Spirit & Opportunity

Byron · 2004-01-04 07:56:45

They really couldn't have picked a better spot to put a rover down, huh? I can't WAIT until that thing hits the road!...lol..

B

Rxke · 2004-01-04 08:39:27

Looks like Murphy for once 'mislaid' that one sharp rock...

Creepy to see that, though, just next to the lander...
Well, tough luck, Murph! Now they have an excellent first target to examine, without even having to leave the 'petals'

Palomar · 2004-01-04 08:39:55

They really couldn't have picked a better spot to put a rover down, huh? I can't WAIT until that thing hits the road!...lol..
B

*Wow...just got up. Thanks Rik and Josh for all the links and updates. You've given me early this a.m. what the major news media haven't! I really appreciate it.

Yeah, flat land for sure; few rocks, etc. Wow.

This looks like a really sweet proposition all around...

Fingers crossed for the same terrific success for Opportunity!

--Cindy

dickbill · 2004-01-04 09:19:51

Hats down for JPL NASA and all the team behind SPIRIT !
They proved again that they are the masters of space navigation and planet landing.

I hope it's just the beginning of further Mars exploration, whether or not life or fossils are discovered, Life must settle down on Mars.

My guess for Spirit : it will prove once for all that water has flooded once on Mars, but still, no fossil traces of life will be found.

Rxke · 2004-01-04 09:25:38

WOW! Hi-res version of that panorama shot! beware >443kb:

This essentially is a 'photoshopped' file: using the polar filter on the fish-eye pic of the lander... Dunno if it's *really* official, probably a leake hi res from a reporter that has acces to these...

I've put up a mirror on a free server, it was not on an 'official' big iron, so it could take a while to load:
here

EDIT: heh, indeed slow, but have patience, it gets sharper while downloading...

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 10:58:44

Morning guys. News briefing should be coming up soon on NASA TV. ::waves::

BTW, Rxke, awesome picture ya got there.

Rxke · 2004-01-04 11:21:11

Josh, could you provide a link?

(I'm getting waaay too tired to search myself...)

snatched this from Slashdot, thought it was interesting:

"Production Line (Score:5, Interesting)
by WindBourne (631190) on Sun 04 Jan 06:32AM (#7871055)
( Last Journal: Mon 22 Sep 02:34AM )

The hard part is the landing. If MER-B also survies, it would be nice if L-Mart can start a production line of this vehicle to be loaded with different instruments for different countries. While the price was 400 Million for each of these rovers, in a production line, I would expect the price to drop to 100 Million or less for the base model. Let UK, EU, India, Brasil, and Japan send up working systems with their instruments and their launchers (or with l-marts).

Personally, I am interested in seeing a bunch of these crawl all over mars with all sorts of different science packages. "

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 12:02:17

Aw, I'm sorry Rxke! I thought you had a link to the NASA TV Real Player streams.

I was watching on TV, and having breakfast... anyway, here's a link for your consumption: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html

The press conference was good, not really anything new to those of us who stayed up last night and watched everything live, just covering the basics, plus a little speculation about where Spirit might be heading. There's a depression somewhat south east of the rover, and one of the guys was talking about how interesting it was to him, but stressing that we know nothing about this terrain until we have the high resolution Pancam pictures.

We should get those by midnight PST.

BTW, go to this link and click on the sample panorama just to get an idea about how high quality our pictures from Mars are going to be (mind you, they'll be in full color, and they'll not be so pixelated): http://athena.cornell.edu/the_mission/ins_pancam.html

Sorry for not being here to provide you a link to NASA TV, I take for granted that everyone just knows.

Rxke · 2004-01-04 12:09:27

Didn't realise t would be the same.

Just found this: the landingsite:here

gonna look if i can paste that in a hires of gusev i downloaded from one of the first links from Stu... 25 m resolution!

