One Mars Probe Photographs Another

sighted writes "In one of the more remarkable shots ever taken by robotic space explorers, the Opportunity Mars rover has been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ." From the article: "Shown in the image are 'Duck Bay,' the eroded segment of the crater rim where Opportunity first arrived at the crater; 'Cabo Frio,' a sharp promontory to the south of Duck Bay; and 'Cape Verde,' another promontory to the north. When viewed at the highest resolution, this image shows the rover itself, wheel tracks in the soil behind it, and the rover's shadow, including the shadow of the camera mast. After this image was taken, Opportunity moved to the very tip of Cape Verde to perform more imaging of the interior of the crater."

Comments

Happens Once in a Red Mars

[eldavojohn]

Yeah, I know how the probes feel, every now and then I'll run into one of my grade school classmates thousands of miles away from where we went to school.

We shake hands and take pictures of each other.

I wonder if the probes experience the same awkward silence after you've asked them how they're doing and feign interest about what they've been up to. I'll bet they both broke out, "Well, I'll let you go, you must be so busy and what with having the whole rest of the planet to photograph....but it was nice meeting you! And out here of all places! I mean with you an orbiter and I a rover, who would have thought we would have been assigned to the same planet?! It's a small universe afterall!"

Re:Happens Once in a Red Mars

[Kris_B_04]

Meanwhile,
Do you want me to sit in the corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?

Re:Happens Once in a Red Mars

[QuasarBlazar]

Psh the land rover is probably glad to be photographing anything, he was supposed to only live for 3 months.

Re:Happens Once in a Red Mars

[Kris_B_04]

This too, is true.... ;)

Re:Happens Once in a Red Mars

[stunt_penguin]

As the orbiting probe will no doubt agree, it's better to burn out than to fade away :D

Moo

[Chacham]

Opportunity Mars rover: I can't believe it, it's like a dream. What's wrong?
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: I just had a terrible thought: what if this is a dream?
Opportunity Mars rover: Well then photograph me quick before you wake up.

Re:Moo

[dynamic_cast]

It was a dream.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Open your leeeeeeeeeeens, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter... Open your leeeeeeeeeeeeens...

Impressive resolution

[BWJones]

Wow, impressive resolution for such a remote platform. Of course the resolution of the current US spy satellites is about three times better (10cm optimal), but those things are the size of a school bus and regardless, it is impressive what you can see with 30cm resolution.

Does anybody know if the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter is limited to the visible spectrum, or does it have multispectral capabilities?

P.S. I am sure the Google folks will want these data to update Google Mars. :-)

Re:Impressive resolution

[sighted]

It does: "New Spectrometer Begins Its Global Map of Mars"

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

Wow, impressive resolution for such a remote platform. Of course the resolution of the current US spy satellites is about three times better (10cm optimal), but those things are the size of a school bus and regardless, it is impressive what you can see with 30cm resolution.

I'm willing to bet US spy (esp. military) satellites can have much better resolution than 10cm...I work for a GIS company, and we often work with satellite imagery at 5cm resolution. I believe, by the way, the MRO does have multispectral capabilities (seven-channel, from ultraviolet to near-infrared).

Re:Impressive resolution

[mopomi]

Try 544 channels at ~18 m/pixel.

http://crism.jhuapl.edu/instrument/innoDesign.php

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

Am I thinking of the same hardware as you? I'm talking about the MRO Mars Color Imager...

Here

Re:Impressive resolution

[BWJones]

I seriously doubt the US spy satellites can get much better than 10cm with optics as we are now pushing the limits of theoretical optical resolution there (do the math). If you are working with 5cm resolution, those data are not coming from satellites, but rather airborne platforms. Perhaps you mean 5m resolution?

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

No, it's 5cm satellite imagery. :) Amazing stuff, believe me. I was stunned when I first saw the HUGE files in such incredible detail.

Re:Impressive resolution

[BWJones]

I don't buy it...... sorry, but my understanding of physics precludes that possibility. Can you send me a link/reference?

Re:Impressive resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for "adaptive optics." There are no theoretical limits to what you can do with AO, to my knowledge. It just depends on the collector area you're willing to devote to the problem.

Re:Impressive resolution

[NormalVisual]

Adaptive optics work great for telescopes looking out into space, since you have stars that are effectively point sources that you can use to tell you what kind of correction to apply. If you don't have a star nearby, you can use a laser to generate one in the upper atmosphere. It's won't be a point source, but it's still small enough to help you determine how to move the mirrors. How would one determine how to correct the image when looking down from space?

