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NASA Images Old Mars Landers

Posted by michael on from the squint dept.

Iron Sun writes "Scientists have used the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter to capture images of what they think are the Viking 1 and Mars Pathfinder craft sitting on the surface of Mars. I'll have to take their word they are the indistinct blobs in question. The probes were supposedly just below the resolution of Surveyor, but they used a new trick developed last year to squeeze more detail out of the camera. The next target will, of course, be the Spirit rover."

4 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Images of beagle 2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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  2. Weird... by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Funny

    If those blobs at the end of the arrows are our probes, whose probes are all the rest of the blobs?

  3. WMDs by mraymer · · Score: 4, Funny
    You can clearly see that the blob of pixels in question is, in fact, a Martian mobile weapons lab.

    I think we are a few artist renditions away from a Martian Liberation.

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  4. Re:When will we send higher-resolution cameras? by Gakster2001 · · Score: 4, Informative

    "In 2005, NASA plans to launch a powerful scientific orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This mission will focus on analyzing the surface at new scales .... For example, the Reconnaissance Orbiter will measure thousands of Martian landscapes at 20- to 30-centimeter (8- to 12-inch) resolution, good enough to observe rocks the size of beach balls." If I read that correctly, this will have tremendous optics. Read it here