(Edit, yes, found it, exactly where the 'pro's' showed it was, see link further in the thread (official, not mine)

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 12:10:04

Oh, a really nice momment was when one of the guys said that Colin from Beagle 2 called them up and congradulated them on a good landing. They (meaning the NASA people) sent out their best wishes and said that they still held out hope that Mars Express would contact Beagle 2. Really touching momment.

That's what it's all about folks. No EU vs. US. No "we're better than you are." Just science.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 12:14:32

Heh, one of the questions from an audience member started talking about "3d artifacts" alluding to some intelligence or something like that and the panel member it was directed to answered that question really well.

It was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists decided to poke their nose where it doesn't belong. Like the panel member said (man, I should be ashamed not knowing the name of that guy!), the images are not high res enough to really make any comments about anything except rock dispersion, and perhaps at the least get a general idea of locality, but other than that, you're wise to wait for Pancam images, since they will be fully 3D, extremely high res, etc.

Believe me, tonight at midnight when that 45 degree Pancam image comes through, you will feel like you're on Mars (especially if they're kind enough to provide stereo images viewable on the monitor without glasses).

Palomar · 2004-01-04 12:31:30

*More good news: NASA is listed on the Yahoo! homepage's "Most Popular Yahoo! Searches"...right up there with Lord of the Rings, NFL, and Atkins Diet.

This is the first time I've seen NASA listed there, which means LOTS of people are tuning in!

--Cindy

Stu · 2004-01-04 12:43:27

Looking at the panoramas released so far, I'm struck by the two light, roughly round areas between the lander and the horizon. There appears to be a hint of a third one closer to the lander too, but elongated, more like a trench. And all appear to be aligned with the lander...

Is it possible these are areas where the lander bounced before coming to rest? Brighter in the images because the impacts disturbed the dust and removed some of the rocks?

Wouldn't that be something? :-)

Loving the pictures, and grateful to everyone for providing links as they become aware of them (when I click on your latest link tho, Rxke, I get nothing..?). Really looking forward to those first hi-res panoramas now!

Here's an ironic note for you. According to the 2004 Sky & Telescope THE YEAR IN SPACE desk calendar, on this day in 1970 NASA cancelled the production of further Saturn V rockets, effectively killing the end phase of the Apollo missions, and, realistically, all hope of staging a manned mission to Mars any time soon after. And yet today, here we are, marvelling at pictures of an ancient lake bed on Mars, thru the eyes of a robot that would fit in one of a Saturn V's engine nozzles with room to spare.

Makes you think, huh?

Looking at the pics, you know I can't help thinking that when people do eventually go to Mars they'll almost certainly walk to Spirit's landing site, and mount a plaque on it, dedicating it to Steve Squyres and the rest of the JPL and NASA team behind the project, celebrating the incredible day in the first week of 2004 when NASA exorcised the ghosts of Mars Polar Lander and the Climate Orbiter, and, in the pioneering spirit of the astronauts lost on Challenger, Columbia, and Apollo 1, showed us that the universe is our real home, and not just this one blue and white planet.

Good job NASA. Very, very proud of you.

Stu

rgcarnes · 2004-01-04 14:59:43

Wonderful initial results by Spirit and all of those involved.

Does anyone else see what appears to be a conformal boundary above the distant features poking above the horizon line in the initial Spirit images? Could this be indication that there is a near-surface atmosphere layer many of us have not been told about?

Rxke · 2004-01-04 15:34:09

(when I click on your latest link tho, Rxke, I get nothing..?).

Stu, had the same impression... Would that be impacts from the bouncing... would be interesting to visit them, to see how fast they 'degrade' if at all..

last link? The landingplace? should work...
Link is: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars....ite.jpg
, dangerous to linkt, hough, cause they keep changing index, might be better to download everything we get, and put them on other servers....