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

Our largest contracts are military...I wish I could send you more (seriously, I do), but I would like to keep my job. :)

By the way, I like your site (simple, well organized...very satisfying design).

Re:Impressive resolution

[BWJones]

Google for "adaptive optics." There are no theoretical limits to what you can do with AO, to my knowledge. It just depends on the collector area you're willing to devote to the problem.

I am familiar with adaptive optics (IAAVS I Am A Vision Scientist), and am familiar with David Williams work, but to my knowledge: 1) No adaptive optics have yet been fielded in a space craft, certainly not a commercial imaging satellite. 2) The amount of space required for imaging at beyond 10cm resolution from space at Earth based objects would be prohibitive given the current lift vehicles in inventory. Most adaptive optics systems are ground based (Starfire) due to size and precise control necessary, but if you can provide me with some references on airborne or space based adaptive optics systems, I'll consider myself corrected.

Re:Impressive resolution

[BWJones]

By the way, I like your site (simple, well organized...very satisfying design).

Thanks. I've tried to keep it simple with no ads to clutter the experience.

Re:Impressive resolution

[Zarquon]

The current highest resolution commercial satellite imagery is 60 cm/pixel or so, from QuickBird-2. Eros B1 does 70 cm; IKONOS, OrbView-3 and some others do 1m. These are all nadir resolutions, of course. If you image further from the satellite path, your resolution suffers accordingly.

There are plans for 40 and 50 cm birds (GeoEye-1, Worldview-1/2) but they haven't been launched yet.

If you're working with commercial 5 cm data, you're working with aerial photography, not satellite imagery, and 5 cm is on the high end for that. Most users around here consider 30-cm (1 foot) data as high end.

If you meant 5m satellite data, that's pretty common.

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

It's not commercial data. I'm aware of the capabilities of the working hardware you mentioned.

BTW, thanks for the tidbit on the plans for GeoEye-1 and Worldview-1/2; I wasn't aware of them. :)

Re:Impressive resolution

[hubie]

The pictures are amazing, but not within the context of spy satellites. The MRO orbit is only 250 to 300 km above the surface, which isn't even considered a LEO orbit on Earth.

Let's see, 30 cm resolution at 300 km works out to be a microradian angular resolution. Hubble has a resolution of 0.1 arcsec, which is like 0.5 microradians, so I suppose if you put Hubble at MRO's orbit then it would see about a factor of two better, whereas a naively one might assume a factor of 4.8 times better given that the aperture sizes on Hubble and HIRISE are 2.4 and 0.5 meters respectively. That is probably a bit of apples to oranges because I don't know in what context the Hubble resolution is. The HIRISE says it is 30 cm per pixel at 300 km, but the Hubble number I found just states it as the basic telescope resolution without mentioning whether they are talking about an Airy disk size, Rayleigh criterion, or whatever. For what it is worth, both the basic Hubble (without instruments) and HIRISE both run at f/24, so their blur spots would be comparable, so if you put the same detector behind them, they would have the same resolution.

Re:Impressive resolution

[Xeger]

Don't forget, kids, that Mars has virtual no atmosphere and is significantly smaller and less massive than Terra. Has anyone checked the Mars satellite's orbital radius? I'd be willing to bet that the "theoretical maximum" of 10cm resolution assumes an Earth satellite in low Earth orbit.

Re:Impressive resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it have multispectral capabilities? Hah! It has a full multi-spectral imager, called CRISM, which takes essentially 4-dimensional pictures with spatial resolution below 20 meters per pixel and spectral resolution across the visible and IR ranges (362nm to 3920nm) of 6.5nm (i.e. 544 color channels). Meaning: it takes a full spectrum for every 20m x 20m (or sometimes 15m x 15m) pixel.

Re:Impressive resolution

[JungleBoy]

About 5 years ago I attended a technical workshop at JPL in Pasadena, CA. One of the presentations I went to was on new features added to the GeoTIFF image format. It was given by a contract software engineer for the DoD. The part the made me raise an eyebrow was when he was discussing being able to create multi-petabyte geotiff images through virtuallization/referencing in the format. He made the off hand comment that the entire planet at 1cm resolution is about 1PB, and his geotiff extensions could handle it.

Re:Impressive resolution

[Wavicle]

Wait wait wait... Are you saying that you are working with UNCLASSIFIED satellite photography with a resolution of 5cm? You couldn't tell us the resolution if the imagery were classified. Satellite resolution is one of those *AHEM* types of classified info (tells our opponents what type of counter-measures to employ). You're worried about your job and you just leaked something like this? The limit of confirmed resolution, to the best of my knowledge, is 10cm. Are you SURE you're not working with aerial photography?

