One Year on Mars

RetroGeek writes "It has been almost a full year for the Mars rovers. NASA has created a flashback of rover images and information. You can use either HTML or Flash (it is the best use of the technology I have seen). There is even a movie taken from the hazard avoidance camera showing the full year of travel."

Comments

Quoth TFA

[stratjakt]

stay tuned as the rovers welcome a brand new year on Mars.

What does an earth year have to do with a martian year? Nothing thats what!

Re:Quoth TFA

[uberdave]

05? 05? It's thinking like this that lead to the whole y2k crisis. It is 2005, not 05.

Seasons

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the things that impressed me most about this mission is when they had to take into account the changing seasons on Mars, and their effect on the rovers.

We are not only on other planets, but planning for spring!

Happy new year! (And let's hope the evaporating methane does not mess up the sensors come summer :)

Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon

[bperkins]

it is the best use of the technology I have seen

You have _got_ to be kidding me.

It's only saving grace is that it's not flash by default. The intro looks like one of those late 80's slideshow, and the navigation of the main page is infuriatingly confusing and useless.

I'm about to fire it off to one of my friends who teaches web design as an example of what _not_ to do in a web page.

I actaully _like_ pretty flash, but when it just slows things down and makes navigation harder, well then it's stupid.

I guess it's better than the html, which seems broken with my firefox setup.

Re:Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon

[Tablizer]

[it is the best use of [Flash] I have seen.] You have _got_ to be kidding me.

I didn't see much that couldn't be done with just HTML. They may have to reduce or rid fade-ins and intra-image roll-overs though, but that is minor.

Also, the HTML version that they present seems broken. None of the links work for me.

Re:Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon

[Tablizer]

Given the fact that they can't make a simple webpage work with more than one browser makes me wonder how the hell did they manage to put two rovers on an another planet for a year...

Being a Fed agency, they can only do stuff they have a budget for. They probably have a very tiny budget for such a web presentation and thus let newbie interns do most of it who have little or no experience or recognition of cross-browser and cross-platform issues.

Re:Science over everything

[EpsCylonB]

I think nothing beats that feeling when science and common sence[sic] works for whole humanity.

I think uniting the whole world might be a bit strong but it definitely shows the difference between the west and some places where intellect isn't valued at all.

Above all it is clear blind religous fundamentalism, whether prohibiting the teaching of evolution in american schools or inspiring people to attack others through suicide, is the biggest threat to our exploration of the universe we live in.

Are you joking?

[SharpFang]

Want me to dig up the "Beagle 2 lost" and "NASA Rovers working" stories? All that rambling about NASA superiority over ESA, "US - Europe 2:0" and such? Maybe if they were a common effort, they would unite the world, but it seems with Beagle 2 demise they only made the conflict deeper.
No, of course they are great devices, great succes, and scientifically priceless and all that. It's just that they didn't help a thing on the social level.

Re:Are you joking?

[lime1304]

I think the rovers success encouraged a little ego massage at NASA but after the Shuttle disaster, they needed it. The Cassini-Huygens mission, on the other hand is showing what can happen if there is true international cooperation in space. Up to this point, that mission has been nearly flawless, and even the missteps have been recoverable. Hopefully Europe's Huygens can make a successful descent, and give insight into Titan's composition.

Re:One of our years, actually.

[rainman_bc]

Technically, a year is how long it takes for the earth to revolve around the sun.

A martian year is measured in terms of earth years.

So technically, a year is a constant as the earth's rotation around the Sun.

Don't you mean...

[uberdave]

322 days? Should't you be measuring in sols?