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Curiosity Spies Unidentified, Metallic Object On Mars
MrSeb writes "A few hundred million miles away on the surface of the Red Planet, Mars rover Curiosity has photographed an unidentified, shiny, metallic object. Now, before you get too excited, the most likely explanation is that bright object is part of the rover that has fallen off — or perhaps some debris from MSL Curiosity's landing on Mars, nine weeks ago. There is the distinct possibility, however, that this object is actually native to Mars, which would be far more exciting. It could be the tip of a larger object, or perhaps some kind of exotic, metallic Martian pebble (a piece of metal ore, perhaps). Close-up imagery will now be captured and analyzed, and within the next few days we should know if it's simply a piece of Curiosity — or something a whole lot more exciting."
Call me a cynic, but even if the entire planet was made of solid gold, it still wouldn't make it economically feasible to go there.
A puddle of water there would be way more valuable.
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It's a spaceship. This is going to be BIG!!!
TMA-1
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's simply a piece of Curiosity.
Dear NASA: Would you please return it to me? I dropped it there when Iwas playing fetch with my astro-dog but since that vacation in 1982, what with the economy inthe shitter and my extreme insanity and all, Italian conspiracies, etc., etc., I had pretty much given upon retrieving it.
Please mail my battery-actuated vibrating metal thing object to:
Bob S.
445 Gimlet Road
Cornhole, OH
Thanks for bringing this find to my attention, Slashdort!
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Proof that many of today's scientists are from the MTV generation:
"Ooooh! Shiny thing!" :)
shiny ass
What are my car keys doing on Mars!
It looks kind of like a screw to me, but I guess we'll find out in a few days. It would be exciting if it was something more special and could maybe lead to more funding for programs like Mars One. If I wasn't married I'd volunteer for the Mars One program, but I think getting married puts me in the mentally unstable category. If it doesn't than being willing to go to Mars and live in what amounts to a large tent for the rest of my life certainly would... I guess they'll have a hard time finding qualified people.
My God, Its full of Stars!
They finally found the Prothean ruin!
The Martian Goldrush of 2012 (+travel time)
Don't expect to hear anymore about this story.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
that's where I left them
Pretty sure it's just Occam's Razor - Curiosity probaby knocked it off the sink after shaving this morning...
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Has ADD
I called it first so its mine!
It's solid gold. Get to the space wagons, we're headin' West!
Let's all make lame jokes or use this as a chance to bash religion! YippeeeEeee!!!
It's probably just the top of a boring monolith made of some blackish metal. Nothing to see here; move along.
0x or or snor perron?!
1. Surreptitiously cause Curiosity to self-destruct as it gets close.
2. Declare the object an alien superweapon.
3. Request a few trillion dollars for the invasion of Mars.
4. ??????
5. PROFIT!!!
If some tells you to bite it, don't.
Oh, would it not have made more sense to tell us how far away the metal object was from the rover, to how far away Mars is from Earth?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
It doesn't look like a bit of anything bigger that's buried beneath the surface. For one thing, if there was something larger underneath it, the dune would have been deformed around it as the wind blew around the object. More likely it's a bit dropped on the sediment surface. Maybe it is a bit of Curiosity, or maybe we're looking at a shard of an iron-nickel meteorite tossed onto the surface from an impact site nearby? Mars is a very dry environment currently, so previous meteorites when found have been quite shiny (several iron-nickel ones are known thanks to the previous rovers). Still, it doesn't look very dusty, so it looks more likely to be a bit of the rover itself or the gear that smacked onto the surface recently (e.g., the heatshield, which impacted not too far away from Glenelg).
I'm expecting an earth-shattering kaboom!
The very first image in the news shows the rover's wheels/chassis surrounding the metal flake. From the photo, I can't tell the scale, but it's directly below the camera, which is aimed straight down at the surface. Distance: roughly zero.
[
It might be part of a uranium q-38 explosive space modulator!!!!
It's sitting in a field of dust--but it doesn't appear to be dusty. If it were in one of Curiousity's tire tracks looking like that, I might believe the dust had been wiped off, but as it is, I think that the only plausible explanation is that it fell there very recently. Like, within the last day. Which strongly argues that it is indeed, a piece of Curiousity.
"If found, drop in any mailbox. Return postage guaranteed"
I found this ChemCam image in the raw image archive. It does look like a jagged shaving of... something.
While this could just be because the ChemCam telescope/imager has the highest resolution of anything on the mast (and they don't want to move the arm now), it might also mean that they plan to zap the object with the laser and measure its composition.
The enemies of Democracy are
Am I the only one who sees there a bright eyed Martian worm? Soon they'll throw sheep at us, dammit.
Today the Council of Elders reports the exposure of a fifth column of traitors that has apparently existed within the intelligence directorate of world's security services. The Council neither confirms nor denies the contents of the following diplomatic transmission leaked to the blue world by rebellious spies.
12GLENELG0062: If it's actually the trigger for a trap door beneath the rover, for example, or the last remaining relic of the Martian race, then NASA obviously needs to handle it with care.