Re:Impressive resolution

[MtViewGuy]

Actually, the resolution of the HiRISE camera could be even better because Mars' very thin atmosphere causes far less atmospheric refraction issues than imaging Earth from LEO. That picture of Opportunity was done probably with the camera not fully calibrated; properly calibrated the HiRISE camera could probably resolve objects as small as 30 cm across in the right conditions.

Re:Impressive resolution

[symie5]

I'm not "leaking" anything sensitive, so no worries about my job. :-)

However, all the heckling was bothering the hell out of me so I had to go back and double-check my sources, and I apologize; I believe I stand mistaken...the first 2-inch res imagery to which I referred was indeed aerial photography (frown), and a secondary image to which I referred as being awestruck by was a 10cm res image (according to a colleague)...my sincere apologies to BWJones. I am humbled.
 
Oh, and thanks, Wavicle, for providing the heckle that made me run and check again. (yet another frown)

Re:Impressive resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Both the rover tracks and the shadow of the camera mast are considerably narrower than 30cm. The resolution on HiRISE is very good, indeed. I thought I read 10cm per pixel, but that is still too large to image those items.

Re:Impressive resolution

[mopomi]

Ah. No, I'm thinking of CRISM, the spectrometer, also on MRO.

MARCI is for weather monitoring (it will be very useful for knowing where there are clouds and haze and avoiding targetting HiRISE there).

There's also CTX, the context imager, clocking in at ~6m/pixel.

Lots and lots of good data is going to come from this mission.

Re:Impressive resolution

[Iron Condor]

How would one determine how to correct the image when looking down from space?

In the simplest case the same way your digital camera does autofocus: You pick a horizontal and a vertical line and adjust focus until you get the sharpest transitions along that line. Make it smarter and more expensive and cover the field and...

There's good reasons that adaptive optics are only ever mentioned in the context of looking upwards. They have little to do with physics.

Full View

[dankstick]

High Resolution View

Re:Full View

[CopaceticOpus]

Super High Resolution View

Re:Full View

[Anonymous Coward]

A higher resolution image was previously available on the site, but was pulled shortly after the discovery of an obscene gesture made by Opportunity.

Maybe Beagle is next...

[R2.0]

And the other rovers can jack it and strip it for parts to keep themselves going.

Depression

[joerdie]

This makes me sad. We now have so much equipment over there doing all this great stuff and no people. I wish there could be another space race. (without the threat of nukes.)

Re:Depression

[Rei]

This makes me happy. We're not wasting many billions of dollars on another "Gee, whiz, we went there!" action before we have brought launch costs down enough to make a Mars base sustainable in the long-run. Instead, we're using extremely effective robotic probes for the tiniest fraction of the cost as a stopgap.

Re:Depression

[drinkypoo]

Actually, the threat of nukes is already here and several nations are warming up for the space race. The only question remaining to be answered is whether the US will be able to afford to participate by the time it happens.

Re:Depression

[caseih]

Wasting billions of dollars? You have a strange idea of where money goes. Those billions of dollars that if spent on a space race would ultimately increase the size of our economy (national and global) by up to three fold (if I remember my Econ 101 class correctly). That amplifies the affect of the money and really allows that money to now benefit many more people, that it would if we spent it directly on, say, some kind of welfare assistance. Of course it's the disparity that we should worry about. But still. It's not like our money goes into space with the rockets.

Re:Depression

[njchick]

That only works as intended is a very strong economy compared to the rest of the world. Otherwise, the taxes are increased and the business goes to better places, like China. You are left with companies that can produce Mars rockets, but cannot produce even simplest things for a competitive price. And please don't forget the internal debt.

Re:Depression

[marcosdumay]

And you , sir, have a strange idea of economics...

Re:Depression

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not wasting many billions of dollars on another "Gee, whiz, we went there!" action

Yeah, who want's to go to another Iraq.

Re:Depression

[iamlucky13]

Well, I guess "Gee whiz, we went there" is hard to value scientifically and altruistically, but I know a lot of people who spend thousands of dollars just so they can say "Gee whiz, we went there" for a vacation when they could've just bought a couple post cards.

Not that I think of mankind exploring the solar system in person as merely vacation or a distraction for our collective societal mind. However, I do think that such purpose justifies the investment at least as much as the $billions spent every year on music, movies, art, and fictional reading, etc. In the case of space, though, those of us interested in seeing it for the sake of seeing it have to vote or lobby our tax dollars in that direction rather than simply going to Amazon and buying a CD, and we have to respect our neighbors if more of them choose to vote or lobby tax dollars away from NASA.

