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Mars Lander Instrument Waving In the Martian Wind

Posted by timothy on from the more-proof-of-fraud dept.

Matt_dk writes "This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars. On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be 'out-of-phase' with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence."

8 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Any audio from Mars? by pongo000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just curious...no need to mod this up, I have plenty of karma.

    1. Re:Any audio from Mars? by sveard · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Maybe I'm missing something, but why is parent modded Trol?

      Being able to hear the wind blow on another world would be SO cool, even though probably rather useless.

    2. Re:Any audio from Mars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Because he is trolling for karma. Everyone knows the best way to be modded up is to say "I'm probably going to be modded down but..." or "I don't care if you mod me..."

    3. Re:Any audio from Mars? by tuxgeek · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Maybe next time they send a probe to Mars, they will put a directional wind vane and an anemometer on board. A dangling wire just doesn't do it. Only shows a wind is present.

      Audio there would most likely sound the same as wind here, so nothing new.

      --
      "Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
    4. Re:Any audio from Mars? by pongo000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I would suggest a spectrum analysis of the audio received from wind noise would be quite valuable, unless NASA happened to also pack along a Doppler radar unit. Instead of guessing if that really *was* a dust devil that passed by, an audio analysis would probably provide definitive proof.

  2. Here's a panorama to provide some perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Phoenix lander on Mars

    The telltale is a small weight dangling from a vertical boom. More sophisticated instruments would have weighed more, so they opted for this minimal weather instrument.

  3. Pardon the tangent..... by Anachragnome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a carryover from a previous topic regarding the smell of space, I wonder if NASA is trying to determine the smell of the martian atmosphere.

    While we have no humans in place to do the smelling, could samples be taken then sent back for "smell" analysis?

    Previous topic( http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/16/1533239 )already touched on the importance of the smell of space, but what about Mars?

    The fact that there is mass pushing that little flag around leads me to believe that there are also chemical components to provide smell "signatures".

    1. Re:Pardon the tangent..... by thepotoo · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Atmosphere on Mars is 95% CO2, 3% N, 1.6% Ar + trace. I'd guess you can't smell the Ar (you can't smell .9% Ar on earth), and you can't smell Nitrogen, so that pretty much leaves us with the strongly acidic smell of CO2.

      This is all based on conjecture, so things may changes in local areas, during various weather conditions, or if/when we get more accurate measurements from the surface.

      --
      Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase