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Spirit Rover Begins Making Night Sky Observations
Nancy Atkinson writes "Even though the Spirit rover is stuck in loose soil on Mars, she has an overabundance of electrical power due to a wind event that cleaned off her solar panels. While MER scientists and engineers are having the rover take pictures of her surroundings in an effort to figure a way to get her dislodged, there also is enough power (since the rover isn't moving anywhere) to do something extra: keep the rover 'awake' at night and run her heaters so she can take images of the night sky on Mars. 'Certainly, a month or more ago, no one was considering astronomy with the rovers,' said Mark Lemmon, planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of the rover team. 'We thought that was done. With the dust cleanings, though, everyone thinks it is better to use the new found energy on night time science than to just burn it with heaters.'"
the sky image - those aren't stars, just "hot pixels"... and the pics are never, ever true colors. How come we can't get true color pics for our hundred million dollars?
Then, when they DO image something interesting, like this Martin crinoid, they won't talk about it!
Who decided she was female?
Less well scientifically endowed individuals might think that storm = rain, thunder and lightening as well as wind.
Just so we have a record of it, you're saying that's NOT a fossilized crinoid on Mars, right?
I wonder how long are the martians going to keep feeding us this data. They should be tired of this joke by now.
Is that what we mere mortals call a 'storm'?
What, are you trying to make some sort of humor event?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Next time I'm under the covers with my wife and she asks where that smells come from, I can now say: a wind event.
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Did anyone else read this title as, "Sprint Rollover Begins Making Night Sky Observations"?
I was thinking, "Now what? The phone companies won't let us use our rollover minutes after dusk? Sheesh."
I doubt he read what you wrote. I didn't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Less well scientifically endowed individuals might think that wind = farting.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....