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Space Science

NASA Launching Two Mars Rovers in June 211

Posted by CowboyNeal from the red-planet-or-bust dept.
shaniber writes "NASA is planning the launch of the Mars Exploration Rovers this month. The rovers are scheduled for two two separate launches, between June 5th and July 15th. These rovers will both work as robotic geologists, including a human-eye height panoramic camera and a miniature thermal emmision spectrometer amongst their scientific equipment. NASA plans on webcasting the launches, as well. A press kit, with many more details, is also available as a pdf."
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NASA Launching Two Mars Rovers in June More

NASA Launching Two Mars Rovers in June

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  • Water, eh? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Obfiscator ( 150451 )
    So the mission is to find evidence of past water on Mars, huh? I hope at least one of the rovers lands in a puddle.

  • Rovers on Mars (Score:1, Interesting)

    by [cx] ( 181186 )
    Have they tried putting those Japanese walking talking dogs on the planet? Or maybe just some human flesh to see how it reacted to being on the atmosphere?

    I think we should bring back a huge piece of the Mars rock and put it on the moon and see if that somehow makes a chemical reaction that blows up the moon and we all are fearful of the crazy world Mars like in those 50s flicks.

    Anyways this post just PROVES how ignorant the average man is to Mars and we need these rovers to prove my theories wrong, now m

    • Re:Rovers on Mars (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Derg ( 557233 )
      That, actually, is sort of interesting. What would it take to create an Sony Aibo based scientific rover? Its already pretty mobile, just strip out the "personality AI" and load it up with chemical sensors and whatnot. It would obviously have to be "hardened" for the Martian environment, but I cant imagine that would be too dificult. Something like I described could possibly avoid hiccups like the rover that got stuck on a 2 inch or some such rock, iirc. Has anyone thought of taking the off the shelf form f

      • Re:Rovers on Mars (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mikerich ( 120257 )
        That, actually, is sort of interesting. What would it take to create an Sony Aibo based scientific rover?

        A real problem with the Martian environment is that the dust on the surface is extraordinarily fine and penetrates deeply into any crevices. Worse still it is likely to be attracted by static charges that accumulate on the landers.

        Since Martian dust is hard and abrasive it would quickly get to work on the joints of the machines making them much more prone to failure.

        Wheels, particularly those on

        • Wouldnt it be theorhetically possible to use the same technique that keeps dust out from the weel connectors on the current rover designs to protect the joints on an Aibo type walking rover?

          I mean, I realize there are obviously alot of things that would need to be changed, but I see the platform itself, in that it has balance mechanisms and enough of a basic sensor array to know where itself lies relative to space (how else is it able to sit up and walk around, it has to know its feet are above the floor s

          • Apart from that you are introducing complexity into a design for very little gain...?

            The current rovers have been designed to survive the forces of the launch, the baking and freezing imposed by the journey to Mars, the impact of the solar wind, the forces imposed by re-entry, deceleration and impact, the constant UV flux and the highly reactive Martian surface.

            AIBO was designed to get around a flat, friendly living room, it would fail all the above tests. It doesn't lift its legs very far to walk, nor

  • The payload (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @03:57AM (#6130194)
    The science payload's page is on Cornell's site here [cornell.edu].

  • Imagery (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dekashizl ( 663505 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @03:58AM (#6130201) Journal
    I think it would be great to see some real color 3-D imagery from beyond Earth. They say human-eye height panoramic camera, but how about having two lenses to capture a 3D image? I'd pay $10 for a little View-Master [amazon.com] with real 3D pictures from Mars, wouldn't you?

    • Re:Imagery (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mph ( 7675 ) <mph@freebsd.org> on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:02AM (#6130208)
      I think it would suffice to move the camera a couple of inches between exposures.

      • Re:Imagery (Score:2, Informative)

        by dekashizl ( 663505 )
        Well it's a fine idea except that it doesn't work consistently in practice outside of a thought experiment or an impossible lab environment. Why? For a couple of reasons.

