Indian Mars Mission Beams Back First Photographs 113
astroengine writes India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) got straight to work as it closed in on Martian orbit on Tuesday — it began taking photographs of the Red Planet and its atmosphere and surface as it slowed down to reach its ultimate destination. After a two day wait, those first images are slowly trickling onto the Internet.
Hey India (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why the FUCK does that site require JavaScript just to view a few pictures and text? What kind of completely inept web designers do they have working for them?
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Re:Hey India (Score:5, Funny)
Hey India, can we get some extra quotas for visas for out of work American space scientists?
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Ironically, the moon's response was:
"Thank you, come again"
Frankly, those are some of the best visualizations (Score:1)
Frankly, those are some of the best visualizations I've ever seen of altitude data on Mars. It makes some of the geologic features very, very clear, compared to other data visualizations that try to do actual color or altitude color.
Re:Frankly, those are some of the best visualizati (Score:5, Informative)
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The pictures are best viewed while chanting :
Kali Ma Shakti de! Kali Ma Shakti de!
And the high priest of the Red Planet of Doom may be seen.
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+1 if I had mod points.
Images? (Score:1)
The best photo... (Score:5, Interesting)
BBC has a good report and the photo...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-29357472 [bbc.co.uk]
As a tweeter asks..when was the last time we saw women scientists celebrating a space mission?
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As a tweeter asks..when was the last time we saw women scientists celebrating a space mission?
Umm, every time NASA does a mission. I realise there is no equality in your country, so maybe that's why you never see women scientists. Here in the USA, they are everywhere.
Perhaps instead of working on Mars missions, your country should first work on women's rights and liberty.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05... [nytimes.com]
http://www.indialawjournal.com... [indialawjournal.com]
Take your pick or just Google it for yourself. It's common knowledge.
Captcha: provable
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As a tweeter asks..when was the last time we saw women scientists celebrating a space mission?
India does have female scientist and engineers, but the women in that photo are not them.
It would be like a photo of NASA engineers wearing hoodies.
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That tweeter is a numbskull. There are and were plenty of female scientists involved with (and celebrating) space missions, going back all the way to Voyager at least (e.g. Carolyn Porco was on the Voyager team, and now leads the Cassini imaging science team).
NASA has on at least one occasion [nasa.gov] planned a day where all of the staff on duty for a science mission (e.g. for Spirit and Opportunity) was female.
Just because photos don't make it to mainstream news outlets doesn't mean it's not happening.
Re:The best photo... (Score:5, Insightful)
And here is the problem in a nutshell. Some women are pictured because they achieved something significant, and some idiot immediately derails the conversation with comments on how attractive they are.
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Getting people to not talk about it in public doesn't make the problem go away. You just have to a
Re: The best photo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Slashdot is known to complain that male scientists are unattractive whenever a picture is posted Totally the same.
Re:The best photo... (Score:5, Interesting)
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By the way, the Sari and that other dress (forgot the name) are not "traditional" in the same way that tuxedos and tailcoats are traditional or worn at formal occasions only. When I visited India, I saw these everywhere in public life as well as in the office. In our own office in Europe, visiting Indians sometimes wear them as well.
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Well, although a sari is a wonderful outfit, the flowing fabric would probably just get in the way in zero-g.
(I kid, I kid)
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You would think Star Trek would have conditioned people by now to expect all sorts of alternative dress arrangements when it comes to space exploration. I'm waiting for NASA to implement Toga Fridays.
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yeah, I try not to do this (respond to ACs, that is), but for hot Indian women think Shilpa Shetty (Bollywood actress), Neha Kapur (Miss India 2006 and wife of Kunal Nayyar (if you don't know who that is burn your Geek card NOW)), and the late and exceedingly hot Persis Khambatta (who won Miss India in 1965). Those are just three off the top of my head, there are many, many more.
Wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot commenters have gone downhill. Congrats to ISRO, Indians, and humanity as a whole. Let's not let the bigots hold us down.
