Slashdot Mirror
Spirit's First Mars Images
An anonymous reader writes "First panoramic and overhead polar views of Mars, a quarter billion miles away are available. Some spectacular examples and accompanying commentaries are at NASA's Astrobiology Magazine, and JPL."
I still keep wondering how fast ppl try to get that first post. No spell check in that time of course...
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Hey, that's just Tatooine. Man, what a rip-off.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The first image suffers from low-light "auterco-feedback" and the rest from "vacuum malaise". There are several distracting artifacts, and it looks as if they all underwent airbrushing before final release.
Is there any known way to take clear, reality-matching photos of Mars and get them back to Earth OK?
I read at the JPL site that the next Rover will carry a 5MP CCD camera encased in bubbleshield glass, which might just do the trick...
No matter how many space missions are made, this stuff still puts me in awe. I know that quite a few NASA guys lurk on /., and all I can say is: good work!
It looks like the colour calibration is a bit lacking in those images.
Where did that Marsdial go, again?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I think I see Beagle2! - or what's left of it.....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Details on the panoramic camera are available from Cornell. Check out the popup test image links which show the test shots they shot in the lab and at Cape Canaveral. They're pretty spectacular.
You're slashdotting a hundred million dollar mars rover!
$400 million actually and yes that is just spirit.
I am really glad that we waste billions of dollars on missions to Mars to find out exactly what we already knew... There's nearly nothing there.
Way to go guys!
Perhaps we should reserve those billions on aid to our own starving populations.
Just a thought,
Which desktop (windows, kde, gnome, mac) is shown in this image?
The leftmost titlebar button resembles MacOS9, but the rightmost buttons don't.
(The image appears washed-out because it's a photo of a canvas.)
So dificult is taking a good photograph in Mars? The first one seems to be filtered with photoshop.
I like the picture of the crater ring, you can see the mouth and the eyes of the "happy face".
ajf
What's really striking about the pictures from the rover is how red they're not. Apparently, the color calibration disk/marsdial is doing it's intended job!
here
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Could someone please tell NASA to upload some pictures at 1280X1024, I really need some new wallpaper.
XP's rolling hills are starting to get old... although I could isolate the red channel and tell people it was pictures from Mars, but I digress.
These are the real pictures: First Pictures. It should be noted that these are black and white and not color or false color, as the submitter may lead some to believe, to that magazine's tweaking of the original.
A blog like any other.
In 1997, at least, I recall everyone with internet access rushing to the Mars Pathfinder site when it landed on Mars, and the rest going to people's houses with internet access to watch large images load up slowly on 14.4 (or, if you were lucky, 28.8) modems. We were fascinated to see that little robot go and take pictures of a rusty planet.
Now, there's little talk of it, relatively little media coverage, and so on. People just shrug it off when they hear of it, and most laughingly hope it will fail because NASA didn't use significant figures in their calculations or something. It's not a big event anymore, and it's certainly not a moment like the moon landing.
Only a few people seem to be following this, unfortunately. Interest in space has either dissipated or become extremely pessimistic. Kids now want to be members of G-UNIT, not astronauts. Hopefully, Spirit will find signs of life or at least water and change those perceptions around and re-ignite interest in the final frontier.
We hurl the craft towards the planet millions of miles away on a gigantic explosive rocket, just so the robot can land and take pictures of itself. Sounds like my last vacation.
You can get the full quality version of these images and more here.
Great stuff so far! The landscape seems a lot flatter than where Pathfinder landed.
That is exactly what the driver of the last mission to Mars said when he hung up the rover on a rock and got it stuck.
I would hate to be the person who got the rover stuck on a rock with all those rocket scientists looking at me really steamed...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
should'nt the dust storms have worn them down to sand by now?
I thought Mars was red?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Here is a space hack page from Digicrime.com.
... Don't go there!!!!!
BTW: turn off java before going to his home page or he closes your browser!
ps: If you use IE
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
you can see the curvature of the planet so easily? it's as if mars is only a couple dozen miles in width.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
BBC's article on the story
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Check his journal and previous posts. His links are goatse.
probably a dupe post too.
here
MoFscker
Here.
I was following the Nasa TV broadcast from Germany, meaning I had to get up at 5am. My girlfriend called me nuts. But I don't regret a single second. The six minutes landing phase was more stunning than any movie could ever be. I smoked chains when the signal disappeared. But now that I see the images I must say "Good work, Nasa!"
;-))))
I am eagerly looking forward to the landing of Opportunity and the rover mission. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for ESAs Beagle2. Chances are we can pick up a signal these days using Mars Express Orbiter!
The landing sequence for the MERs seemed quite complex and I was wondering if they were overdoing it! But I am deeply impressed now. Ever since I was a little boy I was dreaming about a real Rover on Mars and now I get two (hopefully). This is better than xmas! Thank you, Nasa! You rock!
Lispy
All that money and all that time and still got the picture of the backs of heads. Funny how these martians look like NASA geeks. Maybe if we flew in some babes and a couple cases of beer there really would be life on Mars.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit001.h tml
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
In case anyone of the NASA guys is reading /. (I know some are), I'd like to express my congratulations on an excellent job. I really enjoy following each step of the mission.
Sigged!
Click on the little red boxes where they magnify the image to full resolution. I think the most impressive shot is the cable hook which is on the far back wall inside the lab. The nominal shot shows some sort of shadow, the blowup shows the hook and the cable strands.
that NASA haven't set up their site DNS properly, if you go to http://nasa.gov it doesn't work, but http://www.nasa.gov does, strange.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
In case anybody wants to know what resolution the cameras will be taking the photos at you can get the whole technical specs for the pan cameras at
http://athena.cornell.edu/pdf/tb_pancam.pdf
It's quite interesting actually. Real News for Nerds!
as a place run my mini hitlers
You have mini Hitlers? Where did you buy them?
Tiny Mars..OR X-Box huge rover..place bets NOW!
r .j pg
http://astrobio.net/articles/images/spirit_pola
Will code a sig generator for food
People keep commenting on the black and white quality of these pictures. AFAIK, these are lower resolution black and white photos taken for initial analysis to keep the file sizes low. The nice color pictures we all want to see should be here later today (around 12:00 P.M. PST 3:00 P.M. EST). Overall, i'm impressed that we have once again gotten something on Mars without unit conversion issues or just plain bad luck. Now it could only be topped if our President (or the next one) would announce a manned mission to mars challenge, similar to the one issued by Kennedy to go to the moon in the 60s.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Look at his history. All he ever does is make stupid Slashdotting/Windoze jokes. I think ./ could get along without him very well.
Later on, they'll calibrate the camera using the color wheel on the sundial (yep another old technology that works ) and you'll get full color images that are very crisp. The color images will be composite images that are built from 3 separate shots of the same scene looking through different colored lenses.
Had they chosen instead to send a ccd that was wired like a digital camera, the images would have had 1/3rd the resolution they'll get this way.
It was launched back in July or so, the total trip being a quarter of a billion.
You must have missed that part...
M
--then we can plant the flag and claim another celestial body for America! I'm looking forward to homesteading a vacation home on Mons Olympus.
What do you mean, "We come in peace, for all Mankind"? That's hardly fair.
Could you please explain "auterco-feedback" or "vacuum malaise"?
looks like you have a very short memory:
best bang for the buck
take that, US...
Shuttle program vs. No shuttle program. Pretty easy to not have any casualities when you don't put anyone in space.
Apart from the obvious fact that the parent article is flamebait, it may still be worth to put some things straight...
The "European" mission was launched successfully on a Russian Sojuz-Fregat rocket. Thus far, the EU (mostly French and German, IIRC) made Mars Express is working flawlessly too. Only British Beagle 2, the arguably most challenging part of the mission, seems to have failed entirely.