        1. Because things move: wind, dust, heat distortion, light changing, etc. Even more when there is organic matter around (pollen, insects, animals, shadows, etc.). Your brain is good at tricking you into seeing stereoscopically. But all these subtle distortions would break that pipeline. It's like your internal 3D driver is optimize

        • Because things move: wind, dust, heat distortion, light changing, etc.

          Without actually seeing examples of these effects, I'm not convinced that they are a significant problem. Stereographs already mess up the pipeline and "don't feel right" in my experience; most obviously, your eyes only have to focus on the fixed plane of the image, instead of re-focusing as you look at different objects in the scene. It's not clear to me that the effects you mention will have any greater disruptive effect.

          Why ad

    • Re:Imagery (Score:3, Informative)

      by corleth ( 118672 )
      There is a stereo camera [ucl.ac.uk] on Beagle 2 [beagle2.com]. There were also two cameras on Mars Pathfinder [nasa.gov] which were used to produce stereo panoramas.
    • There's plenty of that already. IIRC all of the landers have had such cameras. This [planetary.org] is one link and this [nasa.gov] is another to such images but there are plenty more (Google is your friend...). What I'd really like to see is, however, more than still images - ie. some movement by the rovers and so on. However, I assume that the scientific value of that wouldn't be much higher than that of high resolution still images and thus doesn't justify the amount of data that needs to be transferred.
    • The panoramic camera does indeed have stereo vision. I happen to be a student helping with the development of Science Activity Planner [nasa.gov] which is the primary program used by the scientists to analyse data and plan mission sequences (final analysis of data is done by other tools, but for tactical planning SAP is used).

      Anyways, there is a public version planned which includes the ability to not only make 3-D images using your graphics accellerator, but also to take two 2D images taken by the pair of pancams
    • I believe that MER does have two lenses for the PANCAM. Worked on MER for about a year and a half, but moved on to other stuff a little over a year ago and so my recollection of the specifics of the PANCAM assembly is a little hazy. Certainly the navigation cameras are stereoscopic, and they're mounted on the same mast as the PANCAM. As I recall, the only difference between the PANCAM and NAVCAM is that the NAVCAM has a much tighter field-of-view, so you could build a panoramic view from NAVCAM images by

  • More rovers!?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by MonkeyPaw ( 8286 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:01AM (#6130203) Homepage
    Oh dear. More cute rovers buzzing along the surface only to be abandaned later.

    I felt sorry for that one a few years back. Kind of like leaving a puppy when you move.

    • Re:More rovers!?! (Score:4, Informative)

      by flyingdisc ( 598575 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:36AM (#6130284)
      I felt sorry for that one a few years back. Kind of like leaving a puppy when you move.

      Part of the intention of having 2 rovers is that they can assist each other. This should make it more difficult to get a rover irreversibly stuck by a rock (as happened last time). If this happens the other rover can now be manoeuvred to nudge the stuck one free of any obstcle.

      NASA is under a lot of pressure for a successful Mars mission after the recent failures on the red planet and having 2 rovers minimises the risks.

      • Considering that the two rovers will land on opposite sites of the planet [nasa.gov], it is highly unlikely that they will help each other when they get stuck. I guess it was never even considered either.

        I think the reason behind sending two rovers is the potential for getting almost twice the science for a very modest investment since you only have to do your R&D once. A rough guess for sending one rover would be ~1B$ and adding a second would only add 200M$.

      • The 2 rovers are going to different landing sites, they are not intended to assist each other.

  • The value of unmanned missions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fridzappa ( 607143 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:02AM (#6130205)
    In the past, I would have been adamant in defending the shuttle program/ISS, but lately I've been wondering why so many billions have been spent on manned missions when that 500 million (USD) per launch could have been better spent (IMHO) on space probes.

    FYI, these probes cost about 400 million (USD) each, and promise to return more science value than
    all Shuttle missions combined (IMHO).

    Granted, it was said of the very valuable (scientifically speaking) Apollo missions that 90 seconds of human-on-alien-world visual observation was more valuable than weeks or months of robot observations.

    Still, given their cost and advancing robotic/computer technology, I would be very disappointed if NASA continued to spend so much on manned space "exploration."

    • Truly a life defining moment... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arcite ( 661011 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:10AM (#6130226)
      A previous generation had the Apollo moon landing as a life defining moment, for me it was the Mars rover. I distinctly remember being glued to the life tv broadcast, watching the first images of mars being beamed back to earth, in full colour, high-res, 360 degree glory. Is there anything else that has come closer to bring humanity closer together than the wonder of space exploration? I don't think so. I hope for success for all the landers and probes. We need them to succeed if we are to achieve the next stage of humanity. You know, the Startrek stage. ;)
    • Granted, robotic/computer/AI tech has advanced and is advancing at a very decent rate, but IMHO it still hasn't reached a level where manned missions can be given up alltogether. I doubt that projects like the ISS can be undertaken without the human element being on hand to oversee the robotic/computer/AI elements.

      In any case, future of space exploration does ideally lead to human settlements on other planets; giving up manned space exploration only delays that goal.

    • In the original space program when cost was no object, the idea was that you launched unmanned missions to see what there was to see and then send humans only when there was glory and really difficult science to do.

      Maybe we should just scale up the programme - we're back in the unmanned phase and are going to send out swarms of probes until we find something to investigate that the probes CANNOT examine properley (ie we find life, or a big oil deposit, or a ruined city) and then and only then send people.
    • I think you need to balance manned and unmanned missions. And don't forget, if the science you are interested in is studying the effect of spaceflight on the human body - well, I don't see an unmanned probe achieving much in this field!

      And while I know the situations are very different, the old cliche about what the world would be like now if the explorers of 500 years or so ago had felt the same way still holds.

      Perhaps the next reality TV show should be set on the space station?

    • I don't begrudge expensive manned space expeditions... but I would preffer if they actually spent that money to explaore rather than bore holes in the sky up in Earth orbit. Read Zurbin or go to www.marsdirect.com and read about how we could easily head to the red planet with those rovers easily withen the current space budget for manned exploration.

  • Quick Facts (from PDF) (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:02AM (#6130207)
    Quick facts (from the PDF in case you can't read PDF's, or don't RTFA's)

    Spacecraft

    Cruise vehicle dimensions: 2.65 meters (8.7 feet) diameter, 1.6 meters (5.2 feet) tall
    Rover dimensions: 1.5 meter (4.9 feet) high by 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) wide by 1.6 meter (5.2 feet) long
    Weight: 1,062 kilograms (2,341 pounds) total at launch, consisting of 174-kilogram (384-pound) rover, 365-kilogram (805-pound) lander, 198-kilogram (436-pound) backshell and parachute, 90-kilogram (198-pound) heat shield and 183-kilogram (403-pound) cruise stage, plus 52 kilograms (115 pounds) of propellant
    Power: Solar panel and lithium-ion battery system providing 140 watts on Mars surface
    Science instruments: Panoramic cameras, miniature thermal emission spectrometer, MÃssbauer spectrometer, alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, microscopic imager, rock abrasion tool, magnet arrays

    Rover A Mission

    Launch vehicle: Delta II 7925
    Launch period: June 8-24, 2003
    Earth-Mars distance at launch: 105 million kilometers (65 million miles)
    Mars landing: Jan. 4, 2004, at about 2 p.m. local Mars time (8:11 p.m. Jan. 3 PST)
    Landing site: Gusev Crater, possible former lake in giant impact crater
    Earth-Mars distance on landing day: 170.2 million kilometers (105.7 million miles)
    One-way speed-of-light time Mars-to-Earth on landing day: 9.46 minutes
    Total distance traveled Earth to Mars (approximate): 500 million kilometers (311 million miles)
    Near-surface atmospheric temperature at landing site: -100 C (-148 F) to 0 C (32 F)
    Primary mission: 90 Mars days, or "sols" (equivalent to 92 Earth days)

