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Space Science

One Year on Mars 150

Posted by michael from the tempus-fugit dept.
RetroGeek writes "It has been almost a full year for the Mars rovers. NASA has created a flashback of rover images and information. You can use either HTML or Flash (it is the best use of the technology I have seen). There is even a movie taken from the hazard avoidance camera showing the full year of travel."
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One Year on Mars More

One Year on Mars

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  • Quoth TFA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:16PM (#11230819) Journal
    stay tuned as the rovers welcome a brand new year on Mars.

    What does an earth year have to do with a martian year? Nothing thats what!

    • Re:Quoth TFA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      We could all switch to the Darian calendar [wikipedia.org]

    • "What does an earth year have to do with a martian year? Nothing thats what!"

      They're welcoming 05 while they are on Mars. Wasn't that hard to figure out.

    • Re:Quoth TFA (Score:5, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:29PM (#11230888)
      What does an earth year have to do with a martian year? Nothing thats what!

      These rovers are traditionalists who choose to keep the customs of their homeland, so they still celebrate the earth holidays.

    • What does an earth year have to do with a martian year? Nothing thats what!

      Well, that's true and all, but the mission was planned with a time-frame measured in substantially less than even a single Earth-year.

      Yeah, it'd be cool if we could meet the symbolic milestone of a Martian year ... but griping that a mission which has, by now, something like tripled it's initial planned duration just seems like you're whinging about all of the wrong things.

      That's kind of like complaining that the Wright Brother's

  • A martian 'year' is much longer...

  • Seasons (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:21PM (#11230852)
    One of the things that impressed me most about this mission is when they had to take into account the changing seasons on Mars, and their effect on the rovers.

    We are not only on other planets, but planning for spring!

    Happy new year! (And let's hope the evaporating methane does not mess up the sensors come summer :)

  • Well (Score:5, Funny)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:23PM (#11230864)

    maybe they could use the same sets for the manned mission.

  • Flash (Score:1, Informative)

    by oskard ( 715652 )
    I liked the flash presentation. Informative and interactive without being a full blown technology show-off.

  • PBS special next Tuesday (Score:5, Informative)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:30PM (#11230889)
    Those of us in the U.S. may be interested in the Welcome to Mars tht will be broadcast next Tuesday, January 4th, on Nova.

  • Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bperkins ( 12056 ) * on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:32PM (#11230901) Homepage Journal
    it is the best use of the technology I have seen

    You have _got_ to be kidding me.

    It's only saving grace is that it's not flash by default. The intro looks like one of those late 80's slideshow, and the navigation of the main page is infuriatingly confusing and useless.

    I'm about to fire it off to one of my friends who teaches web design as an example of what _not_ to do in a web page.

    I actaully _like_ pretty flash, but when it just slows things down and makes navigation harder, well then it's stupid.

    I guess it's better than the html, which seems broken with my firefox setup.

    • Re:Maybe I'm just a crumudgeon (Score:5, Funny)

      by tuomasr ( 721846 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:40PM (#11230939)

      I guess it's better than the html, which seems broken with my firefox setup.

      Yep, it's broken on firefox with me too, running default setup on WinXP.

      Given the fact that they can't make a simple webpage work with more than one browser makes me wonder how the hell did they manage to put two rovers on an another planet for a year...

      -1, Idiot

      • Works fine with Firefox/WinXP for me. Are you sure you don't have any funny extensions installed? For example, I did indeed discover that the Tabbrowser Preferences extension doesn't play well with windows that have no menu bars.
      • I misread. I thought you were referring to the Flash version. The HTML version is broken for me, too.
      • Thats just the problem.

        These Mercury rovers are doing REALLY well despite being on the wrong planet ;)
      • It works fine on my (Mandrake) Linux laptop with Mozilla 1.7.3 and the Linux Flash Player 7...
      • Given the fact that they can't make a simple webpage work with more than one browser makes me wonder how the hell did they manage to put two rovers on an another planet for a year...

        Being a Fed agency, they can only do stuff they have a budget for. They probably have a very tiny budget for such a web presentation and thus let newbie interns do most of it who have little or no experience or recognition of cross-browser and cross-platform issues.
      • HTML broken (Konquerer and Firefox, Mandrake GNU/Linux 10.1). And guess what? It _almost_ works in links! Except for the only bit I want to see, the time lapse stuff.