So, if you prefer your black-and-white world, note in the records that the "Anti-US" block delivered solid and successful work, whereas the "Pro-US" contributor failed.
I used to go out with a girl who looked just like the one in that OSDN personals ad that keeps appearing on slashdot... I wish it would change....
On a more OnTopic note I have to admit that all the fuss about the current set of pictures from Spirit are a little dissappointing although one or two of them do seem to have some unusual white looking patches (like frost) but we'll have to wait for some better quality ones to filter through before anyone can make any real analysis
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Ask your six-year-old kid if the planets move, and even he will know the answer.
According to this Mars Fact Sheet, the maximum distance between Earth and Mars is nearly exactly 1/4 billion miles. And while we're probably not at the maximum, we're nowhere near the minimum anymore either.
In six months, we move from one side of the sun to the exact opposite side.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Granted there may not be a lot of action on Mars but we don't we include a small video camera and microphone on the rovers to bring back the sounds of mars or to see the weather in motion?
Speaking of Cornell, my professor at Cornell was the Rover's principal scientist Steve Squyres (great guy and perhaps the best professor I ever had there, by the way...). He said that at one point they had considered using radiactive power cells. That woulda made the rovers last like 6 years, not up to 6 months. The Viking Landers lived from like 1976 until like 1982. Imagine how far the rover coulda crawled in 6 years! I mean, someone do the math... it woulda been amazing. Oh well, glas-half-full-and-all, 6 months is infinately better than shattering in the atmosphere/rocks...
Never knew the war in Iraq had anything to do with space exploration.
We did get one message back from Beagle. "Probe yum yum... tastes like chicken. Send more probe"
qntm.org
What's the hostile and down-the-nose tone of your first post about then?
They didn't wanna look like they messed up again...
Is it just me or does the media have an obsession with pretending there was a race between the US and Europe to land on Mars? The BBC certainly has!
....
"US beats Europe to Mars" was the text they had onscreen at one point. Very annoying. I expected more from them. I really gotta stop doing that
Ok, try googling these great success stories then:
Mars Polar Lander
Mars Climate Orbiter
Mars Observer
Mariner 8
Mariner 3
so, still swaggering ?
Still it's a moot point since I'm sure there are thousands of miles of extremely rugged terrain between the two landing sites. :-(
I wonder if NASA plans on sending a really rugged rover to Mars sometime in the near future? Something that could navigate some of those canyon bottoms etc.?
It would probably have to be radiothermically powered instead of using solar cells, but it would be damn cool!!!!
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
According to JPL's official calculation, Spirit (and presumably Mars) are currently 168,377,000 km away, or about 104,000,000 miles.
The landscape seems a lot flatter than where Pathfinder landed.
This one was shot in a different studio.
For a mission that cost upwards of $200M, couldn't they mount something better than a webcam on Spirit?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
Now it could only be topped if our President (or the next one) would announce a manned mission to mars challenge, similar to the one issued by Kennedy to go to the moon in the 60s.
Won't that cost money? I think this one already spent his budget sending WMDs to Earth.High-Res Panoramic
As mentioned before, there are a lot more images if you look here
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Floopjizzle enlargement patch!
Martian meds without prescription!
Martian sex tape!
Make credits fast at home!
Martian real estate cheap, move to Mars, instant weight loss.
Martian calcium sand better than coral!
University of Mars Diplomas FAST!
Extended warantees on your rover!!!
A letter to you from the Bank of Mars.
Martian export minister needs your help.
...that's South Dakota.
It was meant to be funny.
So what was that date that the EU put a man on the moon? Maybe a man in orbit would be an easier one?
You're splitting hairs here man. Don't take things so seriously.
If Opportunity lands and Beagle is still alive, they can play Battlebots!
here
There is a medium resolution version (1116x328 pixels) viewable here which is not too bad
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
perhaps you should think twice before sputtering silly trolls then.
:-)
anyhow, we got up there first, in 1902
man in the moon
The wittle eurotrash is having another inferiority complex induced hissy fit. How cute.
