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Spirit Takes Snapshot of Earth
ControlFreal writes "On its 66th Sol on Mars, Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has obtained its first full view of crater Bonneville. In doing so, Spirit achieved its primary travel destination, as set out in its initial itinerary. Furthermore, Spirit has now travelled more than 300 meters, thereby fulfilling its minimum mission success criteria. With this, and Opportunity halfway through its primary mission, and having discovered very strong indications of a wet Martian past, NASA has truly many an astonishing interplanetary succes story! See the overview at the Mars Rover site for more details." Another reader writes "Among the 'money-shots' from the Mars rovers would have to rank the 'pale blue dot' image released today--a view looking back towards Earth. The larger image also includes the horizon and Sun, which because the Earth is seen as an inner planet closer in towards the Sun from a martian perspective, is difficult to photograph without saturation by solar glare."
If you turn down your screen resolution so everything is bigger, you can see yourself waving.
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thanks for taking me there--at least in spirit.
So you were a stow-away on Spirit?? How is your internet conncetion up there?
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Dang. They could have told us when to say cheese.
and looking at JPEGs of something on the net isn't the same as seeing it in person
It isn't?? There goes my love-life then.
What a rotten party, have we run out of beer or something?
That would depend on how long it takes them to edit out the Martians laughing at our puny attempts to look at their planet.
You can imagine them all standing around spirit and saying stuff like:
Martian 1: "Look! It's moving!"
Martian 2: "Where? I can't see anything..."
Martian 1: "It's slow, but it is moving, can't you see?"
Martian 3: "Geez! Haven't you guys got anything better to do than poke around with that thing?"
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