    Rover B Mission

    Launch vehicle: Delta II 7925H (larger solid-fuel boosters than 7925)
    Launch period: June 25-July 15, 2003
    Earth-Mars distance at launch: 89 million kilometers (55 million miles)
    Mars landing: Jan. 25, 2004, at about 1:15 p.m. local Mars time (8:56 p.m. Jan. 24 PST)
    Landing site: Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits suggest wet past
    Landing time: Approximately 1:15 p.m. local Mars time (8:56 p.m. PST)
    Earth-Mars distance on landing day: 198.7 million kilometers (123.5 million miles)
    One-way speed-of-light time Mars-to-Earth on landing day: 11 minutes
    Total distance traveled Earth to Mars (approximate): 491 million kilometers (305 million miles)
    Near-surface atmospheric temperature at landing site: -100 C (-148 F) to 0 C (32 F)
    Primary mission: 90 Mars days, or "sols" (equivalent to 92 Earth days)

    Program

    Cost: Approximately $800 million total, consisting approximately of $625 million spacecraft development and science instruments; $100 million launch; $75 million mission operations and science processing

    • Dear Mr.AC,
      Not only have you taken the time to post the contents of a link to /., and posted it as AC(the only proper way), you have taken the time to take this info from a pdf.
      You, sir or madam, are among the best /. has to offer.
      Posting as me, with my karma bonus, so all the karma whores can get a clue.

  • will they land successfully? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hear NASA specifically designed these new rovers to make a beautiful plume of dust when they crash into the Martian soil due to unforseen programming errors.

    Earthbound telescopes should all be trained to the heavens to catch this marvelous use of taxpayer money.
  • A long time ago, people used to hide on ships thats headed for various places, for one reason or another.

    My question is: does anybody think it would be possible (let's assume one can get past the security, etc) to be a stowaway onboard the mars-bound spacecraft, if I don't plan to come back?

    I mean, a spacesuit + a oxygen + urine/feces bag + yourself does not weight THAT much; and the acceleration won't kill you going up anyway.

    So... what y'all think? haul ass to Mars, dig a shallow grave, and write in re
    • No, it won't weigh much - as long as you discount the one and a half metric ton of food and water (assuming you have equipment to recycle your urine) and the air purifying system you need to survive to the end of the trip. That will be _really_ easy to sneak aboard. And, of course, with a launch and propellant system that dimensioned down to the pound, adding close to two tons of extra cargo may have a slight effect on the success of the mission...

    • There is one way: Die and have someone cremate you and hide the ashes in one of the experiments [green-electronics.com]. That's the only way to get light and small enough to not be noticed, or indeed to find room at all.

      Sorry about the big letters part. You could always move out into the desert and dedicate your life to digging mile-high letters in the sand, spelling "FUCK YOU" for the next shuttle crew that passes by. ;-)

    • Re:Ask Slashdot: stowaway on board a spacecraft? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @06:03AM (#6130470)
      No, for a number of reasons:

      - Security around spacecraft security is very tight, especially on a launch site. It is hard to get to them, and they are inspected constantly (not for stowaways, but one would be detected quickly enough).

      - Spacecraft tend to be rather small, and filled with equipment. Certainly Mars Express (the european spacecraft) is far too small to contain a human being. I have not seen the american spacecraft but I'd guess they are not much bigger.

      - The weight of the spacecraft is known with high accuracy, and verified before launch.

      - The center of gravity of the spacecraft is known. Changing it (by tagging on extra weight) will cause maneuvring to fail, sending the thing to the wrong location.

      - The trip takes a significantly long time (many months). You'd be long dead by the time you arrived (from lack of oxygen, radiation, etc.).

      - The launch may very well kill you: not every launcher is human-rated, and some produce vibrations strong enough to kill a human passenger.

      Finally, I don't want to discourage you but as far as I know noone has ever been able to make a picture of one of the moon landing sites proving there was something there. Your grave would most likely suffer a similar fate.

  • Two probes from NASA, one from ESA. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zayin ( 91850 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:11AM (#6130231)
    ESA [esa.int] launched [esa.int] their Mars probe on June 2nd. So, in about half a year there will be three different probes landing on Mars if everything goes as planned.

    • Re:Two probes from NASA, one from ESA. (Score:5, Informative)

      by flyingdisc ( 598575 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:47AM (#6130312)
      There are actually 4 missions. Nozomi which is launched by the Japanese, and will reach martian orbit at a similar time to the mars express.