You can go back to your paedo-scat porn now.
The US beat Europe to Mars in the 1960s. I can't see why it would make headlines in 2004!
First panoramic images from Mars. I'm somehow let down by that. I guess I'd hoped for something more along the lines of:
...instead of just some pictures of some stupid rocks.
"We have failed to uphold Brannigan's Law. However I did make it with a hot alien babe. And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars?"
Ah well. Maybe next time.
That green slime had it coming.
Does anyone feel that JPL's official Mars rover site is a bit dumbed-down? Certainly it's more polished and professional than the 1997 Pathfinder site, but the Pathfinder site had a certain raw immediacy in their presentation, along with gigs of images and data seemingly straight from the downlink.
Is NASA planning to make that kind of detailed information available over the web? Even the Astrobiology magazine site seems a bit on the terse side.
Now it could only be topped if our President (or the next one) would announce a manned mission to mars challenge, similar to the one issued by Kennedy to go to the moon in the 60s.
That could only be done if we (USA) were driven by competition. We won't be sending anyone to Mars until China has almost caught up to us technologically and has committed their full resources to sending a communist to mars.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
But I cannot saw much more on the underlying OS...
Perhaps you should develop a sense of humor.
oh wait....
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
But I think it landed in Vegas.
"Whatever happens here - stays here."
No color????? Cripes. How much did the damned thing cost and NO COLOR?
From the first article:h appy_face.jpg
http://www.astrobio.net/articles/images/hartmann_
"I expected more from them [the news media]."
For the life of me, I cannot fathom why you would expect that.
All of the individual raw photos (which are clearer and in black & white) are available at:
. html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit
Enjoy.
Elonka :)
Take your anti-US racist crap somewhere else please.
Racist? You need to look up the definition. Oh, and use a REAL dictionary, one that's at least older than the PC crap we're dealing with today. The definitions in today's dictionaries are WRONG.
Well, apart from the Beagle, the EU mission is mainly show. Reminds me of Sputnik in '57. Mostly a PR stunt, no science being done there.
I mean, congrats and all; welcome to 1957.
We Can Put A Man On The Moon But We Can't Make Killer Robot Police?
I'd rather stay here at home and spend some quality time with a mons veneris.
He said that at one point they had considered using radiactive power cells. That woulda made the rovers last like 6 years, not up to 6 months. The Viking Landers lived from like 1976 until like 1982. Imagine how far the rover coulda crawled in 6 years! [radio-active launch crash risk makes Nasa reluctant to use those]
I wonder why solar-panelled probes cannot last longer. I have read hints that there are a few problems with them:
1. Dust covering the panels over time
2. Batteries lose ability to hold a charge over time, just like laptop batteries
3. Solar panels corrode a bit from the sun over time
4. Cold temperatures do funny things to batteries
Couldn't some sort of pressurized air be used to clean dust from the panels? Sort of like those air cans used by some IT shops to clean keyboards? Being that the pressure is lighter on Mars, it may need less volume.
Second, do they need batteries during the day if they have solar panels? I suppose that if the probe flipped over, there would be no battery power to right itself (if it even can right itself, I don't know if it has that ability). Also, perhaps it still needs batteries to store and send its data at night because there may not be a communications route available during some days. No bubble memory?
I realize that a year+ down the road it wont be as powerful as day one, but I don't see why solar panels would limit a mission to only 6 months if there was a way to clean the panels.
It would be interesting to see the technical analysis and tradeoffs on this issue.
Table-ized A.I.
I started from a much less bad situation than yours, but still pretty tough... single mother, working hard at a factory job to support two kids and rent a trailer house, dependent on family support for pre-school child care, no family members (even extended family members) who had any college education. My mother was no addict. She certainly made some bad decisions, but not chronically, and not anything beyond what most everyone does. She just made them in circumstances that made life very hard, and after they were made there was no way out.