        The Flash 'works' (FAGV of 'works') but (a) I'm on dialup, (b) I want a local copy and you can't get to the time lapse bits except through a separate falsh frontend - so you can't even 'view source' and run Javascript thru' one's mental parser to work out an HREF to wget.

        Way to go, JPL. :(

    • [it is the best use of [Flash] I have seen.] You have _got_ to be kidding me.

      I didn't see much that couldn't be done with just HTML. They may have to reduce or rid fade-ins and intra-image roll-overs though, but that is minor.

      Also, the HTML version that they present seems broken. None of the links work for me.
    • I usually hate flash because on most sites it is used quite poorly. I've even argued against using it in some of our own sites (hey, I tend to think most sites should be viewable on lynx). But, I think they did an excellent job on the flash version of the site. It loads quick, looks slick, and the navigation seems pretty straight forward to me. The video descriptions of the images and zoomable 'hot spots' work especially well. I guess it just goes to show that taste is subjective. Thanks NASA.

  • A new milestone. (Score:5, Informative)

    by qualico ( 731143 ) <[worldcouchsurfer] [at] [gmail.com]> on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:36PM (#11230916) Journal
    Now lets try for a Mars Year,
    322 days to go.

    Interesting information on Mars Time:
    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/help/notes.h tml [nasa.gov]

    What is time really?
    It helps us sync here on Earth, but it certainly
    gets crazy once we move into the great beyond.

    Wonder what those Mars team members are doing for New Year?
    They had to follow a different time.

    Cicadian Time would certainly be muddled.
    http://www.nsbri.org/Research/Projects/viewsummary .epl?pid=55 [nsbri.org]
    • Circadian Time - give me a spell check /. :->
      • Yeah, I think "cicadian" time is defined as how long it takes before those buzzing insects drive you insane (nominally about 3 days)
        • Too funny.

          You certainly get those in the hot spots of Canada.
          Always know when its going to be a scorching day when they start making noise.
          • You certainly get those in the hot spots of Canada. Always know when its going to be a scorching day when they start making noise.

            Yeah, those scorching days in Canada. Damned annoying when the dry-ice melts.

            • Actually, something crazy is going with the weather here.
              I was able to mow the lawn in December!
              Still have the roof down on my Jeep also.

              If this trend continues, we'll have palm trees by 2010.
    • "Time is natures way of making sure that everything doesn't happen all at once"
    • Kevin. Dude. Set the bong down slowly and back away from it. Please.
    • Now lets try for a Mars Year, 322 days to go. Ya'll realize this is why we're celebrating the Earth year and not when the Rovers are on Mars for a Mars year, right? Then again, who knows? Maybe there will be a surprise and we'll get both celebrations. In which case, we get to party three or four times!
    • Happy Earth New Year...
    • Lol on the responses.

      Whats wrong with the bong though? :->
    • You didn't even mention that they have for download [nasa.gov] a nice little program [nasa.gov] (runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and probably anything else) which will tell you the time on Mars. Or just view it in your browser window [nasa.gov] (Java required).

      Mars24 is a Java program and browser applet which displays a Mars "sunclock", a graphical representation of the planet Mars showing its current sun- and nightsides, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format. Other displays include a plot showing the relative or

      • That is a great clock. Thanks for the links.

        Confusing about the picture of Mars though.

        You would think the polar caps would be smaller on the upper part of the image when the Sun is clearly extended past it's equinoctial point.

        Surely the elements follow the same rules as here on Earth.

    • Don't you mean... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by uberdave ( 526529 )
      322 days? Should't you be measuring in sols?
    • Wonder what those Mars team members are doing for New Year?
      They had to follow a different time.

      FYI, AFAIK the team is no longer working on Mars-time-day shifts. The experience gained in the first months enabled them to plan activities for both rovers in normal "earth-time" shifts now, and they are often able plan for 3 sols at at time too. Also they are no longer all located at JPL, but back home, and using teleconferencing of some sort for planning.

      • That is interesting.

        Are there not other projects where people are preparing for habitation of the planet in polar or desert regions?

        If so, no doubt they are following Mars time to duplicate the environment as closely as possible.
        • I think there is a settlement on a Canadian(?) island where some research is being done, but I doubt they use Mars-time for reality's sake. The Russians are also said to be planning a long duration test to simulate the long flight to Mars, but that's also unlikely to use Mars-time. I don't think that it is a big priority, but I could be mistaken.

