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First High-Res Color Photos from Mars
mzs writes "The first color thumbnail from Spirit was available yesterday from a larger image. Today some full-size color images are available. If you are in the USA you may be interested in catching the NOVA program on your local PBS station tonight." Acrobatman notes the existence of a nifty utility:"Mars24, a Mac OS X and Java application and applet which displays a Mars 'sunclock', a graphical representation of Mars. This free utility shows the current sun- and nightsides of Mars, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format and landmarks such as the landing positions of the rovers."
Why is it that when scientists need a medium-large object to compare with the size of a rock, it is always "the size of a Volkswagen"? It's even worse than using football-fields to measure distance.
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
I think you're mixed up. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, the sky on Mars is indeed red and not Blue. The atmospheres vastly are different in both content and pressure. Also, there's probably a lot of rust dust in the air colloring things.
You might be thinking of the Martian sunset, which is blue.
Blaze a trail to the New World
No argument here. I just REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want to see some cool extra-terrestrial pictures. These images are just making me itch all that more. Actually, those photos wouldn't satisfy me either. What I REALLY want, is to go there. Unfortunately, we have a few nuclear activists to get off our backs before we can do it cheaply.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
If NASA had hi-res images of the Columbia after it reached outer space, they may have been able to prevent the disaster upon re-entry.
Maybe they're taking pictures of the robot to verify the functionality of its various components. And I would imagine they DID take hi-res images of it prior to launch, for comparison among other reasons.
And if you look at earth from the moon while it is eclipsing the sun, it is red around the edge. doesn't mean the atmosphere is red here, just that red light is refracted at that angle from that point of view. If you see blue around the edge of mars I wouldn't expect the sky to be blue when seen from the ground, just means blue is being refracted or reflected towards earth.
Haven't you ever heard the saying "It's not the destination, it's the journey"? We didn't go into space because we wanted teflon, velcro or cordless tools. We didn't find the technology to build MRIs, bone analyzers, or magnetic bearing systems laying around on the surface of the moon. The goals of the space program did not provide flywheel batteries, scratch resistant lenses, or microlasers. Instead it is the effort to stay in space that has given us the practical benefits. So you're going to be getting a lot more than just pictures of a barren wasteland from this.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
just a thought, if there was some kind of life on Mars NOW, how do we communicate with them? signals from Earth is probably useless but something physical and visual from the rover might useful.
imagine an alien spaceship landed on Earth, and just moves around and ignores any communication with it.
You have a funny idea of just how much money this cost and how much it is worth. The entire mission is under a billion dollars while the entire NASA budget is around $15b and, whether you can appreciate it or not, benefits humanity as a whole, albeit in an intangible way. Compare-and-contrast with other worthy endeavours: US military budget is something around $400b (more with the extra war spending). Wow. Glad we're not wasting too much cash on useless space exploration and instead putting it to work where it's really needed.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
Yea, I got a weird errie feeling of awe from looking at that picture that I never got from looking at other pictures of mars before. I think it was because for a split second, I thought I saw a large beetle on the surface, and during my natural instinct to look closer and verify that, a thought short circuited in during that split second before I had the chance, "No, thats Mars, that's pretty much impossible, theres no life there." and suddenly the picture had an actual meaning to me, I sensed its environment of total lifelessness that extended far beyond that horizon.
Then I scrolled over the picture, looking down at the rocks, and up at the horizon, and over, and felt how it was this huge expanse of real land, across the vacuum of space, virtually untouched, and actually sitting there with who knows what kind of potential. It was almost as if without any life, it seemed like the rocks in that picture had to make up for it, and they are sitting in that picture in total shock at the thing that just landed next to them. Eons of nothing happening and then that.