.1%, but if I hadn't gotten a full scholarship to college I probably wouldn't have gone. Even as a teenager I had no real feeling that college was going to get me into a different economic strata than my parents had been - I just had no basis for comparison that I could connect to. I didn't know how easily loans were available, or what to do to get them. A day a month with a good social worker could have corrected that. It could still correct that for a lot of people out there who are smart enough to do well in college and in an academic career but not smart enough to get a full scholarship or not emotionally connected enough to an academic career to understand the difference it could make for them. Government supplemented child care for poor people during work hours could make the difference between someone taking welfare and living out of a PO box and someone contributing to society.
Maybe the difference in our attitude is that your parent was an addict. They made chronicly bad decisions that screwed up their life. However, let me tell you, from someone who's seen the other side - life in a poor household with parents that didn't do anything horribly wrong - that people _need_ help. We have built a culture in which we don't live together with our extended family in one big house. Everyone is expected to go off on their own and support themselves and their dependents. When you're a single mother with no job skills other than being smart and having a good work ethic, with children who are below school age, you simply must have help to survive. What good is it to work two jobs when that just means you have to pay for child care for two children during your second job's working hours? Without familial support, we would probably have been out on the street, and not everyone has familial support.
I had no examples of success through college around me. I'm pretty damned smart, well into the upper
Intelligent support for the poor could be a huge boon to the country's productivity and the happiness and welfare of everyone, not just the poor directly affected. It really bothers me to see people argue against it, especially people who claim to have an in that puts weight behind the argument.
Perhaps we should reserve those billions on aid to our own starving populations
Cultural changes are needed to end starvation, not money. In some of our famine stricken regions if we feed the entire population we will merely have a much larger famine in a decade or two. Is that more or less humane? I don't know.
Cultural changes are needed in some of these areas. No amount of charity can help. In some areas food is used as a weapon. A warlord's reward to the loyal, and hunger punishment to the opposition. In some areas traditional farming is no longer viable. In some areas overpopulation and birth control are a root cause. The problem is far more complicated than you suggest. The solution(s) even more so.
Are the terms "backseat driver", "armchair general", "all talk, no action", etc. familiar in Western Europe? See if we take you along for any more rides, go build and pilot your own vehicle. Or perhaps you can buy a ride from the Russians.
I would think that something this large(?) would require quite a few square feet (aww damnit, i meant meters!) of panels, not something you could just mount to the top of a mobile, thrashing around vehicle. ;)
on the other hand i dont see why they couldn't have some setup where the panels unroll on the ground (think of an overhead garage door). when the batteries start getting low the thing could find a nice flat place to lay the panels, start rolling forward while unrolling the panels out of the back onto the ground. and like you say, when rolling the pannels back into the rover dust them off with the compressed air. THe biggest problem is bringing all that compressed air from earth seeing as how mars doesn't have any
I would think that something this large(?) would require quite a few square feet (aww damnit, i meant meters!) of panels, not something you could just mount to the top of a mobile, thrashing around vehicle.
But the rover does not move that fast. They could be tiny motors. Although Mars has less sun than Earth, lower gravity tends to balance that out.
I was thinking that rather than compressed air to clean the panels, why not have a little robotic arm that dusts them off with a brush? Such an arm could also be handy for digging and poking for exploration, ungetting stuck, fixing loose parts, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
one of the great advances of this rover is it is loaded with stereoscopic engineering cameras. Basically what this means is mission control gives the rover a location to go to, but the rover finds its own way there while avoiding things it would get hung up on.
It takes its time doing it, only moving a foot or two at a time and then stopping to consider its next move, but considering the 20 minute relay time between mission control saying "go here" and the rover's camera showing whats going on to mission control, having a rover that can decide how it should go on its own is a great asset.
-
Are we so sensitive that we cannot take a little good natured teasing from an old friend? Jeeze everyone is so touchy. Learn to laugh at yourself and not take everything so seriously. This is a great day for science, no matter what your nationality.