          IIRC the experiences they had living on Mars-time in the first couple of months operating the rovers was that it worked fine, the human body had no noticable probl

          • If there is to be any hope of sending humans to Mars, I bet time shifting tolerability will become a priority in choosing candidates.

            Similar to astronaut testing in the 60's.
            You don't want to find out that 6 months into the mission a crew member falls ill from an inability to adapt to new circadian rhythms.

            No doubt, if we can't even make a go of it here in the artic, don't bother sending any humans millions of Km.

            They really need to start a moon base first.
            Makes so much more sense.

  • Science over everything (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:38PM (#11230927)
    I think NASA rovers was one of the rare things in 2004 which united whole world. They were there for purerly scientific reasons, they did what they had been sent to do, even more - they continue to rock on and provide more and more details, overloading NASA scientists with work for years.

    I see it as victory of science over money, politics, everything which seperate us. Because I think nothing beat those news that we discovered that Mars once definetly has water. So... there should be living organisms on other planets. There could be something like us, humans.

    I think nothing beats that feeling when science and common sence works for whole humanity.
    • I agree. Even though I was sad to hear about the Beagle, I am proud to see our hardware far outlast it's design and just keep on going. Must be using Energizer batteries or something :)

      Now if they can figure out what is cleaning the panels off. My personal theory is it's another tribe of Gnomes like off of Southpark. They come out singing out of a hole in the ground at night, clean off the panels, and disappear again.

    • Re:Science over everything (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <.moc.bnolycspe. .ta. .spe.> on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:55PM (#11231013) Homepage
      I think nothing beats that feeling when science and common sence[sic] works for whole humanity.

      I think uniting the whole world might be a bit strong but it definitely shows the difference between the west and some places where intellect isn't valued at all.

      Above all it is clear blind religous fundamentalism, whether prohibiting the teaching of evolution in american schools or inspiring people to attack others through suicide, is the biggest threat to our exploration of the universe we live in.
      • I hereby bestow upon EpsCylonB the Most Insightful Comment of the Month Award. As an unrealistic and sometimes escapist type of guy, I often find myself daydreaming of a world where blind faith and fundamentalism are scorned and shunned in favor of rationality and science. I wonder what incredible things such a society could achieve and how incomprehensibly far away from it our own society, still nearly hopelessly mired in religion, mysticism and superstision is. Then I wonder if at a current age of 24 year
        • I wonder if at a current age of 24 years old, I will ever live to even see the first hints of such a beautiful, proliferant civilization

          Of course you will, if you look for them. Stop moaning, and instead join and associate with the subset of humanity that already has these beliefs -- like almost any subset, it's larger than it looks from the outside.
        • I don't see much difference between science and religion: they both have many competing alternate views & explanations for the same thing, they both have fundamentalists who will reject out of hand anything that conflicts with their world view, they both have politics and politicians, treachery, liars who distort truth, prophets, they both have had governments adopt them as a foundation and then gone on to do great crimes against humanity.....in short, science can be a great thing, but is subject to th

    • Re:Science over everything (Score:4, Funny)

      by I don't want to spen ( 638810 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @07:05PM (#11231060) Journal
      There could be something like us, humans.

      Doesn't that comma imply that you are something other than human and are talking to humans? In which case you should be saying 'Take me to your leader' - its traditional.

    • Are you joking? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 )
      Want me to dig up the "Beagle 2 lost" and "NASA Rovers working" stories? All that rambling about NASA superiority over ESA, "US - Europe 2:0" and such? Maybe if they were a common effort, they would unite the world, but it seems with Beagle 2 demise they only made the conflict deeper.
      No, of course they are great devices, great succes, and scientifically priceless and all that. It's just that they didn't help a thing on the social level.

      • Re:Are you joking? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by lime1304 ( 684067 )
        I think the rovers success encouraged a little ego massage at NASA but after the Shuttle disaster, they needed it. The Cassini-Huygens mission, on the other hand is showing what can happen if there is true international cooperation in space. Up to this point, that mission has been nearly flawless, and even the missteps have been recoverable. Hopefully Europe's Huygens can make a successful descent, and give insight into Titan's composition.
      • Even the Beagle 2 team themselves was very happy at the rovers success - everyone knows that Mars is a tough business and scientists are happy when anything works there.

