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Mars Polar Lander Lost Again
IZ Reloaded writes "The Mars Global Surveyor during one of its latest scans of the area where the Mars Polar Lander was originally spotted, discovers that the spacecraft is no longer there! Space.com reports, "We conclude that our interpretation of these features was in error. This is not the location of the Mars Polar Lander. Because the landing uncertainty ellipse is so much larger than our images, and we do not have another candidate to which to target...we cannot continue to hunt for the lander," the MSSS site explains."
Damn martian tow-away zones.
REAL Polar Landers don't ask for directions.
how can it "not longer be there"? this just shows it was never there in the first place...
"(score:5, trying to intice comments about martians"
Proof again that when left to the responsibility of the government, they do things best. Then again, the martians could have taken it! Someday those little green bastards are going to get a knuckle sandwich.
in the movie where you cue the scary music?
perhaps the lander could have been covered by dust, or c02 frost -- therefore eliminating the weak detection seen before?
Maybe it will return one day as P'Lander to search for the makers.
Looks like there's a landerjacking in progress up there!
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
It's THEM! THEY stole it to hide the truth from us! I told you!
Let me be the first to say:
Good job with the brooms, Martian dudes!
Hope you enjoy the hardware.
Sorry we forgot to pack any porn on the hard disk.
My guess is the lil green men took it to their underground lab for analysis.
SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
the spacecraft is no longer there!
I think what the poster meant is the spacecraft was never there to begin with. With limited resolution and enough random dark spots and hills there's bound to be a few that look like they might be a parachute and a lander.
Given how poor the images are I wonder why they ever thought this was the polar lander at all and not just natural features of mars?
AccountKiller
But you put forth some pretty darn convincing evidence! I recall an earlier Slashdot story that covered all this in detail, where you announc...
This is not the location of the Mars Polar Lander.
That was not the location of the Mars Polar Lander.
Move along, move along!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
List of Mars Efforts, courtesy of Wikipedia
Items with bullets represent full or partial failures.
* 1960 -- Marsnik 1
* 1960 -- Marsnik 2
* 1962 -- Sputnik 29
* 1962 -- Mars 1
* 1962 -- Sputnik 31
* 1964 -- Mariner 3
1964 -- Mariner 4
* 1964 -- Zond 2
* 1965 -- Zond 3
1969 -- Mariner 6
1969 -- Mariner 7
* 1969 -- Mars 1969A
* 1969 -- Mars 1969B
* 1971 -- Mariner 8
* 1971 -- Cosmos 419
* 1971 -- Mars 2
1971 -- Mars 3
1971 -- Mariner 9
* 1973 -- Mars 4
* 1973 -- Mars 5
* 1973 -- Mars 6
* 1973 -- Mars 7
1975 -- Viking 1
1975 -- Viking 2
* 1988 -- Phobos 1
* 1988 -- Phobos 2
* 1992 -- Mars Observer
1996 -- Mars Global Surveyor
* 1996 -- Mars 96
1996 -- Mars Pathfinder
* 1998 -- Nozomi (Planet-B)
* 1998 -- Mars Climate Orbiter
* 1998 -- Mars Polar Lander
* 1998 -- Deep Space 2 (part of Mars Polar Lander spacecraft)
2001 -- Mars Odyssey
2003 -- Mars Exploration Rovers
* 2003 -- Mars Express
The problem is the atmosphere. Even on earth plotting a trajectory through air can be rather inaccurate. Everything from pockets of turbulance, to what direction and how hard the wind was blowing that day can drasticly effect the trajectory. It gets even worse if it broke up, or a parachute didn't deploy, or got tangled. This is the reason why they have a landing elipse that is hundreds of miles in diameter.
Click the randomly appearing Mars Polar Lander to win a Free iPod!
Err, wait...
Um, maybe I'm missing something, but have they checked for it on Google maps? I lost a black monolith once on the dark side of the moon, but it took all of two seconds to google for it. It was stuck in between some cheese.
If anyone else (besides the mod in question) thinks that the parent was showing insight (no offense Big Ad; I know it's a joke) please step forward. I guess I could give the benefit of the doubt and say the mod could have accidentally modded as insightful, but meant funny, but the more I read comments the more I find instances like this. Either it was a mistake, or a bad mod. Whichever one it was I say to everyone: META MODERATE! Please? Since I have set my preferences to send messages about how my moderations have been meta modded I have received ZERO messages about the meta moderating results. I have had mod points at least three or four times since then.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I learned in Kindergarden to keep up with my toys. Who knows who will take them when you aren't looking.
