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The View from the Top of Husband Hill

Posted by Zonk on from the hellooo-down-there dept.

chriscrick writes "After 14 months of climbing, the Mars rover Spirit has reached the summit of Husband Hill, 269 feet above the edge of the Martian plain. The panoramic view from the top is spectacular. According to lead scientist Steve Squyres, 'What field geologists typically do - and Spirit is a robotic field geologist - is you climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around so you get the lay of the land and figure out where you want to go.'"

38 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Everything you ever wanted to know about Spirit... by PsychicX · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is right here. Read on!

  2. interseting by schnits0r · · Score: 4, Funny

    Mars rover Spirit climbs on top of husband....husband rolls over a minute later and lights a cigarette.

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  3. Beautiful Imagery by Nerd+Systems · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The imagery that is coming back from the Mar's missions has been truly amazing. Very detailed pictures documenting this foreign landscape. I noticed this took 14 months to climb to the top of this summit. What is the average speed these martian rovers are crawling at?

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    1. Re:Beautiful Imagery by srw · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, the odometer on Spirit is 3.0 miles and Opportunity is 3.56 miles, so, about 0.21 miles/month or 0.000287480473 mph on average.

      Or is that not what you meant. ;-)

    2. Re:Beautiful Imagery by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 4, Funny

      the Mar's missions

      I'm too shocked to make a proper grammar Nazi rant here.

    3. Re:Beautiful Imagery by srw · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, my reply was a bit of a joke. The _average_ speed is kept down by the fact that the rovers stop to take pictures, grind rocks, sleep, etc. The actual top speed while moving is 50mm/s or about 1/10 mph, still not a speed demon.

    4. Re:Beautiful Imagery by Nerd+Systems · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, better to go slow, and assess the stability of where they are located, then go fast and face the possibility of tipping the rover over. "I've fallen and can't get up" takes on a whole new meaning from Mars. Very vivid pictures nonetheless, I wonder what megapixel rating the digital cameras inside these rovers are rated at. I assume very high, considering the extreme cost of each rover.

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    5. Re:Beautiful Imagery by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 2, Interesting
      That's about as much energy as they can get in a day's sunlight, so there's no reason to make the engines really fast. The rest of the energy is used for things like running the instruments, transmitter, block heater, etc. Efficiency (in terms of both weight and energy use) and durability are far more important than having a hot-rod on mars.

      BTW: Units gives me about 0.000224MPH. I'm using a start time of Jan 3/2004 (Yeah, and that's average time (including coffee breaks) not top speed.

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    6. Re:Beautiful Imagery by srw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They are 1MP. A good lens is more important than the number of pixels. This article discusses the issue.

      BTW, the CCDs are Canadian. :-)

    7. Re:Beautiful Imagery by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 4, Informative
      The rover has sensors that detect the tilt of the rover and will halt movement before it tips over. There's a whole section on NASA's website about navigation and the like.

      The Pancam, the highest resolution cameras, have 1024x2048 pixel CCDs.

  4. Full 360 picture by srw · · Score: 5, Informative

    The picture linked is only a 90 degree field of view. The story mentions "horizon all the way around." The picture at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spiri t/20050901b/site_A_AD_ND_cyl_360-A592R1_br.jpg shows the full 360.

    1. Re:Full 360 picture by srw · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's a 240 degree in colour here.

      I don't see a colour 360.

    2. Re:Full 360 picture by deglr6328 · · Score: 5, Informative

      A non-thumbnail size version of this panorama where the jaw droppingly spectacular dust devil on the left can be seen very clearly.

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    3. Re:Full 360 picture by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 4, Funny
      Jaw dropping? Check out the footprints on the very left.

      Rumour has it the FEMA director was last spotted there.

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    4. Re:Full 360 picture by ColaMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Be aware that some mars photos of those devils might be one and the same. It might be just one that keeps popping up in frame as it's moving quicker than the camera taking the set of photos. For example, it looks like the shadow of the big devil on the left hand side is repeated a little bit in the next image - I guess you could get an idea of how fast they are moving from that.

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  5. Parking lots and a water tower by twelveinchbrain · · Score: 4, Funny

    Surely those must be signs of life on Mars, no?

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  6. The shadows are pointing in difference directions! by TummyX · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is clearly a fabrication by the bush adminstration to divert attention from new orleans and iraq

    /michaelmoore

  7. Why must it look so normal? by Hannah+E.+Davis · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I am always amazed by just how mundane pictures of Mars are. I'm not sure what I expect to see... something different anyway. Something "alien".

    But no matter how many times I look at these pictures (and others before them), part of me is always surprised to see red sand and rocky dunes that remind me of PEI and a dusky orange sky that looks just like that above any major city on a cloudy night.