As far as human space travel not being a distraction for the collective societal mind, I don't think humans in space has any less value for the ultimate growth of our understanding of the universe compared to that offered by robotic missions than the experiences of a tourist in a foreign city does compared to a post card. There are definitely limits to what cameras and spectrometers can provide us in either case.

The main difference, of course, is the price of a holiday versus a space program; those pesky launch costs you refer to. I really hope the current track we're on leaves us in good position to further our exploration over the next 10, 20, and 30 years to go beyond low earth orbit and the moon, but the cost/benefits will be coupled with the idealistic dreams and other factors in determining how far we go how fast.

I won't bother re-iterating others thoughts on the proposal of exploration as a survival tactic, but I think that's a worthy angle, too.

Re:Depression

[John Meacham]

Don't get me wrong, I think the scientific space program is great, well worth the money, with many tangible benefits.

But the logic of increasing the size of our economy is flawed, see the following for a treatment of the issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

in practice, a space program is nothing like a broken window, the technology and science it produces well exceeds the cost, but the act of spending the money alone isn't where the economy derives its benefits.

Re:Depression

[caseih]

With the exception of the problem of disparity and wealth distribution, everything I have said is true. Spending one dollar in the economy really does generate several times that in effect. It's similar to depositing a dollar in the bank. Due to how money flow works, one dollar in the bank increases the total money supply in an economy by three times that (depending on the reserve rate). The economy as a whole is similar to a bank, in that money is in use in several places at once. I cannot say what that increase factor is (likely it is smaller than 3 times), but logically it does exist.

Spending money on the space program would have the same effect on the economy as using fiscal policy to control inflation. Government spending in the economy does have a very real and immediate effect on the overall economy. Of course this must be done very carefully so as not to cause overheating, inflation and then later recession. As others have correctly pointed out, there is a problem of national internal debt. But if you take an extreme point of view (I do not espouse this position), paying down the debt has very little positive short-term effect on the economy, and so the debt should just be ignored (after all the money system of profits, debt, debits, credits is all really a figment of our imagination -- an immaterial house of cards).

Of course you could back up your claim with sound economic theory that refutes my statements. I would accept that.

Re:Depression

[Tablizer]

This makes me sad. We now have so much equipment over there doing all this great stuff and no people.

Seen at JPL: "My robot went to Mars and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Re:Depression

[Eccles]

Nonsense.

A dollar spent on the space program is a dollar not spent on something else, nothing more.

GDP is all about getting people working productively. The more people are working productively, the more GDP. The higher the unemployment, or the more people who are doing inefficient support work, the worse off your GDP. Money is just a system of measure and exchange. If you spend money on a space program, then your product is knowledge, but there are other things that you haven't product. But there's no magic beyond that.

This whole mysterious factor of three stuff? Everything in the end goes to salaries, whether it's a space program or me buying consumer goodies I want. And those salaries are spent. But it's no special magic when a rocket scientist spends his salary versus a recreational computer programmer spending his.

Re:Depression

[caseih]

Yes, very good points. So the argument is about whether or not spending money in the space program brings about more economic productivity overall. I believe it can. Especially now that certain parts of the tech industry are going off-shore. Despite the consumer electronics production boom overseas (where the majority of our consumer spending seems to end up), high-tech aviation technology is still largely an American thing. Thus spending money on space and aerospace is a good thing for America, in my opinion.

Re:Depression

[marcosdumay]

The size of a economy is the amount of wealth that its people have. You don't automaticaly increase it by trowing wealth out of the planet (of course, well done science pays well, but it is not your point).

And, yes, most investiments pay off some amount (not all of them, like you assume), but government investments tend to pay much less than private ones, it is even usual that they have negative pay-offs (that's why communism didn't work). The main reasons that government spents benefits the economy is because it changes the wealth distribution and can have long time rewards. Both factors that capitalism alone don't deal well with.

Now, comparing the economy with a bank is a pretty bad analogy. Of course, MONEY won't go away, but money is not wealth (that's why we have inflation).

Will this change Opportunity's plans?

[RobertB-DC]

Ok, I'll admit, my first thought on seeing the picture was Oh. My. Gawd. That's a picture of something we put on another *planet*, a little red dot in the sky. Then I started rummaging through the stock phrases about the future of Man and stuff like that.

But one actual question that comes to mind -- now that the Opportunity team has high-resolution pictures of their baby's room, will they change where they send him to play? For example, could they see that rock just south of the dark "Cape Verde" formation? And looking back, if they'd had pictures like these to work with, would they have approached the crater from a different angle?

Re:Will this change Opportunity's plans?