When a senior military official, apparently intoxicated after having submersed himself in the poisonous liquid that covers two thirds of the enemy world's surface, exclaimed "IT'S A TRAP", K'Breel had the Admiral's gelsacs bronzed and disposed of in the general vicinity of the invader. The Council reminds all citizens that the planetary metals recycling programme operates on a strict basis of "No deposit, no return."
"As it swings toward the shiny object, the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera abruptly falls of its hinges..."
"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?" --Yoda {whips out green light saber}
Which is just bloody great. Now we have to work out how to change an engine mounting from 150 million miles away.
"Curiosity's main activity in the 62nd sol of the mission (Oct. 8, 2012) was to image a small, bright object on the ground using the Remote Micro-Imager of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.
The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material. It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified.
To proceed cautiously, the team is continuing the investigation for another day before deciding whether to resume processing of the sample in the scoop. Plans include imaging of surroundings with the Mastcam."
Um, the picture is fairly clear. Granted, if you want to know the exact number of millimeters away it is, that might be tricky to estimate, but you can tell at a glance that the distance is "within reach", almost bordering on "underneath", which should be good enough.
Yes, I know, nobody ever bothers to RTFA. The flip side of that is that nobody should ever expect to actually be informed of anything. :p ;)
"It doesn't look like a bit of anything bigger that's buried beneath the surface."
It's obviously a lid of a can of Marsian Lite.
wouldnt it be trippy
First alien relic!
All rites reversed 2010
It may seem hard to believe now, but gold, silver and diamonds used to lay on the surface of the Earth. It wasn't until man got to the point we were writing things down that we started collecting the shiny things on the surface.
All I'm suggesting is it could be naturally occurring or it could be ejecta from an impact event involving an asteroid with a high metallic content.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I have money its a Schlitz can.
I wonder what the dispatch will say about this?
'The parts falling off this car are of the finest British manufacture."
Now I'm seeing some sort of intelligent comment.
Bored now.
I found this ChemCam image in the raw image archive. It does look like a jagged shaving of... something.
Mars has very sticky dust. Notice how everything in that image looks like a puffy ball. Except this object, which is totally dust free. Which means it's new. Which means either it's from Curiosity or Melvin shot it at Curiosity.
It's a platinum screw. For God's sake, don't pull it out! The whole planet will fall apart.
Proverbs 21:19
Good thing the Cold War is over, because about right now we would be considering nuking Soviets before they got to alien tech. Now we can actually cooperate and fly SpaceX to take a closer look. Probably within 2 years of R&D with unlimited budget.
It doesn't look like there is any local deformation of the Martian ground where that shiny object is.
So, to me it doesn't seem like it's something that "fell off" Curiosity nor it's landing contraptions. This doesn't mean that it's not but just saying it's rather odd that there are no "crater-like" rings or dirt moved around the shiny thing.
Granted a gust of the Martian atmosphere may have re-covered the "crater" but there would still be some sort of visible change in the soil around it.
I think it might be Martian "ore" of some sort.
It could be the tip of an Obelisk? O.o
It's small, covered in metallic make-up and talks incessantly about itself. Much like several of my ex-girlfriends.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Next!
I can see it now, spacecraft returns to earth with an odd piece of metal from mars. Suddenly everyone exposed to it starts acting strangely. It is discovered that this piece contains all of the demonic force of the universe, and all of earth is doomed.
Wonder where that tinfoil duncecap was mislaid
Their mission didn't go so well perhaps.
A meteorite has got to be number 2 on the list after something that fell off the rover/landing system. They are all over the place at Meridiani (Oppie's landing location), and there is nothing like 3 billion years of very, very dry wind erosion to uncover and polish those bad boys.... Everything else is way way way down the list of possibilities....
Just you wait.
So for this object to remain dust free after falling of Curiosity, it must be internal component (we might have a problem with Curiosity), have some different properties than Curiosity material or dropped from the orbit (and in this case would leave a crate).
Any plausible explanation makes this very interesting find.
be careful when passing
Looks like a torn piece of foil. Some shielding knocked off during the landing, maybe?
They won't tell us anyway, so don't get excited.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material.
Oh, sure, like they would actually tell us if it is the tip of some Martian tinfoil hat!
This is an easy one. It's a monolith.
It says "PINBACK"
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Will turn out to be a chunk of platinum group metals. So begins the push to mine Mars.
It's Jimmy Hoffa's crashed escape pod.
"...Mars rover Curiosity has photographed an unidentified, shiny, metallic object..."
Bite my shiny metal ass....!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. Announce it was just debris from the booster.
2. Go quite on all subsequent media on mars focusing on "curiosity" mission.
3. Announce "jupiter" mission (which is a cover story ofcourse)
4. Massive funding and spectacular research on new launch tech.
5. "crashes" into jupiter and landing failed (actually lands on mars to investigate why there is a coke can on mars)
So for this object to remain dust free after falling of Curiosity, it must be internal component
It could just be something that flaked off the outside of Curiosity, and landed with the dust-free side up.