    1. Re:Why must it look so normal? by BewireNomali · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's amazing. That same photograph just took my breath away.

      It's wishful thinking, perhaps. but looking at the photograph and I imagine a place that once housed life. It might be the birthplace of life in our system and the seed planet for life on earth.

      A dead planet once alive. Conservation of information.... the entire evolutionary record of that planet is in those rocks, that dirt. It's suffocatingly exciting.

      And at once harrowing. It has no magnetic field to speak of. It must have had some form of one due to the clear volcanic/geological activity. What happened to it? When will the same thing happen here? If there was life there, did they just run out of time?

      There are finite strictures on the amount of time ones birth planet remains hospitable to you. And if you don't figure out how to get off, how to survive in space and thrive, maybe you're doomed to die with your planet.

      Some theories abound about why we haven't seen sign of intelligent life. my favorite espouses the notion that civilizations get wiped out by their own technology. What if the stricture is planetary? What if we don't see any intelligent signs because no species could survive the life cycle of their own planets?

      It puts any interest in a next-gen ipod or the new google beta in perspective.

      It's a great photograph. It fills me with that little kid feeling.... the one whe you look up a the sky and it feels like there's something there looking down at you, waiting for you to discover it.

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    2. Re:Why must it look so normal? by blincoln · · Score: 5, Informative

      NASA doesn't invent colours from nothing, but that's not necessarily the same as saying that their images represent what you'd see with your eyes if you were on Mars.

      Both Mars rovers have cameras which are sensitive from the near-IR to the UV. The greyscale images are taken by putting a bandpass filter over the lens, and usually they'll take the same shot with 3-7 different filters.

      Three of the filters correspond to roughly the same frequencies that the receptors in your eyes are sensitive to. So they can approximate what it would look like in person by assigning the three images taken using those filters to the R, G, and B channels in a digital image.

      There is a bit more processing involved. Human eyes are more sensitive to green than red or blue, so the additional processing is probably to take that into account.

      But anyway, the short answer is that generally the Mars images are as "true" in terms of colour as what you'd get with a colour digital camera here, setting aside that the three channels are taken at slightly different times.

      There are a few exceptions, in that I believe sometimes they may substitute the nearest infrared band for red. If you have to pick one or the other, near IR is useful because it scatters less in an atmosphere.

      Other NASA images (like from the Hubble) are made the same way, they just assign completely different spectra to the three channels (assuming they're using an RGB model, which isn't a given). For example, maybe they'll assign radio waves to the red channel, IR to green, and X-rays to blue. Again, they're not *inventing* colours, even though it's not what you'd see with your own eyes. It's like pitch-shifting bat squeeks down into the audible range so humans can hear them.

      --
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  8. The Official High-Res + Wide Angle Image by kernel_dan · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA04184.jpg
    From the catalog page
    This approximate true-color panorama was taken by NASA's Spirit rover after it successfully trekked to the top of "Husband Hill," in the "Columbia Hills" of Gusev Crater. The "little rover that could" spent the last 14 months climbing the hills in both the forward and reverse directions to reduce wear on its wheels.

    This breathtaking view from the summit reveals previously hidden southern terrain called "Inner Basin"(center), where team members hope to direct Spirit in the future. The rover left tracks to the left point toward the west, the direction Spirit arrived from. The peaks of "McCool Hill" and "Ramon Hill," both in the "Columbia Hills," can be seen just to the left and behind Inner Basin.

    The mosaic is made up of images taken by the rover's panoramic camera over a period of three days (sols 583 to 585, or August 24 to 26, 2005). It spans about 240 degrees in azimuth, and was acquired using 51 different camera pointings and three camera filters (750, 530 and 480 nanometers). Image-to-image seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate what a person standing on Mars would see.

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    1. Re:The Official High-Res + Wide Angle Image by deglr6328 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Waaaauu! :D Look at those solar panels! Almost no dust at all! What wasn't mentioned in the article is that Spirit's power output is now back up to ~930 Watt hours/day, the same as it was on landing day. The rover is now being shut down every day in the afternoon, no so it doesn't run out of power and die, as was the case around a year ago, but to prevent the electronics box from OVERHEATING!! Wildly successful doesn't even begin to describe the rover missions at this point :)

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    2. Re:The Official High-Res + Wide Angle Image by BewireNomali · · Score: 3, Interesting

      we should mass produce the rovers using the same specs and retrofit with geographically specific tools. We can send up more at a time and have standing teams exploring in real time, as we're doing now, amassing data.

