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?)

Spirit is indeed a software problem

[LedZeplin]

After some more diagnostics, the flash memory is ok, and it's looking to be a software problem.

2106 GMT (4:06 p.m. EST)
"Spirit is still serious but we are moving toward guarded condition now," rover project manager Pete Theisinger reports. "I think we got a patient well on the way to recovery." In the past day, engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory hardware is OK. 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.

Source

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[mrsev]

Bet they tried to compile the 2.6 kernel!

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[shepd]

>I suppose that Opportunity may have the same software issue.

IIRC, the software for each rover was independently developed, and therefore totally different. I might be wrong, though.

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[bluGill]

Considering that Spirit seemed to work fine for seveal days, I suspect they will just scale back the missions a little bit until they figgure out what is wrong. If nothing else, since Spirit got outside succesfully, we can be pretty sure that Opportunity can leave normally.

The fix needs to be found (assuming it isn't some other hardware...) so they don't run into this again. However this gives some hope that they can work while looking for the fix.

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:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[avalys]

I realize this is a popular (and funny) joke, but despite Sun's claims to the contrary, the rover doesn't run Java.

Mission Control for Spirit and Opportunity does (quite extensively), but they don't run it themselves.

Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem

[orionbelt]

You are indeed wrong. The two rovers are identical (PDF file). And indeed, they are trying to make sure that what happened to Spirit won't happen to Opportunity as well.

Well done NASA!

[Stween]

It's fantastic to see that both Rover's have now landed successfully on Mars (with Spirit to become operational again soon :) ).

This, that Colin Pillinger is discussing sending more Beagle II probes up to search for signs of life, and that President Bush has announced man will set foot on Mars within my lifetime, can only be considered good news :)

Re:Well done NASA!

[cygnus]

unfortunately, the funding was nowhere near enough to send someone to Mars. which means Nasa has to cut other programs to keep up with the Bush mandate. this precipitated the Hubble Space Telescope announcement recently.

it's not clear that this wasn't a means of hamstringing NASA in the long run...

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:Well done NASA!

[Mr2cents]

which means Nasa has to cut other programs to keep up with the Bush mandate. this precipitated the Hubble Space Telescope announcement recently.

In fact, the hubble sevicing mission was canceled because NASA intends to fully embrace the columbia accident report. When the shuttle will fly again, it will have to be inspected for loss of heat tiles. For the ISS missions, a plan for doing this can be established. Also, if something goes wrong, the crew can stay onboard the ISS.

For the Hubble, being in a completely different orbit, they would have to work out a completely different plan, and a rescue plan involving launching a second shuttle to pick up the crew should the first one be unable to survive re-entry. This would be used only once, for the servicing mission. Hence, NASA decided to cancel the flight and try to operate the telescope as long as possible in the current state.

I do agree with your view of Bush's talents, but this has nothing to do with it. This man has no interest in space flight whatsoever, it just happens to be an election year.

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.

Re:Dark?

[netfool]

No dude, aliens have much cooler things to do then lurking over silly little cars. Like, getting drunk off Listerine. Aliens LOVE Listerine.

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.

Re:Surreal

[Cranky_92109]

I know that was meant as a joke, but I can't wait until the day when we have rovers or people up on Mars who can go check out some of these things.
I'd really like to see what the Viking landers look like after all this time.

And while I'm at it, I'd just like to say that NASA has done an excellent job not only of putting equipment on Mars, but of keeping us informed here on Earth. Kudos all around.
This has really reinvigorated my interest in space exploration and I hope that it has had a similar influence on others, especially those kids who are interested in science and technology.

Re:Surreal

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I'd really like to see what the Viking landers look like after all this time.

Probably simply covered with dust and with color paint and cables faded because of UV exposure. It certainly won't corrode with the very low amount of oxygen, and the total absence of water in the atmosphere.

This has really reinvigorated my interest in space exploration and I hope that it has had a similar influence on others, especially those kids who are interested in science and technology.

Agreed entirely. However, I'm a little sad that NASA puts all the hype on Mars alone. Sure, exploring Mars is cool and potentially useful for future colonisation programs, but I reckon that planets such as Venus (to understand how the runaway greehouse gas effect happened), Europa (to map whatever's under the ice, possibly an ocean teeming with life) or Io are much more interesting from a science point of view.

But I guess Mars-Mars-and-Mars-and-only-Mars is better than nothing to get people excited about space and justify spending money on exploration ...

