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Space Science

A First Look At Meridiani Planum 351

Posted by timothy from the tastes-like-mordor dept.
loconet writes "After Opportunity 's successful landing on mars , NASA has recieved the first images showing the landing site revealing a surreal, dark landscape unlike any ever seen before on Mars. The terrain is darker than at any previous Mars landing site and has the first accessible bedrock outcropping ever seen on Mars. The outcropping immediately became a candidate target for the rover to visit and examine up close."
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A First Look At Meridiani Planum More

A First Look At Meridiani Planum

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  • Hopefully fewer Mars-rats this time (Score:5, Funny)

    by ewg ( 158266 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:03PM (#8083419)
    Hopefully there will be fewer Mars-rats chewing on the cables this time. It would be a shame if they did to Opportunity what they're doing to Spirit!

  • Too bad... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:05PM (#8083433)
    Too bad it doesent have big lights to light up the place for an alien party :)

  • Waiting for the "big" discovery. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bender Unit 22 ( 216955 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:05PM (#8083434) Journal
    All I am waiting for are these guys [enterprisemission.com] to find "machinery" there too.
    Who knows what the pixelated'n'smoothed zooms will bring. :D

  • Spirit is indeed a software problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by LedZeplin ( 41206 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:06PM (#8083439)
    After some more diagnostics, the flash memory is ok, and it's looking to be a software problem.

    2106 GMT (4:06 p.m. EST)

    "Spirit is still serious but we are moving toward guarded condition now," rover project manager Pete Theisinger reports. "I think we got a patient well on the way to recovery." In the past day, engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory hardware is OK. A leading theory today is that a portion of the rover's software simply couldn't cope with all that was happening on Wednesday when the trouble began.

    Source [spaceflightnow.com]

    • Bet they tried to compile the 2.6 kernel!
    • Sounds great! :-) I mean, it could be worse and hopefully they can recover from it pretty well.

      However, since this is a software problem they might not yet know why it appeared (I haven't heard they do so far), and Opporunity is probably using very similar if not identical software, well... what now? Another round of QA before letting it move off the lander and do its analysis stuff? Or just cross fingers?

    • Re:Spirit is indeed a software problem (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:43PM (#8083653)
      A leading theory today is that a portion of the rover's software simply couldn't cope with all that was happening on Wednesday when the trouble began.

      Yep. That's real-time Java for you ...
      • I realize this is a popular (and funny) joke, but despite Sun's claims to the contrary, the rover doesn't run Java.

        Mission Control for Spirit and Opportunity does (quite extensively), but they don't run it themselves.

    • Corrupted flash file system? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @08:14PM (#8084315) Journal
      Trying to put 2 and 2 together, it sounds like the file system on the flash storage was corrupted by software. That could prevent the system from properly accessing the drive, prompting an endless cycle of reboots.

      Two things about that bothers me.

      Why would the OS / driver allow software to corrupt the filesystem?

      If the system can function without the flash memory ("cripple mode"), then why couldn't the system properly identify (or at least report) the failure, instead of going into an endless loop of reboots?

      Finally, if it were a software problem, shouldn't they be able to play back the exact sequence of commands to a duplicate machine at JPL and reproduce the problem?

      Dan East

      • Re:Corrupted flash file system? (Score:4, Informative)

        by kune ( 63504 ) on Monday January 26, 2004 @05:04AM (#8086533)
        As far as I understood Mr. Theisinger, the problem is that programms and config data to operate the Rover are stored on the flash file system. The rover has no other mean to store data permanently. The computer is normally shut down at the end of each Sol (Mars day). So without the mounted flash file system, the Rover can't be fully operational. The software reboots after ca. 40 minutes in the failure mode. Now it seems, that they have to send always a command which prevents the reboot after 40 minutes. Probably they have to reformat the flash RAM, but before that the must transmit they complete flash-ram image to analyze, the cause of the problem. Transferring 256 MByte (2 GBit) over 60 million km is quite a challenge, even if you can compress it. Transmission for a satellite pass are around 20 MBit and the direct to link to earth (estimated 4 hrs a day)is 13 kbit/s maximum, which results in an estimated 182 MBit maximum per day. So we have a maximum capacity of 200 MBit per day, if all goes extremely well. So if half of that capacity could be indeed used for the flash RAM and the compression rate is 0.25, you need ca. 5 days to get the complete disk image. The real numbers will be of course different, but I think this estimation is in the right range. I think, that Theisinger's 3 week prediction before operational mode is not to pessimistic.