Re:Proud of India... (Score:5, Insightful)
To the Indian government though, I suggest the next project be here on planet earth:
That is, to make public toilets as easily available as every other space power.
1) China is a space power. Not exactly know for the quality & quantity of rural public toilets.
2) If everyone waited to solve every domestic issue before becoming a space power, noone would have developed rockets yet. I think you would be astonished by the poverty that existed in Appalachia or other rural isolated areas in the US when their space program started. Ditto for Europe (portugal / greece) and Russia (almost everywhere).
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India arguably needs to be a tech powerhouse more than the US does. It faces tougher problems with fewer resources; it has to do more with less. It already has a huge middle class, but it needs to grow that middle class to bring capital in for the even huger underdeveloped portions of its society.
I wish them well. Nations becoming more technologically capable is not a zero sum game.
Disappointed (Score:4, Insightful)
An article with exactly one image from India's mission, and a slide show of false color images from NASA that most slashdotters think were from MOM.
I expected at least a few more images hinted at by the summary. It will be interesting if they can capture some of the more controversial spots to provide independent confirmation of what NASA has been telling conspiracy buffs for the past few years.
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I am sorely disappointed. There seems to be a lot of racism here. Here's some more: http://www.firstpost.com/world... [firstpost.com]
Honestly, I am unable to comprehend why there's so much racism. The US is known for ensuring racism doesn't happen as compared to a lot of other place.
Nothing from K'breel? (Score:2)
This is really cool. (Score:1)
I am genuinely glad more and more space exploration is happening outside of just Nasa and the US.
The more people with different perspectives and regimes we get out there the more likely the information we get back will actually be accurate :)
I wonder how well the satellite is really going? (Score:1)
I notice that the images have either been coloured or are very blurred.
Kinda make me think that the satellite might be spinning or something.
oh wow (Score:2)
I can't wait to get some of these contour images through a terrain mapper and recoloured. Awesome job, India. :D
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That page was confusing - the technicolour height-maps aren't from India's Mars orbiter, but from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Sodding enormous digital terrain models [arizona.edu] are available for download. I suggest using GDAL to convert them into higher-bit-depth GeoTIFFs and loading them as displacement maps in your 3D editing software of choice. They're lovely.
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thanks for that, didn't notice that until after I'd hit send. I do prefer the old school terrain mappers such as VistaPro and FractINT (which does render some amazing terrain based in bitmap colour values, try it on a suitably-converted-to-gif89a portrait!)
Indian Mars Mission (Score:5, Insightful)
So does Indian Mars look anything like American Mars?
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Well. Sandra Bullock doesn't look like Indian Bullocks. Besides, in India bullocks are male, and usually castrated.
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Well. Sandra Bullock doesn't look like Indian Bullocks. Besides, in India bullocks are male, and usually castrated.
I hate to have to be the one to break this to you, but about Sandra Bullock...
This is good: we didn't send a camera on ours (Score:1)
This is good stuff, as the NASA mission that just arrived at Mars lacked any sort of camera instruments. Nothing but a UV detector. Wow. So we won't get any Mars photos back from this one. I suppose we sort of know what Mars looks like but still... India sent back pictures. Not bad, India. Congrats! Welcome to Mars!
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You are correct, we know what it looks like, and I said as much too, but new photos of Mars look good on the news and remind us things like this are worth funding.
To be sure, NASA did some nice animations to fill the gap.
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Just put up some of the latest pictures from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is still up there snapping away at 1 meter resolution. The following is from http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/mro/bo... [nasa.gov]
"The track left by an oblong boulder as it tumbled down a slope on Mars runs from upper left to right center of this image. The boulder came to rest in an upright attitude at the downhill end of the track. The HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this view on July 3, 2014."
MOM (Score:2)
Do I see..? (Score:2)
Re:gasp! (Score:5, Interesting)
and yet, still more interesting than anything you post.
Re: gasp! (Score:2)
Re:gasp! (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get it. This is not a scientific achievement, but an engineering one.
It cost a few cents per Indian - I think they can afford that. Congratulations India!