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Making Tracks on Mars
An anonymous reader writes "In a remarkable series of orbital pictures, the Mars Global Surveyor's cameras have imaged the tracks of the Spirit rover on the surface. Individual debris pieces including the backshell and lander are visible with remarkable clarity using an innovative roll of the satellite."
[insert D&D reference here]
I wonder what the Satellite has for initiative roll bonuses?
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Can't we go to just ONE other planet without scattering our garbage about willy-nilly?!?!
Now all they need to do is locate the massive impact crater left by Beagle 2.
Any chance that they can use this process to search for Beagle?
You know the Surveyor guys are like "oh, sure, NOW you can look around and tell us what's interesting to investigate!"
-Styopa
I worked on the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit) this February at JPL and we had images like the posted one available almost as soon as the rover landed, of course you couldn't see the tracks back then...I don't have a link handy to any of the pictures from then I remember that we had a wall-sized poster where scientists used to guess where the rover would land. Some days later, once the rover landed, there was another poster with various points of interest (lander, parachute etc.) marked on it. So we have had images (also from the Mars Global Surveyor) like these for a long time only they weren't available to the public. If anything, these images bear testimony to the quality of the camera on-board MGS.
On the one hand, Mars does have a much thinner atmosphere, and I have no idea how low the Mars Global Surveyer orbit is.
On the other hand, *anything* we ship to Mars is a design compromise in terms of weight and size. So I'm sure the camera is sophisticated, but isn't this one of those times when size matters, especially on the objective lens?
I've found my house on Terraserver, and I couldn't see features as small as this picture gives us. Makes me wonder what spy satellites can do, what commercial imaging satellites can do, and what DHS wants to let us have.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
have they ever tried doing this to look for the remains of the Apollo missions and other luna missions?
Any estimate on how long it will take the tracks to erode until they are no longer visible, given the average winds in that area? Unlike the tracks on the moon, these shouldn't last too long (relatively speaking).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Quit messing up my lawn!!!
Yes, it's soooo interesting to look at our own devices on other planets.
Maybe it's just me, but when I'm on an exotic vacation, I don't go out and start taking pictures of my car.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
It is a line camera, X resolution is set by number of pixels, Y resolution by mars rotation speed and number of scans per second. If the satelite rolls opposite to mars rotation, it is as if mars rotates more slowly, therefore higher Y resolution. Price to pay is you end up rotating out of view, so smaller pictures, but more detailed ones.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Reminds me of a sketch I saw on French TV, which was taking the mickey out of journalists who were make live reports on Iraq from their own homes back in England. They show this barrage of green lights constantly starting to flying upwards, then as the camera pans out, you see the camera was doing a zoom-in on the water in the bowl, as the chain was being pulled.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
My first thoughts about this were about re-calculating and re-imaging possible crash zones.
What would happen if hubble could image on mars? I suspect the optics are not designed to image something like mars, and wouldn't be effective?
Otherwise surely we would have close to 1m resolution of mars?
Am I missing something? Or is hubble too busy?
are visible in this image from the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. North is up in this image I think the images released are not the full resolution, or if they are then they at least with less compression (unless they transmit them compressed - which would be an insane idea) it should be clearer.
I would guess that they transmit all data back in raw, with lots of error checking.
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A little article with two boffins talking abour terraforming mars.
They harp on about oxygen levels. I started to wonder - what gas other than nitrogen would be good to compose the other 80% (assuming we reach earth density - could we have a 1/5 less atomosphere than was 99% 02?
So I think (although mars contains nitrogen - composition) the matter is how to make nitrogen and oxygen and enough co2.
Nitrogen in the air is vital for plant life also, so I think a valid nitrogen cycle, water cycle and healthy o2/co2 ratios would need to be established.
Would they find thier own levels, or will it be *bloody* hard to establish a balanced eco system?
Any other thoughts on mars ecosynthesis?
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First, it's astronomy, not astrology. One is a science with reproducible experiments and predictable results; the other is a pagan near-religion whose results are entirely vague, and impossibly subjective.
m l).
Second, you're talking about a statistical sample of 2 planets (out of what, thousands of billions?). (And I daresay we've hardly explored #2 - heck, there are great chunks of EARTH we haven't explored.) To wash your hands of it saying 'well, haven't found life yet, we must be alone' is a bit presumptuous.