Re:Surreal

[linuxbikr]

Don't forget about Cassini which will reach Saturn this year and drop a probe into Titan's atmosphere and land on the surface. It's taken 7 years for it to get there.

Not exactly first look @ Meridiani

[calmdude]

A high-res color picture can be found here

Space Flight Now has a color photo

[Jordy]

Space flight now has a color photo of the area which has a red tint to it and a decent article about how the surface looks like talcum powder.

Very interesting stuff. I think we should launch another 6 or 10 of these things all over mars after fixing the problem spirit has.

Re:Space Flight Now has a color photo

[kippy]

Very interesting stuff. I think we should launch another 6 or 10 of these things all over mars after fixing the problem spirit has.

I'd suggest sending 4-6 humans next. As advanced as these probes are humans will be able to do vast amounts more science. Not only will they be able to do in 5 minutes what it takes the probes 2 weeks to do, they will be infinitely better equipped to deal with the unexpected.

The tech has been around for 30 years. I'm glad humans to Mars is a priority again since dollar for dollar and pound for pound, it's a much better investment.

Props to the people on this project but I know for a fact that at least a few of the people on the Spirit/Opportunity team agree with me after seeing a presentation they gave at the local planetarium.

Re:Space Flight Now has a color photo

[FosterSJC]

Troll, troll, troll.

First, the technology has not been available to us for the last thirty years... in fact, it isn't available now. Have we sent people to Mars yet? No. We can't even (super-)reliably get people into a near Earth orbit. And I am not going to spout the same old "how can we deal with the radiation on such a long journey" bullshit. Radiation can be dealt with easily with shielding.

The real question is, how do we get a sufficiently shielded (read: heavy) craft into space in the first place? There are two options for this: One is to simply attach a ridiculous amount of rockets to the ship we want to send and blast off. This is unlikely because it is expensive, dangerous, and just impractical in general. The other option is to build the craft in space.

Do we have the technology to build (i.e. assemble) interplanetary craft in space or on the moon? Probably not yet. Chances are we need the shuttle's predecessor to put the parts into space, as our current shuttle has proven itself unreliable. So add 6-10 years there. Next, we need a manifold in space, aside from the ISS, because God knows we wont be building any spacecraft there. So add 9-15 years there. Then add another 5-10 years for miscellaneous reasons (training, budgeting, technology snafus, big fiery explosions, etc). So conservatively, we will have the technology to send people to mars in anywhere from 20-45 years. This estimate, is, I stress, very conservative. I think 20 years could be tacked on easily, assuming we even want to go to Mars in 50 years.

So, in response to the parent, if you mean by saying that we already have the technology, that we have the ability to send humans to Mars, fine. But if you mean to say we could launch tomorrow, or in 10 years, I think you're crazy.

Landing on the Moon is far easier than landing on Mars.

Re:Space Flight Now has a color photo

[kippy]

Troll, troll, troll.

First, you don't need tens of tons of metal radiation sheilding. The radiation is such that you can survive if the craft is built with the water needed for the voyage surounding the humans. a small shielded coffin/chamber is enough to survive solar flares. between that and advanced plastics you're safe. That kills the weight argument.

You don't need to assemble in orbit. that's the Werner von Braun plan that killed the Mars push in '91 and it's an outdated model. Mars Direct is a plan for launching directly to Mars and living on the land. It was developed by actual rocket scientists at the Martin company rather than Slashdot speculators and it's been adopted in one form or another by NASA, the ESA and the Russians.

Landing on the moon is easier yes but living on Mars is far easier. If politics were taken out of the equation, humans could be on Mars in 10 years within the current budget of NASA.

Do some reading.

Is it in a crater

[madpierre]

Could the outcrop be part of a craters rim. The pictures seem to show that Opportunity is in some kind of shallow depression?

What do they mean by dark?

[ben_white]

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by a "dark landscape." The landing site is near the equator, so incident light should not be less, perhaps it is in a crator, but unless steep walls are involved (which are not seen on the panoramic images) the landing site would not be darker (shadowed?). I would suspect that the makeup of the soil reflects less of the incident light, hence the "dark" landscape.

Just some thoughts.

Ben

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.

Opportunity Gets A Hole In One

[WombatControl]

What's very interesting about the Opportunity landing is that they managed to come down in the middle of a 20-meter diameter crater on the Martian surface. This means that they can study sub-surface details that would normally be beyond the reach of the rover's instruments. Also, the crater isn't very steep, meaning that they should have no problem driving out of it and into the next crater over.