  • Well done NASA! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stween ( 322349 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:06PM (#8083441)

    It's fantastic to see that both Rover's have now landed successfully on Mars (with Spirit to become operational again soon :) ).

    This, that Colin Pillinger is discussing sending more Beagle II probes up [bbc.co.uk] to search for signs of life, and that President Bush has announced man will set foot on Mars within my lifetime, can only be considered good news :)

    • Re:Well done NASA! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cygnus ( 17101 )
      that President Bush has announced man will set foot on Mars within my lifetime, can only be considered good news :)
      you haven't followed the Bush presidency very closely, have you? here's my summary:

      That guy can fuck anything up, given a decent chance.

      • I said he'd announced it, I didn't say it had happened yet, or was guaranteed to happen.

        It's my understanding that with the announcement of men on Mars, there was more funding going to NASA. If they use this funding to make a design and build launch vehicle to replace the Shuttle, then at least some progress has been made.

        • Re:Well done NASA! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cygnus ( 17101 )
          unfortunately, the funding was nowhere near enough to send someone to Mars. which means Nasa has to cut other programs to keep up with the Bush mandate. this precipitated the Hubble Space Telescope announcement recently.

          it's not clear that this wasn't a means of hamstringing NASA in the long run...

          • Re:Well done NASA! (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Mr2cents ( 323101 )
            which means Nasa has to cut other programs to keep up with the Bush mandate. this precipitated the Hubble Space Telescope announcement recently.

            In fact, the hubble sevicing mission was canceled because NASA intends to fully embrace the columbia accident report. When the shuttle will fly again, it will have to be inspected for loss of heat tiles. For the ISS missions, a plan for doing this can be established. Also, if something goes wrong, the crew can stay onboard the ISS.

            For the Hubble, being in a com

    • Re:Well done NASA! (Score:4, Funny)

      by 0WaitState ( 231806 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @07:59PM (#8084210)
      Bush has announced man will set foot on Mars within my lifetime, can only be considered good news

      Paul Krugman put it best, referring to Bush's Mars initiative when he said something along the lines of "can't we save a great deal of money and take the photo now of Bush in an astronaut suit?"

  • Surreal (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:07PM (#8083448)
    revealing a surreal, dark landscape unlike any ever seen before on Mars

    Or perhaps it landed right on top ot Beagle II, and that they see is the charred scattered remains of the ESA probe.

    • Re:Surreal (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Cranky_92109 ( 414726 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:25PM (#8083561)
      I know that was meant as a joke, but I can't wait until the day when we have rovers or people up on Mars who can go check out some of these things.
      I'd really like to see what the Viking landers look like after all this time.

      And while I'm at it, I'd just like to say that NASA has done an excellent job not only of putting equipment on Mars, but of keeping us informed here on Earth. Kudos all around.
      This has really reinvigorated my interest in space exploration and I hope that it has had a similar influence on others, especially those kids who are interested in science and technology.

      • Re:Surreal (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:35PM (#8083611)
        I'd really like to see what the Viking landers look like after all this time.

        Probably simply covered with dust and with color paint and cables faded because of UV exposure. It certainly won't corrode with the very low amount of oxygen, and the total absence of water in the atmosphere.

        This has really reinvigorated my interest in space exploration and I hope that it has had a similar influence on others, especially those kids who are interested in science and technology.

        Agreed entirely. However, I'm a little sad that NASA puts all the hype on Mars alone. Sure, exploring Mars is cool and potentially useful for future colonisation programs, but I reckon that planets such as Venus (to understand how the runaway greehouse gas effect happened), Europa (to map whatever's under the ice, possibly an ocean teeming with life) or Io are much more interesting from a science point of view.

