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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."
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.
Representative: Here's gobs of cash!!
So alright already, will somebody please get off their dead ass and preload an "interesting" photo or two into the imaging software for the next lander!
Is it fascism yet?
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.
> So alright already, will somebody please get off their dead ass and preload an "interesting" photo or two into the imaging software for the next lander!
I was there on Mars waiting for this one to show up, but I accidentally bent its antenna while I was setting up my diorama in front of its cameras.
Sorry! I'll be more careful next time.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Look carefully at the data presented. At site 3 they have one bright pixel. This they have extrapolated to be a high speed impact, complete with ground scarring. Sounds like a pretty powerful computer model they are using if it can deduce all of that from a single data point of one bright pixel. It sure seems to be able to fill in a lot of blanks from absolutely zero supporting data.
Site 2 has 2 bright pixels. From this they have deduced that the lander is sitting intact on it's 3 little legs. That's quite an astounding conclusion for such a minimal amount of data. Again, it begs the question, just how much 'filling in the gaps' is that computer model doing ?
This really makes me wonder, after all, these are the folks doing image analysis for intelligence purposes. 3 pixels on a 1.5 meter resolution is enough to conclude there is a lander sitting upright, and a high speed impact 3 miles away, yet they cannot seem to locate the 6 meter diameter parachute that should still be attached to the much smaller unit they have 'identified'. Gotta wonder, if they can find a lander that's 2 meters, based on 1.5 meter pixel data, why cant they locate a 6 meter object that's not possibly any farther away than the length of the cords attaching it? this should be childs play, because it's going to occupy no less than 8 pixels, and likely it should occupy 12 of them. The location of the parachute should provide more supporting data than all the rest of the data they have combined, yet they cant find it.
This is a very interesting insight to the methodology in use by this agency, begs a few questions about the rest of thier work. Are these folks normally in the habit of drawing conclusions based on extrapolated data obtained from uncalibrated visual systems ? Do they normally draw conclusions from incomplete data, even tho there is strong evidence to suggest the conclusion is not correct, based on the missing correlation data that should be present (missing parachute).
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.