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Mars Lander Snaps the Most Detailed Pics Yet
An anonymous reader writes "The Mars Lander has taken its very first microscopic image of a piece of Martian dust (image). The particle, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is shown at a higher magnification than anything ever seen from another planet. The piece of dust is a rounded particle about a millionth of a meter across. This particle is one of the countless specks of dust that continually swirl around the Red Planet, coloring the Martian sky pink. 'Taking the images required the highest resolution microscope operated off of Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian dust,' said Tom Pike, a Phoenix science team member. 'We always knew it was going to be technically very challenging to image particles this small.'"
'Taking the images required the highest resolution microscope operated off of Earth and a specially designed substrate to hold the Martian dust,'
How many microscopes do we know of which operate off of Earth?
It's called micrometer. I know, that sounds too sciency, sorry.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
When we wanted to analyze moon rocks, we didn't send a microscope to the moon, we brought the moon rocks to the microscope (on Earth). I think it would save a lot of time and money to just send up some astronauts to colelcts some dust and rocks and bring them back. I guess NASA needs to waste money to justify a bigger budget.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Aka the cheapest microscope that we can put in a rocket.
Confucius say "Sending giant rocket to see little piece of dust like bringing mountain to Mohammad."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Is it just me, or is there apparently very little science in that picture (to my untrained eye, anyway)? It shows the size of the particle, true, but very little else, IMHO. I guess I was underwhelmed by the picture - I was hoping for more resolution to show any texture of the particles.
Has anyone seen any hard science out of this mission yet? I see press releases, but no spectrographs or elemental makeup data on the soil samples baked so far.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I was expecting to see a speck of dust, and instead I see flaming green projectiles landing on a red carpet.
Are these simply toxic meteorites, or did the gov't slip up and accidentally post photos of aliens arriving at the Martian Academy Awards?
... Species II started?
Well, it's not what I expected. I kinda imagined a tiny rock.
Smivs on the intertubes!
1. Write a headline, "NASA: Mars Lander sends most detailed Martian pics yet"
2. Don't include a picture of the microscope view
. . . here's another view of the piece of the Martian dust: .
Mars is not pink.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
The original source for this story is here. Updates and raw daily images directly from the team running the mission are here.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
Either both you, and your moderators, are a little too quick on the button today, or I don't know what "+5 informative" means anymore.
/. does need a Whoosh! score.
I don't know why so often we get articles linked to sources completely unrelated to the topic at hand. I understand and appreciate PCMag having articles unrelated to PC's occassionally for the edification of their readers, but there's no reason not to get a topical source for sharing on Slashdot. Space.com and spaceref.com are great news sites for lay-persons, and one thing NASA is generally outstanding about is having detailed, up-to-date, and accurate mission websites.
/rant
Anyways, I think calling this a picture affects readers' expectations. The atomic force microscope is a coordinate mapping tool rather than a camera. It uses tiny probes to sense the surface profile of a target and create elevation maps based on that data. It's more of a three-dimensional graph than a picture and it doesn't use light, but it can reveal much finer details than an optical microscope can.
Here's a similar image to that linked in the summary overlayed with an optical microscope picture of the same area. Note that the optical microscope image is about 3 mm across, of a target of micromachined silicon that has a bunch of tiny pits, posts, and bumps intended to hold dust particles of different types. The atomic force microscope image is 100 times the resolution of the optical image.
Actually, even the optical microscope on Phoenix is far higher resolution than any camera previously flown to another world, but the AFM takes the capability two steps further. Between the two, the Phoenix team is learning a lot about the soil on Mars that should allow them to deduce not only its bulk properties, but even hints about how it formed.
By the way, the Mars Rovers have "microscopic imagers," but these are really more like close-focus cameras than true microscopes. Offhand I can't think of any other robotic space missions that carried microscopes.
Mars is made of Legos!
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
rounded particle about a millionth of a meter across
Get it right.
While we're at it, maybe someone would care to share arbitrary comparisons to help us visualize... like if we could line these particles up from the Earth to the Moon, it would take nearly 3.84403(10^14) of them! Or, if we encircled the Earth with these particles, it would take nearly 4.0008(10^13)! Amazing!!! It's all so clear now.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Am I the only one who raised an eyebrow at the image they used in the article?
Headline: NASA: Mars Lander sends most detailed Martian pics yet
Followed by what I suppose is an artists rendition of Mars from far enough away that it only takes up a quater of the image.
That's no speck of dust, that's a fucking planet!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
"NASA: Mars Lander sends most detailed Martian pics yet"
Gotta love the picture they used to illustrate that. "Most detailed pictures yet!" *low res picture of the whole planet.*
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
launch day:
"ok we're suited up and ready to go"
"see you on mars guys! t minus ten minutes now"
"say... this rocket looks kind a small... where's the return module?"
"oh, it's hidden under that booster over there, don't worry about that"
"no, i'm certain this craft is way smaller than schematics i've been shown... and it looks like we have enough fuel to only get to mars"
"tick tock, tick tock, times a wasting guys, better get inside now"
"look, here's the manifest, my gosh, we only have half the amount of oxygen we need to get here and back, someone alert command"
"ok, i told them, we'll get back to you once you've passed the moon. chop chop, get inside now fellas..."
"hmmm"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Frosty patch! (no, really.)
Stop the presses! I see a face in that pic!
At NASA it's 4.97 nanofurlongs.
No sig today...
A micrometer is a millionth of a meter. Period.
There are many types of micrometer-level measuring tools, including the inside, outside, depth, screw-threaded micrometer variants, to name a few.
However, they are named such because they measure at the micrometer level, not vice versa.
"In the US..." should never be an excuse, it's assumed.
although they keep saying it's not the size of the rod that matters, but how it's used.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
And how much did that cost us? Come'on, dismantle NASA and let private pioneers launch space ventures. This is becoming ridiculous, individuals launches spaceships for a fraction of the cost that NASA do. Lets face it, NASA may have once been a great institution. But that was then, now they can't compete and ought not even try.
about a millionth of a meter across.
What is it, like a microyard?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/to_see_world.html
N/A
Alien Lego
Color me green
So surreal
Dusty atomsphere
I've not seen any dust with colours like that go into my hoover.
I used to have a microyard. I mowed it with cuticle scissors.
That's my left testicle!
Has ANYONE read the caption !! C'mon folks, this is an atomic force microscope. Read and learn. Please.