Meridiani Planum is certainly one of the more interesting parts of Mars we've yet seen. It will be interesting to get a better understanding of what's causing all that interesting surface topography as well as exploring the composition of the surface.

Re:Opportunity Gets A Hole In One

[castrox]

If they could drive out of the crater they are now possitioned in and into another crater.. why would it be news to land in a crater if they could just as easily land on the flat surface and drive down a crater :-)

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"

IIRC...

[criordan]

IIRC 'planum' is Latin for 'plain', which Meridiani Planum certainly looks to be from those pictures. Wouldn't it have been more worthwhile to drop this rover near some mountains, or like Spirit, in a crater? Seems like there would be more geologically important sites to investigate in those types of terrain. Also, shouldn't the heat shield make a crater of its own? After it seperated it just slammed into Mars without any kind of parachute. Is it close enough to reach and would it be worth investigated the hole it's impact created?

Re:IIRC...

[SalsaFrontier]

I agree that it would probably be more interesting to drop the rover near some mountains or other geologic features, but I think there may have been big problems if the rover was a little off its landing site. It could easily get smashed up if it smacked into a cliff or something. I'm no expert, but NASA probably chose these sites to increase the probability of a successful landing.

Re:IIRC...

[haighworld]

With the method used to land the rovers, you need a fairly flat stretch of several miles. If one of the airbags hit a large rock, or went over a cliff, it would have ended the trip pretty quickly.

Meridiani Planum is interesting because of the hematite, which under most conditions forms in the presence of water. That makes it a pretty interesting place to visit, IMHO. :)

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"

Mars Raw Images

[Ghotli]

Here is a link to most of the raw pictures beamed back. It's alot of the same thing, but if you just can't get enough of Mars.

Spirit: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit. html
Opportunity: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity.html

There are currently 132 Raw Images from Opportunity. Spirit has beamed back 1,855 Images.
Enjoy.

the ground material

[rebelcool]

its considerably darker and smoother than the usual dusty red rust we're used to seeing and what spirit sent pictures back of. Take a look at the smoothness of it and the peculiar channels and grooves that have been carved into it.

On mars at least, we've never seen anything like it.

Light story on the solar cells

[AndroidCat]

I noticed this story Mars Solar Photovoltaics Offer Earthly Hope on how the work into making solar panels for space is going to pay off on Earth.

Point green types who are anti-space at this. After all, it's not like money spent on space was shoveled into rockets and fired to Mars. (No comment on the proposed manned mission.) Think of all the work on light-weight instruments that perform under hostile conditions--Turn them around and monitor the environment on Earth. We'd better learn how other planets work, because this one didn't come with a man page!

Re:Oh wow...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

This statement wins points for profoundness. Unlike any ever seen on Mars? I thought that was the idea of the mission, to see what's actually up there!

This is by far the most overrated Slashdot comment since Beagle II won't this year's Most Successful Embedded Device competition.

Re-read the phrase : "[a] landscape unlike any ever seen before on Mars" :

1 - Several probes have been to Mars already and photographed several different landscapes

2 - The landscapes we've seen so far were all similar

3 - That last probe saw a landscape significantly different from all the other.

Therefore, the phrase describe the situation accurately and you win your profoundness points back.

Re:Using the images

[adlai]

I'm pretty sure they aren't copyrighted, since US government info can't be by law; (ianal, of course). Thus, you should probably be able to mirror the images legally.

It is probably a good idea to keep the attribution to Nasa/JPL there one way or the other, since you wouldn't want people to think that was just a picture of your barren backyard.

QuickTime VR

[Trillan]

I'm not exactly happy with how this turned out... but be kind, it's my first time ever using the QTVR tools. :)

Here.

It's on .mac, so it will probably be overwhelmed soon enough. :( Enjoy.

Re:Rover?

[britneys 9th husband]

Not really. You want to land something on the surface so you can examine the rocks, soil, atmosphere, etc. up close. However, you don't want to send humans because sending humans would make the mission far more expensive (humans would need a lot more food, oxygen, and energy than a rover, and also the humans would have to be brought back to Earth). With these requirements, you're pretty much left with landing an unmanned vehicle on the surface. By the way, NASA has been doing an excellent job with a very small (by space exploration standards) budget. These Mars rover missions are among the most efficient missions NASA has ever had.