[DerekLyons]

But one actual question that comes to mind -- now that the Opportunity team has high-resolution pictures of their baby's room, will they change where they send him to play? For example, could they see that rock just south of the dark "Cape Verde" formation? And looking back, if they'd had pictures like these to work with, would they have approached the crater from a different angle?

I would assume the Rover teams are using the best imagery to hand - and MRO is only one source of that imagery. We've been photographing Mars off and on for forty years now.

Re:Will this change Opportunity's plans?

[mopomi]

I'm not sure of whether they would have approached from a different angle, but they've already used the HiRISE images to plan their trek to where Opportunity is now (it's no longer in the spot as seen in the HiRISE image).

Re:Will this change Opportunity's plans?

[iamlucky13]

Would they change where they send him to play? Probably not. Current planning has been conducted based on images taken my the Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor probes. The best images of the area from those probes are around 1/4 the resolution (1-2 meters/pixel) if I remember right. Still, they show the major features and led to the decision to try to reach the crater.

If you look at the path the rover took from Endurance crater to Victoria, it's pretty much a straight line. The goal for the last 6 months was just to get there. The rover has been running for 10 times as long as needed to be considered a successful mission, and almost 3 times as long as even the most optimistic estimates (they had to get a special budget approval for the operations team after the end of the first year...after two planned-for operational budget extensions).

Even if they had more confidence in the continued longevity of Opportunity, they probably still wouldn't have changed the course much. First, Duck Bay looks like a potentially excellent entrance to the crater, so it's a good place to begin observations. Second, Victoria is half a mile across (1.5 miles around). In a little under 3 years, they've accrued a total of about 5 miles of driving. The further around they start their approach, the longer they have to wait for really detailed pictures that will allow them to pick the true points of interest.

This picture is way cool. I remember way back when they first landed and the MGS caught a picture of the rovers. It was single-spectrum (B&W), and you could see 3 or 4 darker grey pixels that were labeled as the rover, half a dozen or so pixels labeled as the lander, and a sparse string of very slightly darker pixels that seemed to nearly line up labeled as the rover tracks. In this picture you can actually see what direction it's pointed and just barely make out the white stripe of the camera mast.

Taking pictures of the car...

[isaac]

Interesting how the some of the most popular photos from these missions are pictures of other man-made objects. Think of the ratings if there were actual people there! Nasa could fund their mission on the ad revenue...

-Isaac

Re:Taking pictures of the car...

[kfg]

Think of the ratings if there were actual people there!

Is she sunbathing nude?

KFG

Re:Taking pictures of the car...

[mcmonkey]

Interesting how the some of the most popular photos from these missions are pictures of other man-made objects.

Considering how NASA is consistently at the short end of the federal budgeting stick, would the agency do better as a private foundation funded by sending out probes decked out like something out of NASCAR?

Re:Taking pictures of the car...

[Daniel_Staal]

On Mars, that'd get you a real killer tan...

Re:Taking pictures of the car...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of like this?

Re:Taking pictures of the car...

[lynxpardinus]

ad revenue.... you mean like putting viagra stickers on the rovers and then take pictures of them? :)

red rover

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to know what red rover looks like from space...

Wow!

[east coast]

It's fantastic that eggheads can find that teeny tiny rover on all the face of Mars when on most nights I have a hard time finding the ignition in my car after I leave the bar.

Re:Wow!

[Midnight Thunder]

It's fantastic that eggheads can find that teeny tiny rover on all the face of Mars when on most nights I have a hard time finding the ignition in my car after I leave the bar.

If they can do this maybe they will finally find Beagle 2?

Re:Wow!

[dan828]

The already did that a few months ago. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4542174. stm

Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think they might take a gander at the last known location of the Beagle? ... just to see if it impacted or fell over ...

Re:Great news!

[zulater]

or got stomped on by transformers.

Proof!

[MindStalker]

Finally Proof of intelligence. On another planet.
(Robot is proof of intelligence, and its on another planet, the sentences don't necessarily have to be linked.)

Re:Proof!

[ivanmarsh]

Perhaps it got to Mars the same way we got to Earth.

Re:Proof!

[mcmonkey]

Perhaps it got to Mars the same way we got to Earth.

If so, what was our planned operational lifetime? And will we exceed expectations?

Re:Proof!

[trongey]

Finally Proof of intelligence. On another planet.
(Robot is proof of intelligence, and its on another planet, the sentences don't necessarily have to be linked.)

I'll give you partial credit for the "on another planet" part. No points for proof of intelligence, because there's strong evidence that the robot was built by humans.

Re:Proof!

