A First Look At Meridiani Planum

loconet writes "After Opportunity 's successful landing on mars , NASA has recieved the first images showing the landing site revealing a surreal, dark landscape unlike any ever seen before on Mars. The terrain is darker than at any previous Mars landing site and has the first accessible bedrock outcropping ever seen on Mars. The outcropping immediately became a candidate target for the rover to visit and examine up close."

Comments

Hopefully fewer Mars-rats this time

[ewg]

Hopefully there will be fewer Mars-rats chewing on the cables this time. It would be a shame if they did to Opportunity what they're doing to Spirit!

Re:Hopefully fewer Mars-rats this time

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah. We tricked 'em. They're all 6600 miles away playing with Spirit. You see, Spirit was the decoy, and now we use Opportunity without worries!

Re:Hopefully fewer Mars-rats this time

[jbrader]

I thought it was flash-eating Mars termites

Re:Hopefully fewer Mars-rats this time

[deathcow]

Dude, I told you, it wasn't Mars rats, it was the gang trouble, see.

Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it doesent have big lights to light up the place for an alien party :)

Waiting for the "big" discovery.

[Bender Unit 22]

All I am waiting for are these guys to find "machinery" there too.
Who knows what the pixelated'n'smoothed zooms will bring. :D

Re:Waiting for the "big" discovery.

[oogoliegoogolie]

All I am waiting for are these guys to find "machinery" there too.

I'm sure you wont have to wait long.
I go to that site once in a blue moon just to get a good chuckle. Pretty much on any picture from any mission to any planet he can find "evidence" of alien artifacts, buildings, cities, sewer systems, irrigation pipes, drive-in theatres, etc.

Re:Waiting for the "big" discovery.

[Jade E. 2]

Whoa, that guy's really onto something. The top artifact in this picture is obviously a fury artifact from Activision's Battlezone! (I can't find a screenshot or my Battlezone CD... someone want to post one?)

Surreal

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

revealing a surreal, dark landscape unlike any ever seen before on Mars

Or perhaps it landed right on top ot Beagle II, and that they see is the charred scattered remains of the ESA probe.

planets

[tsunamifirestorm]

"Opportunity has touched down in a bizarre, alien landscape,"
you mean Mars isn't like Earth?

Governor Schwartzenegger was there

[mikeophile]

He was quoted as saying, "Now get your ass to Mars!"

Re:Governor Schwartzenegger was there

[kippy]

His support is exactly what Mars exploration needs. Anyone who can terraform the planet in 2 minutes as opposed to 2 thousand years knows what he's doing.

Where are the Watches?

[DumbSwede]

revealing a surreal, dark landscape

I don't seeing any limp, melting watches.

P.S. Arizona You're now considered "surreal"

c'mon

[TitanOfire]

we landed there first why didnt the robot come with an american flag planting deally? It could have sent back an image of the flag and been like "One small step for man, one giant leap for robots"

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[mrsev]

Bet they tried to compile the 2.6 kernel!

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spirit is still serious but we are moving toward guarded condition now,"

Wow, I think that's the first time it's gone from Red to Blue. Guess we took care of those damn martian terrorists.

the oil...it is ours, mwuwahahahaaa

Monolith Fun

[Helmholtz]

I want to be watching when the tech turns on the high-pitched squeal sound right when the rover gets close to an outcropping that looks strangely like a large monolith.

Re:Monolith Fun

[Tablizer]

...high-pitched squeal sound right when the rover gets close to an outcropping that looks strangely like a large monolith.

That is the damned diet alarm my wife put on the fridge.

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

A leading theory today is that a portion of the rover's software simply couldn't cope with all that was happening on Wednesday when the trouble began.

Yep. That's real-time Java for you ...

Re:Fore!!!

[sirsex]

Yeh, but this green (well, red) has several thousand holes.

Haiku...

[criordan]

First ever bedrock
Hematite means H2O
Dark terrain for Mars

Re:What are the challenges of a RAM-only mission?

[k4_pacific]

How do you reprogramme Spirit to deliver the objectives in these, new circumstances?

Interplanetary PXE boot.

Re:Well done NASA!

[0WaitState]

Bush has announced man will set foot on Mars within my lifetime, can only be considered good news

Paul Krugman put it best, referring to Bush's Mars initiative when he said something along the lines of "can't we save a great deal of money and take the photo now of Bush in an astronaut suit?"

Re:It's Official: Mars is Dead

[skatedog]

That's what we all thought back in '04. Fast Forward 50 yrs as multiple robotic probes begin landing all over the earth. What we soon find out is that back in '04 our Rovers disturbed an Ancient nanovirus long dormant in the martian dust. As we pondered the quick demise of our rovers the nanovirus was quickly overtaking the newly found hardware and multiplying rapidly and in increasingly complex ways. That's right, we created the "rise of the machines" and you guessed it....President Schwarzenegger we need you now......
And on slashdot, they scoffed that "mars is dead" .........coming soon to a theatre near you....Terminator 44 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger III and everyone's favorite martian, Marvin......

Re:Rover?

[Seehund]

If these are standard astronaughts, ... These people are too smart and too well trained to throw away like that.

Judging by the term you use, these people would be less valuable than astronauts.

Astronaughts: n. Expendable space exploration personnel sent on one-way journeys.

Hey, I've grown to like your misspelling. :)

Re:Opportunity Gets A Hole In One

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet not even Tiger Woods could land that shot.

Re:Well done NASA!

[fenix down]

I'm not happy about this "within our lifetime" shit. It always strikes me as a bad sign when world leaders start planning their schedules around my death.