Stu · 2004-01-04 15:59:03

If Gusev really *is* an ancient lake bed then, like lake beds here on Earth, it will be an EXCELLENT place to look for meteorites, and the instruments on Spirit will easily be able to identify any it finds. We have quite a few "martian meteorites" here on Earth (I've had my tiny pieces of Mars beside me here at the computer all day, as a celebration and good luck charm!), so chances are good we might find rocks blasted off Earth on Mars too...

How cool would it be for Spirit to travel all those millions of miles and then find a rock which came from Earth many millions of years ago - maybe even in the impact which helped speed the demise of the dinosaurs..? ;-)

The possibilities offered by this landing site are making me dizzy...! :-))

Stu

Palomar · 2004-01-04 16:04:59

(I've had my tiny pieces of Mars beside me here at the computer all day, as a celebration and good luck charm!),

*::eyebrows up::

Where/how did you get those??

--Cindy

Stu · 2004-01-04 16:21:18

*::eyebrows up::
Where/how did you get those??
--Cindy

It's really not as exotic as it sounds Cindy :-)

I collect meteorites, and use them in my work in schools - kids love handling the cool "space rocks", as you can imagine - and among my collection is a very small amount of what is basically Mars dust, in phials. You see, meteorites from Mars are very, very rare - I think we know of about 15 or so- and they're so rare they're much (much!) more expensive than "normal" meteorites. Because they're worth so much, when they're cut up to make smaller pieces, even the grit and dust from the process is saved and sold... and it's some of that dust that I have, cos I couldn't possibly afford a whole stone! Some was bought by me looooong ago, some was given to me as a present.

Anyone on this list could buy some bits of Mars, if they had the money for it. You could buy a small piece tonight, right now, for a hundred dollars or so, from one of many dealers.

So, okay, my Mars dust looks like it could have been beaten out of a rug, or banged off the bottom of a boot, but it really is from Mars, and today, watching Spirit's pics coming in while I held my little bits of Mars, I felt just a *little* bit closer to it :-)

S

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 17:07:47

They just played the rover wakeup music.

Well, about 45 minutes ago, I wasn't here to post... but ahh well. It was very heartwarming, and I really recommend catching any wakeup call from now until the end of the mission. I recall almost regularly watching the Pathfinder wakeup calls. It was quite lovely.

Shaun Barrett · 2004-01-04 20:37:17

Has anybody noticed the increase in the number of 'Guests' checking out New Mars just lately?
It looks like Mars Express, Beagle 2, and Spirit have stirred up a lot of interest out there!

2004 will be a good time for President Bush to consider naming Mars as the main goal of human missions beyond LEO.

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 23:47:18

I'e been busy today! But Pancam images are coming down now on NASA TV! 3 minutes as of this post!

(And yeah Shaun, I did notice the incread number of Guests!)

Josh Cryer · 2004-01-04 23:58:56

Ahh, they were los res Pancam images of the sun (for directional purposes). The high color ones are after the next Odyssey pass, which I can't tell when is occuring. The next news briefing is 9AM PST though, so they should be available by then for sure.

These images we just recieved were just testing of the high gain antennae direct to earth. Everything worked perfectly. This whole mission has in fact worked perfectly from the getgo, save the not so nominal battery charge.

Mark · 2004-01-05 02:57:30

This is really fantastic news! Congrats to NASA for such a fine landing with the Spirit Rover. Hopefully the landing of Opportunity will go just as well if not better(if such a thing is possible!). Will be an exciting year for Mars!

Rxke · 2004-01-05 04:15:35

This nice person made some stereo anaglyphs out of the raw pictures...
Hazyhills.com

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#76 2004-01-04 07:56:45

Re: Spirit & Opportunity

#77 2004-01-04 08:39:27

Re: Spirit & Opportunity

#78 2004-01-04 08:39:55

Re: Spirit & Opportunity

#79 2004-01-04 09:19:51

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#80 2004-01-04 09:25:38

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#82 2004-01-04 11:21:11

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#83 2004-01-04 12:02:17

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#89 2004-01-04 14:59:43

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#92 2004-01-04 16:04:59

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