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.

Good News for Water Search

[schnarff]

I would think that, given that the landing site was selected for its hematite content, and given the extreme smoothness of the landscape (indicative of erosion of some sort, possibly water-related), this is the best chance yet we've had to discover evidence of former large quantities of water on Mars. Let's all keep our fingers crossed -- imagine what that'd mean for our understanding of the universe, and the chances of the NASA budget going up!

Not to mention, of course, our chances of getting free shrimp. ;-)

Re:Using the images

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask and ye shall receive.

Re:Fore!!!

[sirsex]

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

Venus

[Detritus]

Venus is an interesting planet. The trick is how to design something that will survive for more than a half-hour on the planet's surface. NASA has already done extensive radar mapping of the planet's surface from spacecraft in orbit around Venus.

I shouldn't say drawing board

[rebelcool]

Because some of these are in the "build phase". Like Mercury Messenger which will spend time around venus before moving on.

Messenger's Site

What are the challenges of a RAM-only mission?

[Demerara]

If the flash memory cannot be recovered - and it will take quite a while to figure that out - the team must develop new procedures to operate the entire mission with the RAM memory.

Okay /. - you have no Flash memory but oodles of RAM. You have to go to sleep when the sun goes down. How do you reprogramme Spirit to deliver the objectives in these, new circumstances?

I ask out of curiosity and humility - I have NO idea!!

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

[SharpFang]

End all your activities 3 hours before sunset, fill up your batteries and doze through the night, keeping the RAM on battery backup.
Reformat the flash with high redundancy, store your data in 3-4 copies, mark bad bytes and exclude them from further usage.
Set up bootstrap to aim the antenna at Earth in the morning, to download complete OS as the first daily procedure.

Most probably the first thing though. Just run on battery backup overnight.

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:Rover?

[bluGill]

They would need to survive for more than a couple of years. Even if the day they landed someone found a breakthrough that allowed their recovery, it would take more than a couple years to impliment it.

That means we would need to plan on sending enough supplies that they could survive for many years even if we can't.

If these are standard astronaughts, I refuse to be a part of sending them on a one way trip where they will starve to death (or other death do to lack of supplies). These people are too smart and too well trained to throw away like that. I don't object to the one way trip, so long as they can keep busy doing real science until their die of nateral causes. There is plenty of science to do on Mars, so supplies are the problem. (Yes it is a high risk deal anyway, but if they die in an accident that is different from deliberatly killing them)

Now if these people were skum that we wanted to get rid of, I wouldn't object to a starvation trip. I'm not aware of anyone on death row (who really commited the crime he is accused of...) who is qualified to do research on Mars, but I'd be willing to send such a person on a one way starvation trip. I'd make sure there was plenty to do before he died, but anything that doesn't need human intervention isn't in range for him to destroy out of vengence.

Re:Good news?

[Stween]

I thought that the Hubble was going to come down because part of the requirements that the Shuttle will ever fly again are that it carries enough fuel to get it to the ISS in an emergency. This puts it onto a very different orbit from the Hubble, throwing out any chance of future repair missions to the Hubble. The Hubble will die before there is any replacement suitable for sending up a standard maintenance mission.

Haiku...

[criordan]

First ever bedrock
Hematite means H2O
Dark terrain for Mars

Informative?

[Anonymous Coward]

+3 Infomative!?? WTF??

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:One question

[Murphy(c)]

All raw images are black and white - how do they transform them into RGB colour ?

Excellent question, which was answered at least twice in the last threads on the subject,

Anyway, this page is really the best at explaining how it's done, and how you can do it yourself IF the images are saturated evenly by a common reference point.

For example, I'm guessing that these 3 images can be made to resemble "human perceivable" colors quite easily.
this on from the L2 lens (Reddish)
this on from the L5 lens (greens)
this on from the L6 lens (blues)

Please note, that I am not all knowing in the matter, I just followed the explanation from the top linked page.

Murphy(c)

Corrupted flash file system?

[Dan East]

Trying to put 2 and 2 together, it sounds like the file system on the flash storage was corrupted by software. That could prevent the system from properly accessing the drive, prompting an endless cycle of reboots.

Two things about that bothers me.

Why would the OS / driver allow software to corrupt the filesystem?

If the system can function without the flash memory ("cripple mode"), then why couldn't the system properly identify (or at least report) the failure, instead of going into an endless loop of reboots?