Second "Things like irreducible complexity in bacterial flagelli or the inability to intentionally design life from scratch while claiming that a roll of the dice made all this seems absurd." NOBODY (except Creationists commonly hiding behind the title of 'intelligent design theory' and busily building strawman arguments) has ever suggested that life is the result of the 'roll of the dice'.
We KNOW that in the presence of radiation, complex hydrocarbon chains such as those found around the universe will form amino acids (found both in liquid water on earth, and in insterstellar dust clouds http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0328/p11s01-stss.ht
We KNOW that these acids can spontaneously form proteins and quinones, among lots of other stuff, which in turn form proteins and (it's surmised) possibly the precursors to RNA.
Granted, we're not clear on that last, teeny step. But give scientists some benefit of the doubt - they've resolved the simplest forms of life down to the point where serious research projects are going on now to create life at a molecular level; to the credit of the researchers in the field, there seems to be a hesitation going on while some of the ethical and moral issues are discussed before proceeding.
I don't dispute with you your essential point - it IS pretty amazing when you think about it. I find the system of the universe a glorious and joyful ballet of energy, matter, and life. I don't know why people feel compelled to assume that God isn't competent enough to build it from the beginning to do what He wanted, and that He would have to stick his hand in and 'make' stuff happen.
-Styopa
Point 1) Mars has an atmosphere.
Point 2) The moon isn't a planet.
Other than that you're completely right.
Hubble has already imaged Mars. The resolution is nowhere close to these new images from MGS. They are images of the entire planet. Check them out here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/ releases/1999/27/
I think it was called "Salvage 1"
OMG. Andy Griffith's forray into sci-fi. And here I thought that I had blissfully forgetten it. Thank you very much for reminding me about it.
"The truth points to itself." - Kosh, Babylon5
Give it time.
Most (if not all, I'm not an astrophysicist) of the planets we've discovered in other solar systems are Jupiter-like - enormous and gaseous. (They've also mostly been almost as close to their suns as Mercury is to ours).
Jupiter-like planets may be easier to detect, but they're not very hospitable to life. Give it time, we'll find something.
Now we know how those "canals" got there :)
Probably not. They knew exactly where to look to see the rover, and they also were able to take many pictures of the same area at different sun angles (shadow lengths) to get one with enough contrast to show the tracks. Because the width of the rover's tracks is just at the pixel resolution of the orbiting camera, a little luck/persistence was required to get those shots, I imagine.
I, too would like to know where the Beagle2 lies. It is about as small as one pixel from an orbiting camera, so they'll need to find some other evidence (ejecta from an impact crater, etc.) to find it. It's very likely Beagle is the crack of a rock, for example.
This sig is a test. If this had been an actual sig, you would be reading something quite a bit wittier than this now.
If you think the images from Mars Global Surveyor look awesome, the images from the upcoming Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter should be nothing short of AWESOME.
Given that MRO will likely use a modified version of the same camera system used on the Ikonos imaging satellite (Ikonos can resolve down to 100 cm resolution from a 300 km orbit through Earth's thick atmosphere), the combination of the lower orbit and the very thin atmosphere on Mars means there are estimates that the MRO cameras could resolve objects as small as 150 millimeters across in the visual light spectrum! At that resolution, MRO could finally put to bed the controversy about the anomalous features on the Cydonia plain of Mars that some people claim are not natural features of that plain.
the combination of the lower orbit and the very thin atmosphere on Mars means there are estimates that the MRO cameras could resolve objects as small as 150 millimeters across in the visual light spectrum
I think I just shat myself.
If they keep driving all over the surface of Mars, how will they ever tell the difference between their tracks and those made by the little green men?
We'll never prove the existance of life on Mars at this rate!
Couldn't they use the same techniques to find the other landers that have either crashed or soft landed successfully and died (Viking, one of the Russian Mars probes).
I would be interested to see if the Viking landers are still visible, or if they're now covered in martian dust? Maybe it'll be a better job for the MRO when it gets there.
I would be interested to see if the Viking landers are still visible
i ng_040107.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mgs_mpf_vik
Table-ized A.I.