        But I guess Mars-Mars-and-Mars-and-only-Mars is better than nothing to get people excited about space and justify spending money on exploration ...
        • However, I'm a little sad that NASA puts all the hype on Mars alone. Sure, exploring Mars is cool and potentially useful for future colonisation programs, but I reckon that planets such as Venus (to understand how the runaway greehouse gas effect happened), Europa (to map whatever's under the ice, possibly an ocean teeming with life) or Io are much more interesting from a science point of view.

          There are missions in the works for these planets. It takes several years to build and test probes. There are a

        • Venus (Score:3, Informative)

          by Detritus ( 11846 )
          Venus is an interesting planet. The trick is how to design something that will survive for more than a half-hour on the planet's surface. NASA has already done extensive radar mapping of the planet's surface from spacecraft in orbit around Venus.
        • I think they don't want to put a probe ON Eurpoa because they wouldn't want to interfere with whatever life may be forming/living there.
      • I'd really like to see what the Viking landers look like after all this time.

        I like to imagine, although it will likely be after my lifetime if ever, that we will build nice domes over these sites in the future to preserve them before terraforming.

        Then they will be the memorials and history exhibits of the future of our first steps off of Earth.

  • Not exactly first look @ Meridiani (Score:5, Informative)

    by calmdude ( 605711 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:08PM (#8083456)
    A high-res color picture can be found here [btinternet.co.uk]

  • Space Flight Now has a color photo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jordy ( 440 ) <jordan@COWsnocap.com minus herbivore> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:09PM (#8083463) Homepage
    Space flight now [spaceflightnow.com] has a color photo of the area which has a red tint to it and a decent article about how the surface looks like talcum powder.

    Very interesting stuff. I think we should launch another 6 or 10 of these things all over mars after fixing the problem spirit has.

    • Re:Space Flight Now has a color photo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kippy ( 416183 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:32PM (#8083598)
      Very interesting stuff. I think we should launch another 6 or 10 of these things all over mars after fixing the problem spirit has.

      I'd suggest sending 4-6 humans next. As advanced as these probes are humans will be able to do vast amounts more science. Not only will they be able to do in 5 minutes what it takes the probes 2 weeks to do, they will be infinitely better equipped to deal with the unexpected.

      The tech has been around for 30 years. I'm glad humans to Mars is a priority again since dollar for dollar and pound for pound, it's a much better investment.

      Props to the people on this project but I know for a fact that at least a few of the people on the Spirit/Opportunity team agree with me after seeing a presentation they gave at the local planetarium.

      • Troll, troll, troll.

        First, the technology has not been available to us for the last thirty years... in fact, it isn't available now. Have we sent people to Mars yet? No. We can't even (super-)reliably get people into a near Earth orbit. And I am not going to spout the same old "how can we deal with the radiation on such a long journey" bullshit. Radiation can be dealt with easily with shielding.

        The real question is, how do we get a sufficiently shielded (read: heavy) craft into space in the firs
        • Troll, troll, troll.

          First, you don't need tens of tons of metal radiation sheilding. The radiation is such that you can survive if the craft is built with the water needed for the voyage surounding the humans. a small shielded coffin/chamber is enough to survive solar flares. between that and advanced plastics you're safe. That kills the weight argument.

          You don't need to assemble in orbit. that's the Werner von Braun plan that killed the Mars push in '91 and it's an outdated model. Mars Direct [nw.net] is a
      • I disagree. If we were serious about sending probes, we could send hundreds of probes over the next decade. We could set up robotic base stations staffed with remote-controlled assemblers that could reconfigure and service modular probes that wander the surface. The stations could be regularly supplied with shipments of new science experiments and rover parts. All of this would cost a mere fraction of a single human mission, and it could run any experiment a human could.

