Jealous Mars spacecraft raises game - July 02, 2008
In your face Phoenix! While the lately-landed lander is busying itself scraping for ice, old-timer rover Opportunity has been taking some amazing photos; which so far have only had limited press coverage, but really merit a bigger splash.
The ever-anthropomorphised rover has sidled up to a cliff face in Victoria Crater and is tilting its camera skywards. Is this just an attention-seeking ploy now that kid-brother (sister?) Phoenix is showing off finding signs of water ice, and testing the soil, blah blah blah?
I don’t doubt that NASA will be shouting loudly about these images, which as yet have only made it into the raw data files on the Phoenix mission’s web pages. Perhaps they’re going to wait until the rover has nosed closer to the bottom of the cliff and got a better view. The plan seems to be to take some close-up shots of the rocks and see what kind of structure they have, geologically. Coupled with the data that Phoenix is digging up, further north, it looks like Mars is going to be spewing up data for us to devour for a while yet.
(Another great picture below the fold.)
Comments
Wow! Those are some pictures! Geologists must be having a field day. Layer upon layer of laid-down dust and sand (made up of what?)running up the face, with precious few discontinuities, millions of years of relatively unchanged weather. Between Phoenix, Opportunity, and Spirit (she still lives)we're going to know a lot more Martian history.
Posted by: Jon Mandaville | July 2, 2008 08:15 PM
Ah ha! the secret is out! Just like before, NASA is trying to fool us (well, the Yank taxpayers) into thinking that they've gone into space when really they're just filming in a remote studio on Earth and sending the messages back with a tape recorder loop to fake the time-of-flight.
Any fool could tell you that's a profile of Stanage Edge, just outside Sheffield. Next thing you'll see will be a couple of joy riders torching a Ford Cortina, and a rather confused wombat.
[Ha ha, just joking. It's obviously not Stanage. It's on the coast just north of Cleethorpes.]
I sense a tragic future for Opportunity. Up to the axles in loose sand as the sun is setting and the batteries are getting cold. Poor anthropomorphised lump of ironmongery.
Posted by: Aidan Karley | July 3, 2008 05:20 PM