First Stereograms of Mars from Spirit

An anonymous reader writes "NASA has made the first stereo image pairs from Spirit available. I've made stereo anaglyphs and arranged the full-size images side-by-side for stereo viewing. These are from the low-res black and white hazard avoidance camera, but still very cool. Anxiously awaiting the first stereo pairs from the panoramic cameras!"

In a day and age like this...

[lynxuser]

In the age of HDTV, MPEG4, and THX; I am glad to know that stereo images still play a role in science. *g*

Re:Mars: Reach out and touch it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple? Haven't you been paying attention to how many probes we have lost trying to get there?

We need a much better success rate before we attempt a maned flight.

Re:Mars: Reach out and touch it.

[Wyatt Earp]

Yes they did.

However, the basic need, atmosphere was avaliable.

When you are on the way to Mars in a Titanium Can and it's 3-6 months away, atmosphere isn't avaliable.

Illnesses can crop up on the way to Mars too.

But the early trips to the New World and around the world had high rates of death, but there is a very high risk in going to Mars too.

Look how many Mars probe missions failed, in 2003-04 the world is has had 2 of 3 fail and if Opportunity works, then we are batting .500.

Re:Black and forking White?!?!

[deathcow]

This camera undoubtably has a set of filters on it which permit it to image in a variety of wavelengths. Color images will come, they will take individual red, green, blue exposures and combine them. They can probably image all the way from near ultraviolet to low infrared.

Re:Well...

[bravehamster]

Imagine if your spaceship was the Beagle 2, and not this NASA ship.

We mock what we don't understand.

Imagine if Beagle 2 was a manned mission. We'd sure as hell at least know what happened. And the majority of failed mars missions have failed because there was something wrong that couldn't be fixed by remote. If there was someone on hand to reach over and tweak the long-range antenna, I'm positive the percantage of successful missions would be much higher.

Re:Why are we doing this?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're under-informed. What we will learn is not just something about rocks. They chose the landing site because of the suspicion, based on observations, that iron hematite may be present, which only forms on Earth in the presence of water, so the lander has instruments to dig for and analyze sediment layers that may have been left behind by water. This would appear to address what you asked about "increase out overall knowledge of the universe" (sic).

As for why we continue, do you suppose Europe should have stopped sending ships after Columbus? If so, would you and your family have chosen to emigrate to whatever America would have existed without European intervention? (I know, the Europeans did horrible things here, but if you like the US, you have to appreciate the countless ships that went to the bottom of the sea in the building of this nation.)

Compared to the sea explorations that built new nations, space travel has cost few lives. The new landers were built at a FRACTION of the cost of the Viking missions of the 70's, especially after adjusting for inflation. If we are to continue exploration, and we must, isn't it a good thing that we are becoming more economically efficient about it?

(There is no reason in particular that I post as Anonymous Coward except that I am sick of maintaining online accounts for every web site I post on.)

Re:Wow, just wow

[Unregistered]

You aren't funny.

Since when has that mattered on /.

Re:Black and forking White?!?!

[hitchhikerjim]

Nav pictures need to come back quickly and accurately over a very slow link, just in case. And the quality needs to be enough to navigate by, and no more. (cause more quality = longer transmission times, thus less photos to nav by). Don't worry, the high quality color cams will be really fantastic when they get going. One thing at a time.

Excellent

[Chuck Chunder]

Watch her leave the room- quickly

I did this and because of my toilet tube goggles it looked like she had a twin sister!
I think I'll be taking these goggles to the bedroom tonight!

Re:Black and forking White?!?!

[lurker412]

IANARS, but I would bet that the bandwidth for transmitting data is the main constraint, not the cost of the navcams.

Manned Missions to Mars in 2006!

[uptownguy]

You'd think it was worth it only if you survived.

Ask yourself this question... the people who go on Fear Factor... the people who fly solo across Antarctica... the people who sail across the Pacific alone, with no radio... I bet most of them are in pretty great shape. I bet you could get 1000 of them to volunteer for a manned Mars mission in 2006 in a heartbeat. I bet out of that 1000 -- these are people who climb mountains and run triathalons, remember -- at least 50 or 100 of the candidates would be able to pass a training program and be "able" to fly to Mars. Especially if we build our ships right -- let the machines and the computers do most the work and train these people to do what they already get off on doing: surviving.

When they're there -- they can take pictures of the rocks the mission wants, take the soil samples of the areas the mission asks... things space agencies spend billions for each primitive 100 kg. robot to do one time... Why not instead send out tens of manned missions? Do it right. And sure, we might lose 1 trip out of 3. More at first. I bet ANY of these people would be MORE than willing to go... AND you'd be saving money!!! Tons of money. The first crew that arrived successfully... think of it. Think of the presige. The honor of having your name go down as that man or woman in history? And think of all the experiments they we perform with PEOPLE there... Just imagine! And if they were to arrive home... what it could do for the world...