[sighted]

That's an interesting observation. I don't know if there was ever life on Mars before, but there is now (at least in proxy). That rover is probably the only thing moving on that plain, perhaps ever. It reminds me of the end of The Martian Chronicles, when the family looks into the canal to see the Martians, and their own reflections look back at them.

Re:Proof!

[geekoid]

"And will we exceed expectations?"

every day.

Re:Proof!

[greenegg77]

Perhaps it got to Mars the same way we got to Earth.

If so, what was our planned operational lifetime? And will we exceed expectations?

I hope not. My body already sounds like a box of Rice Krispies...

Re:Proof!

[Paradise Pete]

-Atheist: someone who's too lazy to get up at 8:00 on the weekend.

By eight o'clock I'm usually at about the 11th tee. Although I have to admit, God has probably been mentioned several times by then, one way or another ;-)

Re:Proof!

[Tim C]

But they are linked; it is proof of intelligence and it is on another planet. Thus it is proof, on another planet, of intelligence or equivalently, "proof of intelligence on another planet".

You're not necessarily saying that the intelligence is on that planet, no matter how many people may infer that...

Re:Proof!

[Eternauta3k]

Thanks, you brought back fond memories of my childhood... which would be like 3 years ago :P
maybe the future will be more like firefly and less like star wars

Re:Proof!

[ivanmarsh]

Well... considering we probably arrived here in microbe form I'd assume we've been here a lot longer than expected.

All in a day's work.

[Rob T Firefly]

"Morning, Sam."

"Morning, Ralph."

Re:All in a day's work.

[geekoid]

excellent reference.
well done.

Re:All in a day's work.

[Anonymous Coward]

To what is that a reference? I know I've heard it before but can't seem to recall.

Re:All in a day's work.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it was a reference to a Looney Tunes cartoon, where 1 character is punching out and the other is punching in for the morning.

Re:All in a day's work.

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's a wolf and a sheepdog, too; the wolf tries to eat the sheep and fails in comical ways as the sheepdog foils his plans.

Re:All in a day's work.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Sheepdog_and_Ralp h_Wolf

Re:All in a day's work.

[CptNerd]

Thank you! I haven't laughed at a Slashdot posting moderated "Funny" in a long, long time! You made my day, sir!

mods on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, mods, you don't have to give it a +1 funny if you didn't find it funny, but there's no reason to go -1 offtopic if it is, in fact, a joke about the topic of the article

Re:mods on crack

[east coast]

Well, it is about the topic... but it's not a joke.

Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another of these made-up photos to show we really went to space.
Bah!! Everything is a conspiracy, sonny.
There is no Mars or Moon or anything.
Everything is made up, I tell ya.

More disturbing would have been

[WillAffleckUW]

if the tracks had spelled out "When Can I Come Home?"

Re:More disturbing would have been

[lgarner]

Or if it was on blocks. I'm remembering a pretty cool ad (for a soft drink, I think).

Re:More disturbing would have been

[WillAffleckUW]

maybe if it had an Intergalactic Parking Ticket ... now that would have been fun ...

Re:More disturbing would have been

[virg_mattes]

> if the tracks had spelled out "When Can I Come Home?"

Yeah, no kidding. That would be really creepy. It's a good thing they only spell out "When can I co".

Hey......

Virg

A Better Image IMO

[sasserstyl]

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA08813.jpg

Re:A Better Image IMO

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO the parent links the most beautiful pictures the space program has ever produced.
I have already ordered a poster.

Re:A Better Image IMO

[Bob_Villa]

That is amazing! I just wonder how something like that could have formed. Was it from a massive asteriod impact or something else?

When I first saw it I thought back to Star Wars and the sand pits, but this is much, much bigger. How cool would it be if people could actually be there checking that out close up? I mean, any geek or aspiring space pioneer without a wife/husband and kids would probably gladly accept a one way ticket to see these things close up and to be the first human on Mars.

Re:A Better Image IMO

[ZeroExistenZ]

That is amazing! I just wonder how something like that could have formed.

It looks to me as if the surface is more solid then the sand in the crater (the pattern in the middle looks like loose sand being blown around) and winds moving sand from under the edges of the crater making this jaggy outline by the underground being rendered too loos to support the surface, and having it break off.

The picture is just mesmerizing...

Re:A Better Image IMO

[chrisb33]

Incredible picture - anyone else play "where's waldo" and try to find the rover? (Hint - look at the original picture to get a rough idea of where on the circle it's located)

Re:A Better Image IMO

[Fishbulb]

Yep - you can definitely pick it out in the upper left quadrant of the crater. Just to the left of the large shadowed cliff/region.

