Mars Lander Instrument Waving In the Martian Wind 46
Matt_dk writes "This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars. On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be 'out-of-phase' with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence."
[...]one of the images seemed to be "out-of-phase" (Score:3, Funny)
A new candidate (Score:1)
...for the Slashdot Straight-Line Hall of Fame.
rj
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking the same thing ... cue "instrument waving in wind" jokes.
LOL
Great choice of words. (Score:4, Funny)
Insert joke here about my "telltale instrument" waiving in the wind.
Re:Great choice of words. (Score:5, Funny)
See that's why girls don't come here....
Sheesh. Insensitive....
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
What's wrong with having long hair?
"Instrument" . . . (Score:3, Funny)
. . . so that's what the kids are calling it these days.
I got in big trouble for waving my instrument in the wind.
Of course, with a string bass, swinging it on a dead calm day would be just as bad.
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I waved my baritone sax in the wind, and the final butchers bill was three clarinettists, two flautists, an oboe player and a cello player who happened to be leaning back at the time.
Still, the orchestra sounded sweeter after the incident...
Proof (Score:4, Funny)
OR... it's proof that these martian landings are staged and never really occurred in the first place!
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Soundstage on the moon?
Any audio from Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just curious...no need to mod this up, I have plenty of karma.
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Maybe I'm missing something, but why is parent modded Trol?
Being able to hear the wind blow on another world would be SO cool, even though probably rather useless.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Because he is trolling for karma. Everyone knows the best way to be modded up is to say "I'm probably going to be modded down but..." or "I don't care if you mod me..."
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Audio there would most likely sound the same as wind here, so nothing new.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would suggest a spectrum analysis of the audio received from wind noise would be quite valuable, unless NASA happened to also pack along a Doppler radar unit. Instead of guessing if that really *was* a dust devil that passed by, an audio analysis would probably provide definitive proof.
Here's a panorama to provide some perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
Phoenix lander on Mars [fotoausflug.de]
The telltale is a small weight dangling from a vertical boom. More sophisticated instruments would have weighed more, so they opted for this minimal weather instrument.
Late Breaking News from the Council (Score:5, Funny)
The most Illustrious Council of Elders has decried this latest humiliation inflicted upon its noble citizens by the latest mechanical invader from the blue planet. K'breel, speaker for the Council, stressed that this most recent insult would not be taken lightly:
When a small group of younglings questioned whether the telltale waving of the enemy's instrument was perhaps due to a gust of wind, K'Breel ordered their gelsacs pierced on the spot.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
K'Breel is a /. meme going back at least as far as 2005 [slashdot.org]. Any Mars thread on Slashdot, and particularly, any thread referring to the activities of any Earth-based probe must have at least one post of this nature. Google "K'Breel", "gelsac", "Council of Elders", and so on.
The root of the meme is TripMaster Monkey [slashdot.org], who spawned it, and he probably spawned it years before the 2005 post I found
Site slashdotted, here it is, click link for image (Score:5, Informative)
This series of images show Phoenix's telltale instrument waving in the Martian wind. Documenting the telltale's movement helps mission scientists and engineers determine what the wind is like on Mars.
On the day these images were taken, one of the images seemed to be "out-of-phase" with other images, possibly indicating a dust devil occurrence. Preliminary analysis of the images taken right before and after the passing of this possible dust devil indicates winds from the west at 7 meters per second. The image taken during the possible dust devil shows 11 meters per second wind from the south.
These images were taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) on the 136th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 12, 2008). Phoenix's telltale is part of the Canadian Space Agency's meteorological package on the lander.
The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University [nasa.gov]
Feel free to discuss this article in the forum... or chat...
Re:Site slashdotted, here it is, click link for im (Score:2)
With apologies to Bob Dylan (Score:5, Funny)
Before you can send one that's manned?
Yes, and how many times must you scoop the soil
Before you get some in the pan?
Yes, and how many sols must the dust storms fly
Before there's ice on polar land?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Pardon the tangent..... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a carryover from a previous topic regarding the smell of space, I wonder if NASA is trying to determine the smell of the martian atmosphere.
While we have no humans in place to do the smelling, could samples be taken then sent back for "smell" analysis?
Previous topic( http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/16/1533239 [slashdot.org] )already touched on the importance of the smell of space, but what about Mars?
The fact that there is mass pushing that little flag around leads me to believe that there are also chemical components to provide smell "signatures".
Re:Pardon the tangent..... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is all based on conjecture, so things may changes in local areas, during various weather conditions, or if/when we get more accurate measurements from the surface.
Mars, atmosphere (Score:3, Informative)
Many seem to forget that Mars does possess an atmosphere. Therefore, has wind and other 'weather' phenomenon.
Just not anything we can breathe, mostly carbon dioxide.
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It probably had a thicker atmosphere when its iron core was moving to create a magnetic shield from the solar wind. (like the earth)
Too bad we can't have a big tether like this (http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html) and connect one end to the now solid core (50KM below surface!). Then maybe a new a magnetic shield could be created.
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Mars does possess an atmosphere
rj
Refreshing (Score:2)
This is quite refreshing for me. Usually NASA has something entirely different waving the wind.....
There Are Dust Devils On Mars!!! (Score:2)
Oh, wait. Nevermind [wikipedia.org].
Catholic Church Takes Interest In Mars (Score:1)
Interesting instrument (Score:2)
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The professor is pretty innovative, although Ginger was bloody pissed.