While the timing makes a part of the arm, specifically CHIMRA, seem most likely, they haven't done more than just scoop so internal parts of CHIMRA haven't been subjected to any new abrasion, and any already loose parts of the internals would have likely been shaken out when they tested the vibration/cleaning mechanisms earlier. It still could be, though.
The enemies of Democracy are
.. had to be said - Red Dwarf is back after all!
"Benign" is an interesting word choice. It's probably not good if Curiosity is shedding parts, but I wouldn't expect them to be dangerous.
Since it was found directly beneath the rover, I bet they can figure out what assembly it came from.
They glued a quarter to the surface to trick us. The fact that we haven't found them yet makes our discovery of said quarter all the funnier to them.
Curiosity managed to travel 350 million miles before falling to pieces.
However if you only count the distance traveled on the surface of Mars...then it's pretty typical for US made vehicles.
oh god a piece of my tinfoil hat has torn off and now they've found me.
n/t
Also, you can take a photo on mars, download it, analyze it and publish your results faster than you can get a news story up on Slashdot. ;)
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Who is Slah, and why does he have dots?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Remote, Slight, Slim, Vanishing all seem like better words.
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one..... they said.
Why on earth would you put it this way?
May as well be opening Al Capone's Vaults! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Al_Capone's_Vaults
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
I bet it reads "The cake is a lie"
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
put it there with a fishing line attached to it and it'll get pulled in a little further as the rover gets near. Damn Martian hooligans.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Look sir: Droids.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Quick! KILL IT!
It _is_ close to the rover, just a few hundred meters from touchdown. And it could be a fragment of the ablative heatshield, which was released kilometers up above that whole landing area.
Congrats, we're doomed.
It's Nancy Green's candy wrapper. (Extra, extra bonus for ultra obscure reference.)
It's full of stars!
It must be a rare sample of Cthonian scrap-metal that was not scavenged by the human's during the real space race.
...Bender's Shiny Metal Ass.
If this "shiny metal object" is native to Mars then Apple will most likely sue Mars for infringing on their Shiny Metal Object patents.
If it's a piece of a Terran rover on Mars, doesn't make it the first known alien artifact?
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
MrSeb writes:
"It could be the tip of a larger object"
How do you figure, given that it's resting gently on top of some loose pebbles? did you even bother to look at the chemcam images?
It actually is to a partially buried warning sign. The sign is to warn us that it is over a hazardous nuclear waste dump that the ancient Martians put there. The Martian civilization went extinct because they too didn't know what to do with all that waste. The problem is that we are too dumb to understand that it was meant to be a warning.
Curiosity is so curious, it's starting to rip itself apart.
Their "When the Aliens Reveal Themselves to Us, the Whole World Will Collapse Into Chaos" mantra is one of the foundation tenets of their religion.
It's one of the excuses for why not even the tiniest shred of credible evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial visitors and their transportation system has ever been found, despite an extensive search by hillbillies, teenage courting couples from small towns, and the clinically insane.
It's right up their with that other crucial belief, "The Whole World is Conspiring Against Us to Hide the Existence of UFOs and the Aliens!"
Time out for a second. That wasn't supposed to happen. Do you see that thing that fell out of me? What is that? It's not the surprise. I've never seen it before! Never mind, it's a mystery I'll solve later...
Just one question.
Is it an ass that I have to bite?
Updated: NASA’s initial assessment is that the object is in fact a piece of plastic that has fallen off Curiosity. Further analysis will be performed before a final judgment is made.
We go, we explore, we litter!
Be seeing you...
Or maybe God created a universe full of beings like us (even if they don't look like us). Maybe they already know God.
Doctors were interviewed who claim to have treated the lizard-like aliens who are alleged to have crashed in Brazil years ago, and it was recorded in a book all about the Brazil crashes (I don't remember the title, but it should be very easy to find on Amazon). One of the doctors said that an injured alien said to him (I'm paraphrasing), "We feel pity for humans. You don't realize you are spiritual beings in physical bodies."
If aliens do exist, why would we have a monopoly on God, the creator of the universe?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
It would be interesting to see if there could be water on Mars but does it forfill all the factors needed to have H2o?
This was researched by Nasa scientists on a documentry call "The Privaleged Planet"
-Johann
http://quickenme.weebly.com/powerful-testimonies.html
...is that it will have Russian writing and a radiation hazard symbol on it. I would love to see some previously top-secret rover show up from decades past.
...Bite My Shiny Metal Ass.....
We'll all be dead and dust before too long. Why worry about Mars?
Oh that's right - find something that looks vaguely alien and the first thing we do is zap it with a laser.
No wonder we never get visited.
Yes but is it from this rover, or a parallel universe rover?
In science, you don't just jump to easy conclusions.
Hey, that's not fair. It's not the first thing we do. First we take pictures so we know what it looked like before we lasered it.
The enemies of Democracy are
http://www.amazon.com/Vault-of-the-Beast-ebook/dp/B001M0N0FO
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
But because we can't imagine anything important of that size we'll never know.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.