        It may take longer to do any one e

  • Is it in a crater (Score:2, Interesting)

    by madpierre ( 690297 )
    Could the outcrop be part of a craters rim. The pictures seem to show that Opportunity is in some kind of shallow depression?
  • I'm not sure I understand what is meant by a "dark landscape." The landing site is near the equator, so incident light should not be less, perhaps it is in a crator, but unless steep walls are involved (which are not seen on the panoramic images) the landing site would not be darker (shadowed?). I would suspect that the makeup of the soil reflects less of the incident light, hence the "dark" landscape.

    Just some thoughts.

    Ben

  • Governor Schwartzenegger was there (Score:5, Funny)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:10PM (#8083474)
    He was quoted as saying, "Now get your ass to Mars!"

  • Opportunity Gets A Hole In One (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WombatControl ( 74685 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:10PM (#8083475)

    What's very interesting about the Opportunity landing is that they managed to come down in the middle of a 20-meter diameter crater on the Martian surface. This means that they can study sub-surface details that would normally be beyond the reach of the rover's instruments. Also, the crater isn't very steep, meaning that they should have no problem driving out of it and into the next crater over.

    Meridiani Planum is certainly one of the more interesting parts of Mars we've yet seen. It will be interesting to get a better understanding of what's causing all that interesting surface topography as well as exploring the composition of the surface.

    • If they could drive out of the crater they are now possitioned in and into another crater.. why would it be news to land in a crater if they could just as easily land on the flat surface and drive down a crater :-)
      • Earlier news stories said that the lander spent about 10 minutes bouncing about in its airbags before coming to rest.

        So does this suggest that the first point(s) of contact with the surface were outside the crater? (even a long way outside).

        It seems like a really lucky shot anyway :)

  • Where are the Watches? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DumbSwede ( 521261 ) <slashdotbin@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:11PM (#8083481) Homepage Journal
    revealing a surreal, dark landscape

    I don't seeing any limp, melting watches.

    P.S. Arizona You're now considered "surreal"

  • IIRC... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by criordan ( 733016 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:12PM (#8083482) Homepage Journal
    IIRC 'planum' is Latin for 'plain', which Meridiani Planum certainly looks to be from those pictures. Wouldn't it have been more worthwhile to drop this rover near some mountains, or like Spirit, in a crater? Seems like there would be more geologically important sites to investigate in those types of terrain. Also, shouldn't the heat shield make a crater of its own? After it seperated it just slammed into Mars without any kind of parachute. Is it close enough to reach and would it be worth investigated the hole it's impact created?

    • Re:IIRC... (Score:2, Informative)

      by SalsaFrontier ( 717084 )
      I agree that it would probably be more interesting to drop the rover near some mountains or other geologic features, but I think there may have been big problems if the rover was a little off its landing site. It could easily get smashed up if it smacked into a cliff or something. I'm no expert, but NASA probably chose these sites to increase the probability of a successful landing.

    • Re:IIRC... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by haighworld ( 194832 )
      With the method used to land the rovers, you need a fairly flat stretch of several miles. If one of the airbags hit a large rock, or went over a cliff, it would have ended the trip pretty quickly.

      Meridiani Planum is interesting because of the hematite, which under most conditions forms in the presence of water. That makes it a pretty interesting place to visit, IMHO. :)

  • c'mon (Score:4, Funny)

    by TitanOfire ( 678360 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:12PM (#8083484)
    we landed there first why didnt the robot come with an american flag planting deally? It could have sent back an image of the flag and been like "One small step for man, one giant leap for robots"

  • Mars Raw Images (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ghotli ( 670032 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:13PM (#8083491)
    Here is a link to most of the raw pictures beamed back. It's alot of the same thing, but if you just can't get enough of Mars.

    Spirit: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit. html [nasa.gov]
    Opportunity: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity.html [nasa.gov]

    There are currently 132 Raw Images from Opportunity. Spirit has beamed back 1,855 Images.
    Enjoy.

  • Light story on the solar cells (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:21PM (#8083540) Homepage
    I noticed this story Mars Solar Photovoltaics Offer Earthly Hope [solaraccess.com] on how the work into making solar panels for space is going to pay off on Earth.