The image shows shows spirit on the crater rim, that's something like sol 90 iirc (spirit is now at sol 260). So why did it take so long to get the image? Were they stored on-board for months? Were they processed for months? This is not a flame, I'm genuinly curous :).
Anyway, I hope that Mars Express will give it a try, too.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Do the AnswersInGenesis people know that you're trying to defend their point of view? Maybe you should just link to the site and leave it at that. Yours has to be one of the worst arguments for your point I've seen in a long time, and that's saying something. Let's take a few swings, shall we?
...the mysteries of an apparent Cambrian explosion in the fossil record?
> People have been discussing Asimov's three laws of robotics for decades. But we're no closer to robots with synthetic intelligence than we were in the glory days of AI research. (i.e. we're not close at all).
And you know this exactly how? In 1899, the vast majority of the world's brightest minds were openly saying that there was very little left to learn in the realm of physics, since Newtonian mechanics had been quite thoroughly explored by that point. It only took six years to turn that on its ear, and nobody (not even Einstein) knew it was coming. How you propose to know what technological or innovative breakthroughs will or won't occur in AI is beyond my understanding. As simple (to us) a device as the steam engine took more than 300 years to develop, and societies as far back as the Romans had the materials to make it happen, just not the innovation.
> There is no evidence these projects that you say are "going on now to create life at a molecular level" are likely to succeed.
Nice spin, but to reverse it, there's also no evidence that they're likely to fail, either. See above. Isn't acting clairvoyant a violation of Christian ethics?
> See this for reasons why the 1950s Miller experiment was not an accurate replica of supposed primordial conditions...
Since that particular experiment doesn't have much to do with current efforts (because, y'know, it was not an accurate replica of supposed primordial conditions) this point is irrelevant. If they simply wanted to replicate the old experiment, then they'd have done so.
> You must have considered the apparently unique earth we have: it's wonderfully balanced Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen cycles, the temperature and the position of earth w.r.t. to the sun, the qualities of water, and the wonder that is the water cycle,the wonderful balance of plant and animal life...
I'm familiar with this argument, but it's not valid because it's two-sided. You argue that the Earth is perfectly designed for humans, and I argue that humans developed specifically to survive Earth conditions, and these things support both points, so they support neither point.
>
I agree that there's no good explanation for this as yet. Again, though, it doesn't disprove any reasonable theory, it puts bumps in the road for the theories. Whether we will learn what caused it will remain for time to tell, but I see no reason to accept the young-Earth theory on the strength of this alone, and so far it's the only thing you mentioned that I can't answer directly.
> Consider how the continents were one supercontinent to begin with (as the Bible describes in Genesis) or how the Bible, rather off-handedly, describes the earth as a sphere (Book of Job).
In a book the size and scope of the Bible, you will find plenty of references to stuff that turns out to be true. However, you must counter mentions in the Bible of stuff that turned out false as well, if you care to use it as a scientific reference. You might start by Googling for "geocentrism".
> And then there are the smaller details: look up and consider how the sun, and the the moon have the same relative size...
What? What relevance could this possibly have? If you think this is anywhere approaching a good piece of evidence in defense of the existence of God, you're going to be very easy to dismiss. Besides, they're not all that close, unless 20 percent different is "close enough".
> how all humanly-recorded history begins 5000 years ago...
nd then there are the smaller details: look up and consider how the sun, and the the moon have the same relative size
Um. So? Millions of years ago they didn't have the same size, as the moon was closer to the Earth. Millions of years from now they won't be the same size, as the moon is steadily moving further away.
no tree has more than 5800 yearly tree rings (and there is no reason they can't - these old trees were cut down, still living, in this century).
You can extend it back a lot further if you look for more than one tree. You find a live tree going back, say, 4000 years. The you find an old stump whose later rings match up with the earlier rings of your tree. Then maybe you find a petrified log whose later rings match up with the early rings on the stump. We have tree ring data going back 10,000 years. Here's an example of a study going back 7400 years.
Also, we have ice cores and varves with annual layers going back tens of thousands of years.
And please don't disappoint me by quoting some rubbish from the ICR or answersingenesis.
I'm thinking that the heatshield impact should have dug a pretty nice divot out of the ground, which might make a pretty good opportunity for examining deep layers of soil on the edge of a large impact crater.