Finally, if it were a software problem, shouldn't they be able to play back the exact sequence of commands to a duplicate machine at JPL and reproduce the problem?

Dan East

Re:Corrupted flash file system?

[kune]

As far as I understood Mr. Theisinger, the problem is that programms and config data to operate the Rover are stored on the flash file system. The rover has no other mean to store data permanently. The computer is normally shut down at the end of each Sol (Mars day). So without the mounted flash file system, the Rover can't be fully operational. The software reboots after ca. 40 minutes in the failure mode. Now it seems, that they have to send always a command which prevents the reboot after 40 minutes. Probably they have to reformat the flash RAM, but before that the must transmit they complete flash-ram image to analyze, the cause of the problem. Transferring 256 MByte (2 GBit) over 60 million km is quite a challenge, even if you can compress it. Transmission for a satellite pass are around 20 MBit and the direct to link to earth (estimated 4 hrs a day)is 13 kbit/s maximum, which results in an estimated 182 MBit maximum per day. So we have a maximum capacity of 200 MBit per day, if all goes extremely well. So if half of that capacity could be indeed used for the flash RAM and the compression rate is 0.25, you need ca. 5 days to get the complete disk image. The real numbers will be of course different, but I think this estimation is in the right range. I think, that Theisinger's 3 week prediction before operational mode is not to pessimistic.

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. :)

A closer look

[IPFreely]

You can take a good look at the terrain on this 3D fly over. You can also control the path and view angles. Give it a try. It's pretty cool.
marsquestonline

There are also other Mars terrain flyovers, and current large pan and zoom pics from Spirit and Opportunity.

Re:Good news?

[sdo1]

That exactly the reason they won't be going back to Hubble. It has nothing to do with money. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe explained it very well in a press conference yesterday (the press conference was supposed to be about the impending landing of Opportunity, but all anyone really asked about was Hubble and Bush's Mars initiative). Anyway, he said that in hindsight, those missions to Hubble were very dangerous in many ways. Far more dangerous than other Shuttle missions. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that for future Shuttle missions that it needs to be able to dock with ISS in case of an emergency. It simply can't do that on a hubble mission due to the differing orbits.

-S

Re:What was the initial contact point?

[Tablizer]

It seems like a really lucky shot anyway

Not really. If you roll around a bit, like the air-bagged mass probably did, you are more likely to land in a depression just like a ball is more likely to stop in the lowest/lower spot of a lumpy surface.

Re:Water on Mars

[dellis78741]

Mars Polar Lander, which was lost in 1999, was designed to land on the edge of the polar ice cap and dig for ice.

That is a *computer rendering*

[dekashizl]

FYI, that picture is a computer rendering of Mars, "created using Bryce and MOLA topographic data from NASA" (info here). Which is not to take anything away from it, because it's a stunning image, but let's not try to pass it off as a real photographic image.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Re:Fisheye lens (navcam vs. pancam)

[dekashizl]

Can anyone explain to me why all the pictures look like they're taking through a fisheye lens? Why couldn't they have used a better camera?

The pancam has a field of view similar to a human being. It is 16.8 deg x 16.8 deg (0.293 x 0.293 radians).

The navcam has a wider field of view for use during driving, and to look at the immediate surroundings. It is 45 deg x 45 deg (0.79 x 0.79 radians).

You are seeing pictures from both of these cameras, because they are using both of these cameras. The navcam gives the appearance of a "fisheye" lens. The Pancam is in fact an extremely sophisticated and detailed digital camera, and it has two eyes to create stereoscopic (3D) images that make you feel like you're on Mars. Wait a few days and you'll see some more of these images. Click the link below to see some of the good ones from Spirit.

P.S. Anybody know how to make a degree symbol in a slashdot post?

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Rover CPU

[dekashizl]

I wonder what cpu is used on the rovers..

They use a radiation-hardened RAD6000 32-bit RISC chip made by BAE Systems. See their Press Release here. Bookmark the page in the link below.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Re: Picture of Jesus on a taco shell

[some guy I know]

What am I supposed to be seeing?

The site is presenting "evidence" of alien artifacts.
By magnifying the pictures, the pixelization causes rectangular artifacts (heh) in the picture that make them look somewhat artificial, i.e., manufactured.
In addition, the site authors seem to have quite an imagination when interpreting ordinary but unusual natural structures as artificial.