They're now setting up home in a pleasant spot on the slope of Mount Olympus overlooking the Mariner Valley and hoping to raise a family of small Lego buggies.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Which is exactly why GWB is funding Nasa's Mars mission: to take the fight against these little green terrorists to their own planet.
me? insightful? we need the ability to mod the modders.
;-)
-1 American
Since modding someone funny gives them no /. karma some have started using interesting or insightfull in it's place to better reward humor and this might explain the mod.
Also whenever I meta mod and find I need to check the 'context' MOST of the time I'm MM-ing a post several weeks old, only once or twice has the article been still open for posting.
That last bit said I still rarely see meta mods on my moderation anymore, though at one time I could expect to see about 20% of my mods meta'd, and within a month or two.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
If so, I suggest looking there. It's always behind the fridge.
It appears the Martians have their own Area 51, where they hide evidence of extra-marital life from their fellow martians.
You lost ANOTHER Space Probe???
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A landing probe randomly tossed but leaving no debris it once was found but now is lost we're blinded and now can't see .....
No one down here knows how to work the brakes,
but Uncle Sam's on Mars
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
These are not the droids you are looking for....
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
...clearly, this is the work of the giant purple spiders.
After some months of trying to communicate with the extrange visitor, the Elder Martians just wished it away.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
On Mars, YOU are the alien...
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Maybe someone (and "the guys") took the lander to go pick up some power converters...
You'd think if GM and other American auto makers can install On Star to help people find directions and lost vehicles, then our space agencies could use it too. Sheesh!
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Is it really correct to say that it's lost again, since they never truly knew where it was?
Ignore Alien Orders
"Dude, where's my Polar Lander?"
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
I'm fairly sure if the parachute didn't deploy then the thing wouldn't have wafted far off course...
You know, if you thought the Cydonia conspiracy nutjobs were crazy, wait until they get ahold of this little story :)
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
All these worlds are yours except Mars
Attempt no polar landing there
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
That's some pretty bad digitial zoom. Haven't NASA any better optical zoom built into the Surveyor?
Have there been any sandstorms on Mars lately?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
They try looking for it under the couch cushions? ...always where I loose stuff.
Who doesn't love spending money looking for broken crap? Its like the ebay of space.
Sounds just like Bagdad Bob and Saddam, there is no Polar Lander, there never was a Polar Lander. Inspections for the Polar Lander have failed and are going nowhere. I say we gather a coalition of the willing and invade now to find all the Polar Landers, lest they be used against us!
the light is better there.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That is NEVER not funny!
i hope they woun't have to announce "we cannot continue the hunt for manned lander" after it will be sent there in several decades
It's not on eBay. Yet.
To the lay eye, it certainly appears that the initially identified location was questionable at best, because of the high levels of background noise. The few pixels of dark near the few pixels of light could, perhaps, have been a lander, but they also could have been just noise. Although the linked article doesn't mention this, there would be, I'd hope, a decent amount of statistical analysis to show that these pixels were a good 3+ sigma away from background. But by looking at it, you sure don't get that impression, as there are a handful of places that the arrow could just as easily pointed at and declared "lander!".
What's really impressive, though, is the newest set of images with vastly improved resolution and reduced noise! And, unless there's something about a Shuttle mission to replace hardware in Mars orbit that we haven't heard about, this is on the same optics and sensors! Sounds like some good old-fashioned software engineering improvements of the like that JPL gets far too little credit for. Anyone involved in the project know for sure?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
These are not the mars exploration drones you are looking for.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
So has anyone called OnStar to see if it can be located?
Homer no function beer well without.
Indeed, the "Informative" you received on the gibberish above will be a good test case
I was in fact wondering what idiot would mod that informative. On re-reading it, it makes sense, but I had to slow down to understand it. So gibberish is a little harsh. Still, even if it was perfectly written, it does not deserve any mod at all.
Let me see if I can fix it: When meta-moderating, if I see something marked informative that is false I will mod it down. Even if it is clearly sarcastic humor. Humor is interesting, but it is not informative.
I use all the tools I have to improve slashdot as a place for geeks interested in science to hang out. It often feels like loosing battle.
If the us military complex nsa/fema and top secret projects spend $450billion, you can bet they allocated $5b/yr * 20 yrs of effort
into getting something 10x better than hubble for close range. maybe a 1m meter * 6 in a ring. When there is no limit to a budget, and no slow managers involved, you can bet the NSA (10000+ math people) and the best grads can do better.
Who knows maybe they beam down UV rays and inspect the result bouncing back or 25 ghz beams in combo with 1000 wavelengths.
3mins of my time isnt going to come up with 20 years of expertise * 10000 people.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.