Possible to find all sorts if interesting things in there... almost as good as the crater itself. (presuming that the rover can get out on the other side, that is.)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
NASA was able to get a really good initial fix on the positions of the rovers using doppler measurements of the tones the spacecraft emitted on descent.
For example, from the journal of Michael Watkins, manager of the navigation team:
But we're also still working, and for Opportunity, the Navigation Team wants to get our first solution for the position of Opportunity as quickly as possible to help assess the condition of the rover.
Ten minutes after landing we get it - it's about 10 km further downtrack (to the East on Mars) from the last targeted point (which was about 10 km from the original target), due entirely to low atmospheric density on Mars. This is similar to Spirit, and well within specifications, and it looks from our maps to be an awesome landing site for the scientists. But we'll have to wait and see the first pictures...
This picture shows you the relative accuracy of the navigation. The big blue estimate ellipse is based on doppler data from the approach to Mars. The black ellipse is based on doppler data from the rover's status tones prior to chute deployment. And the white dot is the estimated position based on doppler from surface communications.
Actually, with regard to point #2, the earth and moon are a double planet system, because the moon orbits the sun, not the earth, as evidenced by the fact that it always falls towards the sun. More here: http://www.copernicus.org/EGS/egsga/nice00/program me/abstracts/aac6816.pdf
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
> I studied AI while working toward an MS in Computer science a few years ago.
:( Here are my reasons for the apparently arbitrary 5800 ring count: the Bible says that the existing world was destroyed in a deluge that occured about 5000 years ago. Now most trees add one tree ring a year. In extremely rare cases, trees have been known to grow more than a single ring a year. Hence, I chose the 5800 ring count (to sufficiently account for ring aberrations). Now, I probably should not have stated 5800 -- 5100-5200 rings should be sufficient. :)
My pointing out the thinking of physicists in 1899 was to demonstrate that even those who have studied a field extensively can't usually predict watershed changes in the field any better than layfolks, so it's a bad exercise to say "we're no closer to..." about it. Studying AI makes you better informed about the current state of AI, but it doesn't help you predict the future.
> Advances in "AI" (a badly named field) are very interesting to me - I hope to see them continue to occur for some time. I said synthetic intelligence (as in "pass the Turing test" intelligence) is unlikely. That belief is based on the current state of AI research and my understanding of the Bible.
See above, and remember that your understanding of the Bible doesn't speak very well toward what we'll discover in the field of AI.
> Its sad to see you angry without just cause.
I almost don't want to get into this, because it's such a bothersome dance, but I must ask you one thing. If all the trees on Earth were destroyed by a deluge, where'd the new trees come from? Most importantly, though, why do you say that there's nothing stopping them from living longer? Random chance virtually guarantees that any living object will die due to accident or disease give enough time. Sure, there's no one specific thing that guarantees that a tree will die in 5000 years but the amount of luck an immobile living object would need to fail to have anything lethal occur to it in that span of time would be significant. The fact that the number of trees that measure past 4000 years can be counted in single digits indicates that a tree some significant amount older than them would be even more rare, to the likely point of non-existence. Again I present, you've given no reasonable argument that the age of the Earth can be determined by the age of trees in any case.
> Please back that up with suitable observations of an evolutionary process adding information to the genome.
This is my just cause for being angry, by the way. It's a broken argument, and you present it broken on purpose. The failure is this. I can't present the mechanism for how it works. You can't present any evidence that it's not possible. However, because I can't prove it does work, you take that as proof that it doesn't work, and that's broken.
To counter, I can simply present gravity. It's easy to see that gravity works. Two massive bodies attract each other in very predictable ways. Ready for the twist? Nobody on Earth can tell you why. That's right, nobody. There are plenty of theories, but not a single one of them can be conclusively proven. The fact that nobody understands why gravity works does not mean that it doesn't. I can't conclusively prove that ceramic yard gnomes are not the mechanism for gravitation, so I can't directly refute a theory that states that yard gnomes cause gravity. However, I can present a theory (like graviton particles or dark matter or whatever) that's more likely based on the evidence.
To get back to the point, the most likely mechanism in science for the development of the species is currently evolution driven by natural selection. And before you get started, any theory based on the Bible isn't science, it's theology. "Because God said so" doesn't work in science, so feel free to argue that it's how things happened, but don't present it as evidence that ev