      The amusing thing about nozomi (meaning hope) is that it was launched in 1998 - but used too much fuel and was unable to reach mars in that window - it's been bouncing off various planets including a swing by earth again to realign it with the current mars window. So there will be a japanese martian orbiter as well - just 4 years late.

      • So, there are seven:

        MER 1 - NASA lander, launched soon
        MER 2 - NASA lander, launched soon
        Beagle 2 - ESA lander, launched recently
        Mars Express - ESA orbiter, launched recently
        Nozomi - ISIS orbiter, on route
        Mars Odyssey - NASA orbiter, already there
        Mars Gloabl Surveyor - NASA orbiter, already there

        Quite an impressible armada, don't you think?

    • Which means... (Score:4, Funny)

      by nounderscores ( 246517 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @05:19AM (#6130372)
      ROBOT WARS!

      Beagle-2 has Rover-A up against the pit! Beagle-2 is charging!!!!

      Oh that's got to hurt! Rover-A is ducking out of the way and giving Beagle-2 a quick whack with the rock abraision tool!

      The cocky brit recovers but the solar panel is cracked. Yes that's right folks, the beagle-2 solar panel is definitely cracked, and has lost some of its power generating capabilities.

      But wait! what's that under the ground??? the mole probe from beagle-2 is ripping up Rover-A's aluminium rocker bogie wheels!

      Oh the humanity! they're joined together! they're rolling into the pit!

      Where's the ref bots???

  • Martianzilla (Score:4, Funny)

    by malia8888 ( 646496 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:14AM (#6130237)
    From the NASA webpage The robotic arm will be capable of movement in much the same way as a human arm with an elbow and wrist, and will place instruments directly up against rock and soil targets of interest. In the mechanical "fist" of the arm is a microscopic camera that will serve the same purpose as a geologist's handheld magnifying lens. The Rock Abrasion Tool serves the purpose of a geologist's rock hammer to expose the insides of rocks.

    Then the Martians will come up (practical jokers that they are) and put silly putty in the robotic hand and some lady Martian's thong underwear on the robotic arm.

  • Why Marsbots? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jabbadabbadoo ( 599681 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:23AM (#6130253)
    Instead of 400 000 000 USD Marsbots, why not 400 000 000 worth of research into more economic spacecrafts?

  • Faster, Better, Cheaper, Smarter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by btakita ( 620031 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:24AM (#6130256) Homepage
    NASA really needs this to be a success, especially after the Columbia.

    Given the past performaces of Mars expeditions, NASA is taking a big risk.

    Of course, technology has improved, but is this a prudent bet for NASA?
    • I'm a student who happens to work for the head of the mission Steve Squyres [cornell.edu] (he's the Principle Investigator).

      I've heard much about the politics etc that allowed this particular mission to be chosen, and it's quite an amazing story. One of the big deals about this mission is that it's a SCIENCE mission. Unlike pathfinder, whose mission was to test mars lander/rover tech, this mission is all about accomplishing as much science as possible. The mission was designed basically by looking at the pathfinder
    • Given the past performaces of Mars expeditions, NASA is taking a big risk.

      Of course, technology has improved, but is this a prudent bet for NASA?

      The rovers and the mission have been in development for years. It is true that it is risky, but most of that risk has already been taken in the development of the rovers; it is a sunk cost.

      Cancelling the mission at this point will not remove the risk, it will just guarantee a failure.

      Tor

  • Competition! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:31AM (#6130269)
    YES!
    Now it will be very soon we'll have certainty about life on Mars: reall competition (ESA+Rusia vs. NASA) :-)

    Ps. I'm not a fundamental capitalist; in a few instances competition is bad. But this is one of the many good examples imho.

    • Re:Competition! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by flyingdisc ( 598575 )
      I'm not challenging you assertion that competition is good or bad, but you are fundimentally misreading the current state of space research if you see it as a competition. Anyone involved in space science will know that we are currently seeing unprecedented levels of collaboration not competition.