Moon Probe

[Midnight Thunder]

Would be nice if they could get such a probe to the moon and then we would be able to show people that the Eagle really had landed.

Re:Moon Probe

[PreacherTom]

Actually, I do believe that you can get imagery of the moon landing from terrestrial observatories.

Re:Moon Probe

[Sloppy]

And even if you can't, I'm sure I could fake something for ya.

Re:Moon Probe

[bill_kress]

Sometimes I think it's more appropriate to allow people to wallow in their own stupidity.

--
"Stay The Course"
        Captain Edward John Smith -- 11:38 April 14, 1912

Re:Moon Probe

[Ars Dilbert]

No, we can't do that. The Apollo artifacts left on the Moon are just too small. Even the mighty Hubble does not have the resolution necessary to resolve Apollo stuff.

The ESA lunar probe SMART-1 was in lunar orbit for a while, and it too was not able to resolve Apollo landing sites. But SMART-1 did capture lunar terrain in detail never before possible, except for the pictures taken on the surface of the moon by the Apollo astronauts. The terrain matched the Apollo pictures perfectly, so yeah we've been there. Not that *I've* ever had any doubt.

Re:Moon Probe

[mh101]

I don't think even that would convince everyone.

They'd simply argue that the probe's launch was actually just another routine launch, and with the state of today's CG capabilities, it would be a piece of cake to fake footage.

The only way to prove it to those people would be to actually send them there in person.

Re:Moon Probe

[Anonymous Coward]

Pff, send me to the moon, and I'll just accuse you of drugging me and putting me in a VR simulation of the moon! I'm a hardcore skeptic.

Re:Moon Probe

[camperdave]

Well, Opportunity is about the size of a golf cart. The lunar rover(s) would be about maybe twice the size of the Mars rovers. The LEM descent stage would (I guess) be about four times the size of that. We should be able to see something. Clementine could have been retasked. However, in a year or two, when the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter gets there, we will have nice crisp photos.

wow...

[Simon Thulbourn]

Wow, I can view Mars in better detail than I can my own freaking house on Google Maps...

Re:wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try http://local.live.com/ If your house is in a "Bird's Eye" area you can see yourself in the back yard ;)

Re:wow...

[arthurpaliden]

That shoud be all the proof you need to say that the Mars photo is fake.

One Mars Probe Probes Another?

[aquatone282]

Oh - "One Mars Probe Photographs Another. . ."

My bad.

Re:One Mars Probe Probes Another?

[Tablizer]

Oh - "One Mars Probe Photographs Another. . ." My bad.

Good. I've heard enough Foley jokes already.

The picture is impressive...

[Hamster Lover]

but it is more impressive that Opportunity is still working years after its original mission was expected to end. I know both rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, are showing their age, but still to continue to function two and half years past their "warranty" as NASA calls is so cool. In the time since they landed on Mars I've moved three times, changed cities, broke up with two girlfriends, changed jobs and done time for molesting a goat.

Re:The picture is impressive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, goes to show you... Build a bridge and no one calls you Sammy the Bridge Builder. Kill the giant that's been harrassing your village and no one calls you Sammy the Giant Slayer. Halt Syndrome from destroying the world and no one calls you Sammy the Saviour of the Realm. But f*ck one goat...

(yeah I know, old joke)

Re:The picture is impressive...

[SamSim]

That's nothing. I'm told Pioneer 10 has a fifty-year warranty which it is nowhere near the end of yet.

Repairs are on a return-to-manufacturer basis, of course, that's why it was so cheap

Re:The picture is impressive...

[fooslacker]

Don't lie, you didn't have two girlfriends, you slashdot freak. ;)

Re:The picture is impressive...

[presidentbeef]

Considering his last statement...maybe they were goats.

Re:The picture is impressive...

[greeze]

by Hamster Lover (558288):

...and done time for molesting a goat.

Huh. For some odd reason, I would have expected you to have done time for molesting a different mammal.

Re:The picture is impressive...

[solferino]

Start with hamsters, end up with goats.
OK, good to know what the progression is.

Fantastic!

[penrodyn]

It's amazing what we can do when we try, would it be great if we could spend just 10% of what we spend in Iraq (50 billion) on more unmanned space probes! There is so much out there to discover and so inspiring for our young people to get in to science and technology = and Maintain our technological lead in the world

Re:Fantastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

try 509 billion http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articl es/2006/09/28/cost_of_iraq_war_nearly_2b_a_week/?p age=2

(ten times the number of space probes based on you 50 bil estimate)

Re:Fantastic!

[QuasarBlazar]

Yea, but if we do that where are we going to get our oil?