    Point green types who are anti-space at this. After all, it's not like money spent on space was shoveled into rockets and fired to Mars. (No comment on the proposed manned mission.) Think of all the work on light-weight instruments that perform under hostile conditions--Turn them around and monitor the environment on Earth. We'd better learn how other planets work, because this one didn't come with a man page!

  • QuickTime VR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:23PM (#8083554) Homepage Journal

    I'm not exactly happy with how this turned out... but be kind, it's my first time ever using the QTVR tools. :)

    Here. [mac.com]

    It's on .mac, so it will probably be overwhelmed soon enough. :( Enjoy.

    • Nice job. Gives a much more realistic idea of a crater than the flat image. I don't think the crater is as deep as your movie makes it seem, though. Is NASA just too overwhelmed with workload to put out stuff like thus yet?

      • Yeah, that's what I'M not happy about. The original pictures make a cylinder, not a sphere, but I can't find the an option in the tools to do cylindrical stitching. It gives the impression of a deeper crater than it really is, and lets you tilt.

        Maybe for the next panorama I'll be able to figure it out...

        • I think if you add extra "sky" padding on top to set the horizon line in the middle of the panorama, the effect will be more convincing and less fishbowly. Give it a shot, let us know if it works...

  • Monolith Fun (Score:5, Funny)

    by Helmholtz ( 2715 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:26PM (#8083567) Homepage
    I want to be watching when the tech turns on the high-pitched squeal sound right when the rover gets close to an outcropping that looks strangely like a large monolith.

  • Good News for Water Search (Score:5, Informative)

    by schnarff ( 557058 ) <alex@Nospam.schnarff.com> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:29PM (#8083579) Homepage Journal
    I would think that, given that the landing site was selected for its hematite content [nasa.gov], and given the extreme smoothness of the landscape (indicative of erosion of some sort, possibly water-related), this is the best chance yet we've had to discover evidence of former large quantities of water on Mars. Let's all keep our fingers crossed -- imagine what that'd mean for our understanding of the universe, and the chances of the NASA budget going up!

    Not to mention, of course, our chances of getting free shrimp [longjohnsilvers.com]. ;-)
    • and given the extreme smoothness of the landscape (indicative of erosion of some sort, possibly water-related)

      Don't forget Mars storms. Sand blown by dry wind at 200+km/h, can polish any surface smooth much better than water - and it's common there!.
  • Why do they only have the left pan cam images - the right camera should be taking pictures as well? And I find it funny that they don't try and send some stereoscopic color images.

  • What are the challenges of a RAM-only mission? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Demerara ( 256642 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:58PM (#8083732) Homepage
    If the flash memory cannot be recovered - and it will take quite a while to figure that out - the team must develop new procedures to operate the entire mission with the RAM memory.

    Okay /. - you have no Flash memory but oodles of RAM. You have to go to sleep when the sun goes down. How do you reprogramme Spirit to deliver the objectives in these, new circumstances?

    I ask out of curiosity and humility - I have NO idea!!

  • All raw images are black and white - how do they transform them into RGB colour ?

    They clearly do a lot of artistic frequency remapping when they present photos of stars/galaxies/nebulae (i.e. convert invisible spectrum into visible one), but I'd really hope they do something more scientific with data from neighbouring Mars.

    • simple - they have a set of color filters they can put in front of the lens.
    • All raw images are black and white - how do they transform them into RGB colour ?

      Excellent question, which was answered at least twice in the last threads on the subject,

      Anyway, this [atsnn.com] page is really the best at explaining how it's done, and how you can do it yourself IF the images are saturated evenly by a common reference point.

      For example, I'm guessing that these 3 images can be made to resemble "human perceivable" colors quite easily.
      this on [nasa.gov] from the L2 lens (Reddish)
      this on [nasa.gov] from the L5 lens (gre
    • That's not the main camera that's taking the pictures, it's the navigation camera which sends lower quality black and white photographs so the controllers can navigate without waiting for a 10MB image to load. RTFA.

  • Haiku... (Score:2, Funny)

    by criordan ( 733016 )
    First ever bedrock
    Hematite means H2O
    Dark terrain for Mars

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