      There is no point in inventing the wheel 3 times. We all gain from pooling scientific data. Previous mars missions inform the current ones. The current ones inform future ones. The different missions comp

  • Hmm, their planning team needs work (Score:3, Funny)

    by toddhunter ( 659837 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @04:33AM (#6130276)
    If their estimates for launches in this month include the 15th of July.
    • to which the submitter replied, "D'oh!"

      I read the usenet posting first, which said that "[the] second rover mission, bound for a different site on Mars, will launch as soon as June 25". (sci.space.news, Message-id: bbll9j$1kb$1@nntp1.jpl.nasa.gov).

      Should have double checked my wording before hitting submit...

  • Mars???? It's already June!!!
  • I remember once (long time ago) seeing a very funny drawing with too Martians smiling and holding up a picture of an empty surface with a few craters in front of a rover camera (so that we Earthians would think it's uninhabited). Has anybody else seen this? I'd love to find it since it was so funny so I'm sure the moderators will give you a +5, Funny if you can post a link :)

  • woohoo! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gohai ( 554042 )
    Finally my name and the name of 3,551,644 other people will be sent to mars (on DVDs on board of the two landers, more details here [nasa.gov])

    I hope E.T. will check this out soon :D
    • Unfortunately, I signed up to have my name delivered on the Mars Polar Lander. I guess my name did make it to Mars, as a teeny-tiny collection of letters.
    • "Finally my name and the name of 3,551,644 other people will be sent to mars (on DVDs on board of the two landers, more details here) I hope E.T. will check this out soon :D"

      He will.... and he will send you and those other 3,551,644 people a great big fine for littering!

    • Re:woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)

      by mikerich ( 120257 )
      Oh they will,

      In six months time you will be getting email offering surgery-free tentacle enlargement, low-low rate Mars Express credit cards (ahem) and cheap inkjet refills.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

  • So is "human height" 5 feet or 5 meters?
  • Imagine this far-fetched scenario.

    One of these rovers discovers an advanced, humanoid civilization on Mars that has been previously overlooked.

    The aliens are advanced enough to contact us via "primitive" radio signals and learn several of our languages in a few days.

    Then we decide to meet. This would be the conversation:

    Earthlings: So yeah, you should come here! That would be so cool.
    Martians: ...right. So, how about you just come here instead?
    Earthlings: Well, uhh... could we meet on the mo

  • Europeans beat Yanks to Mars! (Score:3, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @10:32AM (#6131675)
    The European Space Agency successfully launched theirs last Monday on a Russian rocket. Theirs cost $80 million compared to the US $400 million per craft. The Euros just have a robotic arm, while the Yanks use artificially intelligent rovers.

    There is a low fuel (cheap) path to Mars in a two month window every 2.5 years. So this is why you see a flurry of launches. With a 40% success rate over the decades- 41 of 66 Mars craft didnt make it- hopefully at least one of these three will succeed. Lots of interesting craft planned for 2005 and 2008 launches.

  • Celestia: Follow MER-A and MER-B to Mars (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gruuue ( 171191 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @01:54PM (#6133616) Homepage
    If you have a decent 3D graphics card and an interest in unmanned space exploration, you should download Celestia:

    http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ [shatters.net]

    It runs on Windows, Linux, and OS X . . . Then, install one of the many spacecraft add-ons here:

    http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/ [eircom.net]

    Images are here:
    http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/browseima ges/mer.htm [eircom.net]

    One add-on features a detailed model of the Mars rovers in interplanetary cruise configuration, together with two proposed trajectories for each rover. Add a high-resolution (8k x 4k) texture and bump map for Mars, and you'll have a very detailed and accurate simulation of the Mars missions. We're still trying to get trajectory data from the ESA so that we can make an add-on for the Mars Express mission.

    --Chris
  • The website indicates that they will land on opposite sides of the planet ... presumably, this is to prevent the first traffic accident on Mars.
  • Will it have a high quality camera so I can get a bitchin wallpaper?

    Take all the humidity, temperature, and chemical tests you want. but I want to see red mountains cool rocks and a three eyed green man walking around!

    --Joey

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