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Mars Space

Animated View from the Mars Rover 26

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the we're-not-in-kansas-anymore dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Mars Spirit rover is within sight of the summit of Husband Hill, and it's looking out onto a vast plain where it caught sight of dust devils that are presented in a new animation of stills. Meanwhile, on NASA's site is a cool new panorama of 'Rub al Khali' taken by Opportunity." The science of the dust devils was covered previously on Slashdot.
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Animated View from the Mars Rover More

Animated View from the Mars Rover

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  • It is good to be reminded that despite the many setbacks that (unfortunately) plague the agency, NASA still does a lot of good research. Unfortunately, the public is often too short-sighted and ignorant to realize this, which has resulted in NASA's budget being slowly subjected to Congress's Axe, as the public objects less and less.

    Whatever happened to research for research's sake? Don't people realize that this is often the research that yeilds the most amazing commerical rewards in the long run?

  • I don't know... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @08:32PM (#13376176) Homepage
    Surprisingly like the Mojave desert. Hmmm...
  • Try dust ghost [imageshack.us].

    :-O

  • Still Amazed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xagon7 ( 530399 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @09:14PM (#13376352)
    These things are STILL roaming on another planet. Unassisted in any physicaly way, and serving humanity WAY past their designed life.

    EXCELLENT job NASA and the JPL. I am proud to have paid taxes for such an awesome project.
  • Maybe if we're lucky those cyclones will take the rover up and over the rainbow to the wonderful land of Oz, WHERE THERE MIGHT BE SOME FREAKING COLOR PHOTOS!

    Actually, why don't the rovers transmit color photos? I'm guessing that it's just to big of a file to throw across the void.

    • Re:Oz (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      Here is a nice (but exaggerated) color image on Marsdaily.com:

      http://www.marsdaily.com/images/mars-mera-sol560-g usev-husband-desk-1024.jpg [marsdaily.com]

      They sometimes process for color when Nasa doesn't bother to; possibly because Nasa has to answer questions about whether the color is accurate while blogs don't. The rover color filters used to take many images don't necessarily correponse to the human eye range because they are doing geology ahead of postcards.

    • Re:Oz (Score:4, Informative)

      by pease1 ( 134187 ) <bbunge@l a d y a n d t r a m p.com> on Tuesday August 23, 2005 @07:14AM (#13378335)
      Because the camera only shoots in black and white. To take a color pix, they shoot the same scene three times with three filters and combine the images later. The wavelength of the filters were carefully selected to show different mineral deposits on the surface. That there are three filters close enough to allow some color pix is just gravy.

      In other words, don't expect to see color pix from the rovers of moving objects. Specially if it's the natives.

  • Additional/larger dust devil animations (Score:5, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @11:14PM (#13376917) Journal
    Some additional (and larger) animations of Martian dust devils are available here:

    Animations for August 19 [nasa.gov]
    Animations for July 8 [nasa.gov]

    This animation [nasa.gov] is my favorite, with maybe a half-dozen dust devils charging past the camera, some of them quite close.

  • Recommended reading (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chokai ( 10224 ) on Monday August 22, 2005 @11:24PM (#13376964)
    I'll have to take the opportunity (pathetic pun intended) to plug Steve Squyres new book Roving Mars. Steve gives a good history of the rovers development and he doesn't hold back, he even touches upon things such as a yelling match between him and the Engineering lead at JPL which would normally not be in such a book. He goes over all the drama involved in designing and testing the airbags, parachutes, and other landing equipment. He also spends a fair amount of time on how MER was nearly killed several times by close calls at NASA design reviews.

    Once on Mars you'll find out how a function left over from the frustration of early software development together with a programmer's backdoor helped save Spirit. There is a great deal about learning to operate the rovers on Mars and how tough it was to make the call to run for the hills with Spirit at the risk of dying enroute with virtually no science return. The book is also filled with many little known tidbits including how debris from the WTC was used on the rovers, and things NASA might not want you to know about such as the supreme importance of beer as a motivational tool in ensuring the success of the project.

      Amazon.Com [amazon.com]
  • Doom 3 got it all right and now the martian devils are chasing our robots! And these devils are only minions!
  • If men are from mars, the rover should be able to take a picture of what the hell goes on in guys minds. It's hard enough to tell from earth though.
  • It looks like we have found life on Mars. It's not the carbon based life we were hoping for, but these dust devils sure are fun to watch.

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