And if you don't respond to flamebait, his stupid post would die in -1 obscurity.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
I liked the stardust campaign a little better. Unlike being encoded onto a DVD like the mars lander, stardust microprinted the names onto metal plates affixed to the spacecraft. I suppose theres not much difference but in a million years you could put the plate under a microscope and read the names off, whereas the dvd format will be long gone...
Since the spacecraft portion will continue flying throughout the solar system after returning to earth and dropping its lander off in 2006, the plates should last forever...
-
But at least there are no neighbors to bug, unless Mercury aliens have really good hearing
"This is you left and that's your left. This is your right and that's your right. You're gonna die!
I have constructed a 3D stereoscopic image from a couple of the images I found. You'll have to wrangle with your eyes to get the effect but here it is in case you want to see. Interstingly enough the effect does sort-of increase the resolution, and gives you a better view of the rock in the background.
i f
...
http://www.blackapology.com/downloads/3d_rear.g
have fun
(if anyone else makes another 3d pic please post it under parent)
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
You'd think with all that money they could hire a webmaster who had half a clue that not everyone runs a Windows box with IE on it. :(
Anyone know of other links which might actually work?
>> ...It's not surprising that big companies in the US, who might someday like to own all that land, don't mind it if the peasant farmers are driven off their land...> 'Foreign aid' programs create dependencies where they didn't exist before, and they destroy local economies.
Probably true, in some case, but not in others. The chain of dependency exists between corrupt and incompetent leaders and their "followers", who have been suckered into trading individual freedoms and prosperity for false pride in their leaders and their nation. (That's why it's called "nationalism".) What merit is there in taking pride in a country that is governed by criminals and fools who are making your life miserable?
Foreign aid sustains that chain of dependency because it helps sustain the local status quo.
It is right to give food to a starving man, but it is wrong to walk away and leave him in chains.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Heres one I did using GIMP its even higher resolution and the aspect ratio is correct (sun is round!)
...
here
Incase you missed my 3d picture that is as follows (cross your eyes!) but it has a better resolution.
here
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
What do the Leather Goddesses of Phobos look like?
Enjoy.
I tried submitting this as a story, but it was rejected.
Hooray.
Bowie J. Poag
Successes/Failures breakdown
U.S. (Success: 67%)
-Successes: 10 (Mariner 4 [64], Mariner 6 [69], Mariner 7 [69], Mariner 9 [71], Viking 1 [75], Viking 2 [75], Mars Global Surveyor [96], Mars Pathfinder [96], Mars Odyssey [01], Spirit [03])
-Failures: 5 (Mariner 3 [64], Mariner 8 [71], Mars Observer [92], Mars Climate Orbiter [98], Mars Polar Lander/Deep Space 2 [99])
U.S.S.R. (Success: 27%)
-Successes: 4 (Mars 3 [71], Mars 5 [73], Mars 6 [73], Mars 7 [73])
-Failures: 11 (Unnamed [60], Unnamed [60], Unnamed [62], Mars 1 [62], Unnamed [62], Zond 2 [64], Kosmos 419 [71], Mars 2 [71], Mars 4 [73], Phobos 1 [88], Phobos 2 [88])
Russia (Success: 0%)
-Failures: 1 (Mars 96 [96])
Japan
-To Be Determined: 1 (Nozomi (Planet-B) [98])
E.U.
-To Be Determined: 1 (Mars Express/Beagle 2 [03])
Source: NASA
Get ready to download!
What are those creatures viewing the Rover from the top and scheming destruction plans in the polar view picture?. They're a step ahead of us!
"Wireless : LAN
Exactly right. You've simply highlighted my points that were left to the discerning reader to realize for themselves. We agree that politics and corruption are better labels...and why not, when something so dated seems to be happy on life-support, devoid of self esteem and redeeming market value.
Farming is touted as the last icon of the American bootstrap spirit, when it's been nothing but a classic postcard for decades. Note the original Food Stamp Program was enacted in 1964. That's forty years ago...forty years since it was created to shell game farming from oblivion.