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  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Summer trip? by xerid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wow, this looks very close to i picture I took during my cross-country trip a few years ago.

    summer trip image

    .

  11. Surface Composition by Nerd+Systems · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder what the surface composition on these hills is? I know it has taken a long time to climb up to the top. Is this because the surface of Mars is slippery and the rover slides down as it tries to come up, or is the surface hard enough for an easy ascent? It looks like from the picture as if it is a mix of sandy type surface and some hard.

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    1. Re:Surface Composition by ScrewMaster · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's taken such a long time because the 440 cubic inch V8 with the four-barrel carb that was supposed to power the rover threw a rod, and the thing has been running on solar panels ever since.

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  12. Re:Everything you ever wanted to know about Spirit by lostchicken · · Score: 4, Funny

    The Wikipedia! The best karma whoring invention since Google.

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  13. Roving Mars by Steve Squyres by sizzzzlerz · · Score: 4, Informative

    This fascinating book by the one of the creators of the Rovers as well as the principal investigator of the science mission is an absolutely fascinating tale of the tortured process leading to the birth of these explorers. He then documents the first 90 days on Mars with an almost day-by-day description of the events as they occurred. Highly recommended!

  14. Re:The shadows are pointing in difference directio by Kafka_Canada · · Score: 2, Funny

    WHY HASN'T BUSH DETECTED LIFE ON MARS YET?! IS IT BECAUSE THERE'S NO OIL ON MARS?

    Surely he could've at the least found some carbon-based life...

    [Lameness filter is lame.]

    (Actually, no, I guess it's not. If I hadn't been sarcastic in my post, I guess it would've done a good job of stomping out a lame Bush-is-evil whine.)

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  15. Unfortunately.. by jesser · · Score: 2, Funny

    Spirit let two of her fingers get in front of the lens, ruining an otherwise breathtaking photo.

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  16. Re:Everything you ever wanted to know about Spirit by kiore · · Score: 4, Funny

    To comply with the GPL full source code was shipped with the rovers.

    All you need to do is go up to Spirit and retrieve the CD in the left front hubcap.

    BTW: while you are doing this, NASA would be grateful if you could bring back a few kilograms of assorted mars rock.

  17. ehhhhh....yawn..... by Hosiah · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wake me when they decend into "Wife Valley"

  18. You ain't seen nothing yet by Rxke · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you liked this, I suggest you take a look at the incredible
    http://midnightmarsbrowser.blogspot.com/
    This cross-platform donationware gem fully automatically downloads the raw imagery, auto-stitches, false-colorizes,makes slideshows... And best of all: creates "virtual-reality" pannable and zoomable panorama's...

    Everyone into these rovers should really check it out.

  19. Re:Everything you ever wanted to know about Spirit by drsquare · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well it's wikipedia. Very vague, very brief, very shallow, sometimes inaccurate information on lots of subjects. It's the place you to go for a brief overview of something you've never heard of, but don't expect it to give you the same information you'd get in a book.

    That's what encyclopedias are, they're brief summaries. Otherwise they'd be 300m thick.

  20. Re:People AND Rovers - no geologist required by BewireNomali · · Score: 2, Interesting

    See, I think you stumbled on the holy grail of space travel to other planets. We as a species have to accept that the human sent up to ther planets are on a one way trip. Part of the problem is this idea that the humans are coming back. We need to determine how we can keep humans alive for a while (this would include regular food and supplies modules in a continuous string, or maybe peppering the landing site with a ten year supply of essentials, etc). But the problem with sending humans is that society isn't prepared to deal with the idea that we're sending them to a probably early death. When someone drops the fig leaf and is like, "dude, explorers fucking die. It's blood and glory, not an afternoon watching Lifetime," true exploring can get about its business. But I agree with you about sending humans. It'll be a while before our civilization matures enough to allow it. by then, Mars will be owned by the Chinese, and the Russians will be launching DOS attacks from the moon.

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  21. I wish NASA would show us the true color of Mars by Teilo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And if they did, this is more likely what you would have seen:

    http://thinkingspace.org/HillPanoramaRestored.jpg

    Take it for what it's worth, but NASA has repeatedly admitted that they arbitrarily shift the color of the Mars shots to make them look more red. Why? Who knows. Trying not to confuse the public, I suppose, who expects the Red Planet to be not just red, but really really red.

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  22. Martian Joy by poor_boi · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hmm. That picture seems to show that there is an exposed 'joy stick'-like controller on the outside of the rover. I have to take this design decision by NASA into serious question. Didn't anyone over there consider the possibility of martians hijacking the rover and using it for their own evil purposes. The rover should be bristling with guns, not unprotected control mechanisms! I'm agape with astonishment!