Does this sound brutal? To me it feels visionary -- it makes just so much common sense; why don't people ever spell it out like this? Let people freely decide if they are willing to take that risk. Here we are, legalizing assisted suicide across the Western world but we don't have the balls to let adventurers sign up for one of the last ULTIMATE adventures???

Anyone from NASA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering if anyone at NASA could help the scientists at home with any calibration information for the stereo cameras.

I saw the fields of view listed on the rover website:
Navcams 45 degree
Hazcams 120 degree
Pancams ? degree

Also I was wondering if you could list the distance between lenses, if the lenses are parallel, and/or how you are calibrating the range finder.

Thanks for all of your work

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Manned Missions to Mars in 2006!

[the grace of R'hllor]

Because if they died in transit, or during their stay, you'd have a couple of dead gameshowcontestants on your hands. Can you say "Shitcanned"?

Because if they did make it, you'd not have scientists or engineers on Mars, which is what you want, not the average Fear Factor contestant.

I don't think a lack of willingness of the astronauts is the problem here. The problem is that spacetravel should not be a crapshoot.

Sailing across the world hundreds of years ago wasn't. You stocked up on vegetables and press-ganged drunks, and made sure that you (the owners/captain/regular crewmember) survived. There was a fairly good chance.

Right now, we can't even reliably send a probe, which doesn't need to be protected so much, to Mars. The fact that we can do so at all is fantastic, but the hit/miss record is a bit depressing atm to send live people.

Re:Wow, just wow

[gangien]

umm since when has funny been determined by any sort of measure? it's something only you can determine for yourself, and apparently, enough people found him funny to recieve that mod. It's like people always talking about if the RIAA ever produced good music.. wtf kind of argument is that? You may not like it, so what? Many people DO like it. like so many other things, these are relative things, but the general /. consesus is that they are some how absolute.

Death by Vacuum/Cold/Radiation

[troon]

and people are tougher than you think.

That argument works fine on Earth, where you could fall out of your ship, or get stranded on an island and live off the land. Mars [nineplanets.org] has virtually no atmosphere (7mbar, only 0.15% oxygen), and the average temperature is -55degC. There is no potential for "living off the land" without serious engineering work. Man is fairly tough in his natural environment, but this is a whole new ball game.

Gusev Crater a poor choice

[amightywind]

Any new pictures of the Martian landscape are very cool, but I have to question the choice of the landing site. Gusev Crater may be very interesting in a macro sense, it probably contains lacustrine sediments. But are these sediments accessable to the rover which has landed in the middle of a featureless plain? I doubt it. It is more likely that it will just sample the ubiquitous dust and rock ejecta, again. There may be no significant exposures of the stratigraphic section nearby. When will one of these missions truely explore the fantastic landscape revealed from orbit?

Re:Let's Go to Mars!!!

[Suidae]

I'll bet there are hundreds if not thousands of young, intelligent volunteers who could easily be trained up and ready to go by the time a ship and launch windows were ready to go.

Sure, you aren't going to be sending PhD's, but just like fighter pilots, you keep the best at home to train and direct, and set the second best to do the work (and the dying).

Of course you have to provide a reasonable chance for survival, I don't think you'd get many volunteers for a strict suicide mission, but even if it was a 'go there and we'll keep sending supplies until we figure out how to bring you home' mission, you could probably find people. I can think of worse places to live.

Re:Manned Missions to Mars in 2006!

[roystgnr]

The problem is that spacetravel should not be a crapshoot.

Sailing across the world hundreds of years ago wasn't.

Fun quotes about Magellan's circumnavigations from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

"One ship, the Santiago,was sent down the coast on a scouting expedition, but it was wrecked on the return trip. Only two sailors returned, overland, to inform Magellan of what had happened."

"Eight crewmen died as they faced 1500 warriors. The crew were forced to leave Magellan to die, surrounded by warriors, in the surf."

"Twenty crewmen died of starvation before Elcano put in to the Cape Verde Islands"

It's not that spaceflight is any more risky than ocean explorations were, it's just still so much more expensive that nobody is willing to plan missions which include much risk.

Re:Extremely cool

[uberdave]

Thanks for that link [vision3d.com]. It has taught me how to view cross eyed stereograms. It is a little wobbly and out of focus for me at first, but after about 5-10 seconds (and getting shorter with practice) the images come into focus and I get a nice 3d image.

I prefer the parallel viewing method. However that method has an built in weakness. Images can only have a separation of about 50-60mm. Wider than that, and the eyes have to look beyond parallel. The cross eyed version does not have this weakness.