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!

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

[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 :)

Not exactly first look @ Meridiani

[calmdude]

A high-res color picture can be found here

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.