Re:Fantastic!

[penrodyn]

Easy, we pump another 10% of the Iraq budget into energy conservation and developing alternatives. We kill two birds with one stone, we get less reliance on unstable oil resources and we end up developing new technology which we sell to the rest of thw world.

Haven't you seen the trailers?

[blueZ3]

We all now know it was smashed by a Transformer :-)

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Lost European rover?

[throatmonster]

We should be able to get some very definitive pictures of the lost European rover with this thing. When are we going to get those?

Going into the crater

[MichaelSmith]

Duck bay looks like a good place to try because of what looks like a little break (or slip?) in the scarp just below (in the picture) the location of the rover. I haven't seen any estimates yet of the slope in that part of the crater, nor of the type of material which will be found there.

I am sure there will be a lot of analysis done before they try. Lets hope it goes well. I wouldn't like to see Opportunity turn over while descending on a too steep slope.

Re:Going into the crater

[mopomi]

The problem with ingressing at Duck bay is that it would be on a south-facing slope.

That's bad news for a solar-powered rover in the southern hemisphere.

I agree, though, it looks like the safest place to enter from a slope/scarp point of view.

The Rovers can handle quite a slope. Going down, that is. Coming back out? Well, not so much.

Re:Going into the crater

[Tablizer]

Duck bay looks like a good place to try because of what looks like a little break

But it's not all it's quacked up to be ;-p

Notice the filled in crater on the left.

[arthurpaliden]

If you look at the left hand side of the photo you can see what looks like a filled in crater.

Re: Photographing themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

An analysis of probe communications reveals that they are now uploading their pictures of each other to their MySpace profiles.
Look, they even used that cliched "MySpace angle" where you shoot the camera down from above.

blatent rip-off of another guy's joke

[ClosedSource]

Opportunity-> 0
Camera Mast Shadow-> .

OMG Martians!

[NotAcoolNAME]

MESSAGE TO NASA:::
Johnsons, thanks for the kick-ass work.
It is amazing to think that we have a sophisticated r/c car over there...
NASA stuff.

When are we going back to the moon?

Thanks :D


Did anyone RTFA?
Did you see "promontory"?
I'm using that word tonight. ;)

The image was taken at a local Mars time of 3:30 PM

How long is the Martian day?
Ctrl+T Tab "wiki: martian day" enter =
""and the Martian day is 24.5 hours. ...""
((a cookie to whomever posts what I did ^^^^there^^^^))

Ok... can't make a joke about it...


[/non-social-Friday rant]

more imprressive photo at Rover site

[peter303]

Here you can see detail on the Rover such a camera pole and its shadow. We are talking about a five foot item.
I've seen people on the ground in Google Earth photos when the contrast is good. So this is about the same resolution.

tentative beagle image

[peter303]

The Beagle was spotted by the previous Surveyor orbiter. However, it is only a couple pixel splotch and not certain. I hope they re-shoot this with the new orbiter.

Honk Honk

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the rover's tracks, is Opportunity being driven by a woman?

Re:Honk Honk

[Tablizer]

Looking at the rover's tracks, is Opportunity being driven by a woman?

Women have less accidents than men. A man driver would probably try to jump the crater to show off and crash up.

Re:Honk Honk

[Anonymous Coward]

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389- 2348813,00.html

Paragraph 13.

'nuff said.

Re:Honk Honk

[Tablizer]

It seems to say that women have a larger quantity of accidents, but men's accidents cost insurers more in total. (Plus, that is not US stats.)

another advantage of the Reconnaissance Orbiter

[peter303]

The new orbiter has a high bandwidth connection to Earth, so it can essentially photograph full time. The previous Global Surveyor orbiter lacked this capacity, so it could only be turned on a fraction of the time.

Click here!

[dangitman]

For photos of hot probe-on-probe action.

Under mars surface

[Anonymous Coward]

As neat as one robot photographing another robot on Mars (that red dot in the sky) is, I still want to see a giant hole on mars. Are there layers of dirt under the surface? Are they different than the layers of earth?

The Uranal probe

[noigmn]

I heard NASA is also thinking of sending a probe to Uranus in the near future. Maybe to look for more evidence of what is causing the dark spot.

Re:The Uranal probe

[noigmn]

Argh!

Sorry to double post, but I just searched the net and they've got the pictures back already!

http://images.google.com.au/images?svnum=10&hl=en& lr=&safe=off&q=uranal+probe&btnG=Search

Errant Dog

[chris_sawtell]

Please give us a call if you spot that errant Beagle puppy. The Brits are still mourning their wee dog.

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