American farmers are propped up, and everyone knows it, but as long as they pretend otherwise, they can continue to hold onto their land and their way of life. No one is fooled, and everyone is willing to let it slide, for now.
Utah?
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
From: *Email address Deleted* (Jim Griffith)
Subject: Breaking news story
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 97 3:20:01 EDT (Just after the Mars Pathfinder landing...)
AIR FORCE DENIES STORIES OF UFO CRASH
This Amazon page has some links to really good photos.
Is it just me, or does the terrain seem a lot more boring than that seen from previous landers? Many fewer and smaller rocks, no terrain features like gullies, etc.
The problem is, unless that rover is going to rove a really long way, it looks like everywhere it goes it's going to see the same thing: flat sand with a few rocks. Where's the excitement going to be? Look, everybody, here are the latest pictures from Mars, and guess what, they look exactly the same as the ealier pictures.
It looks to me like in the desire to find a nice "safe" landing spot they may have done too good a job, and found someplace so bland that the rover's ability to move will be useless.
The most tantilizing thing about mars, to me, is the whole terraforming question.
:D
Governor Schwarzenegger and memory implanting aside, mars does seems to be a very fertile place for experimentation on a global scale.
Now the question is; should we leave mars as sterile as we find it?
or should we do as we do to most fertile places and set up a homestead?
What kind of an ethical question is that I ask.
Now, i've been told I should "always end your stories a sentence earlier" - but I can't help but speculate about the role mars is going to play in our future.
What says we cant begin genetically designing flora and fauna for this new world. Or are we the species that likes to just plant the biological seed and see what happens?
It's a held notion that isolation encourages evolution. Could 10 generations of martian-humans start to show some kind of trait difference?
Would we even need to dabble in earths biology at all for life to be able to gain a foot hold on mars?
This is the time to be alive, at the beggining of the story.
I just wish I had a near-lightspeed craft to spend a month in so I could see what happens next century
can't use compressed air to clear dust for the same reason fan blades get and stay dusty - there is a dead air layer. particles smaller than this layer's thickness don't move no matter how hard you blow.
I can only surmise that either they don't know the difference between Beagle 2 and Mars Express, or that they are thinking of the Japanese spacecraft.
It makes me glad that I can check the net instead of relying on TV "news".
Read the 1964 act and debate the intent with the people that wrote it...
I doubt they see it as surperflously as you do.
No one here believes a simple public discussion can reflect one's in-depth attitudes...be a bit less cynical and a bit more open minded when adding your own, thanks.
I thought this would have been something from the "and-yet-another-Kodak-moment department" instead of the "isn't-that-special department"
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Cool! I always wondered about that.
Spirit was targetted for vaporizing once it landed too, but the martian gunners' aim was spoiled and then they died from hysterics and knotted necks as soon as the lander started bouncing around crater walls and boulders like a demented kitten.
Those bouncy airbags were a great idea, JPL!!!
Next time also add drag chutes made from a pile of bras and nickers. Those martians gunners won't stand a chance.
This is slashdot. Your should have written:
My cousin is the Mars Rover...
The rover camera software supports scans of 26K x 8K pixels. Thats what they mean by huge magnification capacity.
That camera costed about 1.5 million dollars to intigrate into that rover and look, it gives us a purple terrain, not a red one! http://astrobio.net/articles/images/first_light_ba nner.jpg
On the Nova show, I saw a tux sticker on his briefcase, did any one else ?
The Mars Explorer panoramas as QTVRs: www.nickcrossland.co.uk/portfolio/qtvr/mars/
Most of the scientists I know tend to stick with what works (or even what doesn't work) when it comes to computer software. It is not so noticable for the MS Windows guys, as they are more or less forced to update due to buuild-in obsolence in MS products. However, many of the Unix people have ancient desktops.
As a Unix quy myself, I have found nothing in Gnome or KDE that adds uitility over twm + Athena.