        A few silly comments from trolls on Slashdot should not be mistaken as world opinion. I agree, the landings were a real unifying event as people the world over got a glimpse of what can be accomplished with some proper global teamwork.
      • I think you are taking the trolls here too seriously. I'm pretty sure that everyone with scientific interest was cheering for both Beagle2 and Rovers, and dissapointed at the formers loss. Also, Mars Express is doing fine, and getting admiration from both "camps". Plus what lime1304 said about Cassini/Huygens. Anyway, just mention Mars Polar Lander to the trolls and they'll shut up... IF they even know what that was :)
    • Unfortunately, its taken an enormous earthquake, and phenominal tidal wave to unite the world.
      People from around the world have been united in grief.
    • There could be something like us, humans.

      My bet is that we'll find life everywhere, intelligence no-where (especially in Washington.)

      The argument goes like this: life is incredibly probable. Everywhere on Earth that where there is the least chance of life, we find it. But we know that intelligence has evolved at most once, and that even then it took a LONG time to do something more useful than make cave paintings and design ballistic missile defense.

      So I'm still betting that we'll find life on Titan,

  • Grab some popcorn? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @06:45PM (#11230969) Homepage Journal
    The movie section says "grab some popcorn and select one of the movies to the left to start the show". I'd rather say "select one of the movies to the left, then drive to the mall to buy some popcorn, and when you're back, it will start".

    Dear Sirs. We managed to slashdot NASA. Congratulations.

  • Wow, I didn't realize they were so BIG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @07:00PM (#11231034) Homepage
    For some reason I thought the rovers were MUCH smaller than they really are. Heck, this thing is bigger than the lunar "automobile" (the copy of it I've seen in Boeing museum).

    • Re:Wow, I didn't realize they were so BIG (Score:4, Informative)

      by wronkiew ( 529338 ) <wronkiew@protonmail.ch> on Friday December 31, 2004 @07:56PM (#11231300)
      Apollo lunar rover dimensions: 3.0m x 2.3m
      Mars Exploration Rover dimensions: 1.6m x 2.3m

      Perhaps the copy you saw was a scale model?
      • Still, they're larger than Lunokhod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1), which roamed the Moon in 1973 (!).
        • 1973, but no autonomous capacity at all, it was steered remotely. Still a great achievement in those days, though, just saying it doesn't compare very well with the current rovers.
          • Steering remotely wouldn't work for Mars. It barely worked for the Moon. The round trip was 5 seconds, so you had to steer very carefully. As far as whether it compares, I'd say it does. Just read the wikipedia article I've provided. That was an unbelievably advanced thing for the early 70's. Back then there weren't any computers. :0)
            • I guess we're saying the same thing.. Both great achievements, and of a similar difficulty IF seen in the context of the technology level at the time. I just get a little tired of the people (not you) saying: look, the Russians did in 1973 what NASA is doing now". And I don't think that that is a fair statement.
              • This must be painful to European space agency. Russians did a rover in 1970, americans did their first in 1997, and Europeans smashed their Beagle into Mars in 2004. I bet it would work, if they used NASA's landing technology.

  • Holy Childhood Flashbacks... (Score:4, Informative)

    by JohnPerkins ( 243021 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @07:04PM (#11231058) Homepage
    I seem to recall, from reading Lucky Starr in the 1970s, that the Martian year is 687 Earth days.

    With the rovers there for so long, it sure would be interesting to get them back here. Nice chance to study the long-term effects of the Martian environment.

  • Premature? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday December 31, 2004 @09:23PM (#11231667) Journal
    Spirit landed in early January and Opportunity in late January. If something goes wrong between now and then, the "Year on Mars" campaign will have egg all over it.
  • I wonder how much it would cost to build a couple of rovers or static landers and orbiters that would have a guaranteed life of ten years or so and how much it would cost to monitor them. It would be cool to have monitoring capabilities on each planet of the solar system, sort of a cosmic early warning system.

    • Probably a lot of money. More than it would be worth. Think how much we improve computers every few years. Think about a 10 year old pc compared to what we can do now.
      Nope it would be better to send many smaller probes over and over. Not to mention that if we are sending enough of them we can afford to send some to more dangerous locations.
      I for one want to see a landing at the poles.
  • First prize: a year on Mars.

    Second Prize: two years on Mars.
  • Because of the fisheye distortion on their cameras, the high-speed movies of their travels make them seem a bit like The Little Prince [amazon.com], walking about his tiny planet. I thought Mars was bigger than that.

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