes "On January 3, 1999, NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it was supposed to land on Mars. An assessment report by NASA suggested that the lander's legs may have sent an incorrect signal to the craft's computer, which in turn caused a premature shutdown of its landing engines -- resulting in the craft crashing on Mars. However, according to this article from Space.com, analysis of images of the Polar Lander's assumed landing site area obtained by the Mars Global Explorer were sent to a U.S. 'spy' agency called the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) to determine if any signs of wreckage or the spacecraft could be discerned through pixel analysis. The article describes NIMA as an 'acclaimed leader in describing, assessing, and visually depicting physical features on Earth' from imagery taken by spy satellites. NIMA's report states that the images they analyzed suggest a successful landing based on identification of three separate parts of the Mars Polar Lander: an upright Polar Lander, and two 'pixel return' signatures that suggest the lander's parachute and heat shield. These findings suggest that something else may have caused the Polar Lander mission to fail. Conspiracy theories about why the Polar Lander never called home abound."
the tops of our heads! The tops of our buildings!. So long as the terrorists (tm) operate in a 2D-pacman-like grid and never work in buildings or go underground in a subway, we're safe!
That'd be a really big freaking tree. Or you might consider that it's a reasonable size for a geological feature.
Moral of the story: unless you have experience in interpreting geology from biology when looking at Earth images, you probably shouldn't bother trying to use Mars as your first experience in interpreting aerial imagery.
I know nothing about interpreting these images. Me, all I see is two different surface types. One of which sometimes is round with radial patterns in it. It means nothing to me.
Then why don't they show us the photos? I mean, we (and this includes professional astronomers) have not seen any satellite photogrgaps of the Martian surface with enough detail to make a determination like "the lander is upright on its three legs," like NIMA said. So either they're full of sh*t, or they and maybe NASA as well are classifying photographs from the Martian surface. Why, so the terrorists can't use them for evil? If you're a US taxpayer who financed everything that NIMA and NASA does, you should be mad!
Not only that, but, seriously...if NASA did find plant life on Mars, I think they'd be screaming it from the rooftops, and more importantly, in front of congressional budget hearings. Imagine:
NASA Rep: Life on Mars!! Look, pictures of plant life! We want to go there!
Representative: Here's gobs of cash!!
Obviously, NASA has not found pictures of life on Mars.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The source photos probably are available to us (including those who are professional astronomers); it's the analysis algorithms used by NIMA that wouldn't be.
Speaking from experience, yes.
What they are supposed to do is to look at only the evidence presented and not draw a conclusion. What I have seen more often is that they are presented with a theory and they look for supporting evidence, which is human nature. This is one of the reasons why I got out of that business, the lack of objectivity.
These are interesting academic questions, until you put the final perspective on it. The conclusions this intelligence agency draws, become part of the basis for starting wars.
One only has to look at recent history to find out how true that statement is.
The official hypothesis for MPL is that when its landing legs deployed the "thunk" sent spurious "touchdown" data to the guidance system, which, beleiving the lander was on the ground, shutdown the descent engine prematurely, resulting in.. well.. another crater on Mars.
Bush Lies On the Record.