NASA rover sends snapshots from Mars

http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/3855168/

I love space exploration - as long as it's not me doing it! :laugh: This is such great news - it almost makes me hopeful for the future again, after all the negative news of the last few years. Enjoy!

I cannot believe they made it to MARS! Very very exciting! The pics are really neat!

On a side note, for all the things media considers "breaking news alerts" (Michael Jackson shopping! Britney Spears married!) I can't believe this is just a regular old news story. They're showing it of course but no-one seems amazed. I am!

Pasadena, California-AP -- The author of "The Martian Chronicles" says last night's Mars landing makes him feel like he's 83 years old "going on 14."

About a-thousand space enthusiasts -- including author Ray Bradbury -- attended a California event last night to watch a T-V feed of Spirit's landing.

Bradbury says it's "a dumb question" to ask why humans are exploring Mars. He says the Red Planet is "the future."

The robot that landed last night is just the beginning for the science fiction icon. He says, "We've got to put flesh and blood back on the moon and then on Mars."

Bradbury predicts a human visit could come in the next half century.

http://www.fox21.com/Global/story.asp?S=1586323

~~~~~~~~NASA's Web site braces for Mars flood
1997 mission curiosity taught agency lessons

http://www.floridatoday.com/news/spa...404marsweb.htm

By Chris Kridler
FLORIDA TODAY

The little Mars rover that blew the doors off the Internet in 1997 taught NASA a few lessons.
The agency's Internet gurus say they are ready for a wave of Web watchers for its two new rovers: Spirit, and in three weeks, Opportunity.

FOR MORE
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html


When Pathfinder's Sojourner rover landed on Mars and started crawling around on July 4, 1997, NASA's Web site was overwhelmed with 17.3 million visits in the first month.

"We've taken that as a benchmark, I guess you can say, so we've been preparing the Web for that," said Michelle Viotti, the manager for Mars public engagement.

As her title suggests, she's trying to get the public involved with Mars through the Web, schools and other educational venues, such as museums.

Even without an exciting mission like the rovers, traffic to the Mars pages at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory runs about 654,000 visits per month. Of those, 272,000 are unique visitors, Viotti said.

"People are really interested in Mars," she said. "That seems to be a pretty stable figure over the years."

There's a network of computers around the world that will show the same content that's on the lab's site.

"To the people out there, it looks the same, because they're all going to the Mars site," said Jeanne Holm, who manages NASA's Web infrastructure.

Traffic also will be funneled to Mars pages through the NASA home page (www.nasa.gov), which has been redesigned over the past year to provide simpler access to information throughout the agency.

"We have a whole infrastructure that we've actually built out over the last 10 months," Holm said.

Last week, NASA was ironing out its Web plan, moving links to old Mars pages and sorting out just when a flashy Mars-related animation would appear to visitors.

NASA's current Web look was launched Jan. 31, just one day before the shuttle Columbia disaster that killed seven astronauts.

"We sort of had our first trial by fire for the very worst reasons the first day we were out," Holm said.

Immediately after the disaster, the site was getting 3 million visits per hour, Holm said.

"We know we can handle a large number of people looking for content," Holm said. "The trick with Mars is people are going to come, and they're going to want to get very high-resolution images. They're going to want to download screensavers."

At first, there won't be a lot of video, heavy graphics or interactive features on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Web site because of the anticipated demand, Viotti said.

As time goes by and the amount of interest becomes more clear, she said, NASA may add content to its Mars rovers Web site.



"Our first order of business is really to make sure that everyone has access to the data coming back," she said.

There's a good chance that, if the first rover survived its landing late Saturday, it won't be able to send its first photo until today, rover project manager Pete Theisinger said.

The Web team will post daily images and press releases, along with feature stories focusing on what's happening behind the scenes, Viotti said. Eventually, the Web site is expected to feature 360-degree panoramas and three-dimensional images.

NASA will deliver some content directly to science museums and planetariums so they can share it with visitors.

Viotti's team has developed classroom activities that will complement discoveries as they happen, such as soil studies.

"We are really going to be hopefully increasing some of our education activities in Florida, simply because we launch out of Florida," she said.

"We call you guys our gateway to Mars."

Great links, tncorgi! I read tons of Bradbury when I was younger. I especially like the NASA site. :gvibes:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040105/marspix.html

NASA SITE~http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Jan. 5, 2004 — NASA has begun receiving high resolution color photographs of Mars from the Spirit rover and is processing them for release sometime later Monday, officials at mission control in Pasadena Calif. said.

Scientists chalked up several new successes on the robot's first full day on Mars, including deployment of an antenna to transmit data directly to Earth and testing of instruments ahead of three months exploring the Martian surface.

Shortly after landing on Mars overnight Saturday to Sunday, Spirit began transmitting low-resolution black-and-white images taken with its navigational camera, giving the world a first glimpse at the rocky plain where it came to a rest in the Gusev crater, about 15 degrees south of the Martian equator.

Twenty-four hours later, NASA was receiving high-resolution, IMAX-quality color images at Jet Propulsion Laboratory here. Technicians were putting together a mosaic of images to produce 360-degree views, the best photographs ever taken on Mars, for release later in the day.

The pictures were taken by Spirt's panoramic camera, mounted on a vertical telescopic arm, which essentially gives researchers a window onto Mars.

The camera will help mission managers choose which soils and rocks to analyze and decide where to guide the robot once it is put in motion.

The resolution of its images is three times superior to those produced during the 1997 Pathfinder mission, during which the mini-robot Sojourner moved a few yards (meters) on the Martian surface. The images are 14 times clearer than those received so far.

Another key task accomplished during the day was the deployment of Spirit's high-gain antenna, which will enable it to transmit data directly to Earth at a rate of 1,000 bits per second, and eventually at more than 11,000 bits per second.

Spirit is already using a UHF antenna that transmits data at 128,000 bits per second via the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Odyssey satellites, each of which passes above Spirit for several minutes once or twice during a Martian day.

Spirit is at the moment about 40 centimeters above the ground, perched on its lander platform, and the next nine days or so will be spent preparing for egress, or rolling off, onto the Martian surface.

"Spirit has told us that it is healthy. The egress path we're working toward is straight," said Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission manager for operations on Mars' surface. The robot is well positioned to move onto the Martian surface, with no rocks in the way, she said.

Impatient to Start
NASA scientists are burning with impatience to start exploring.

"My hat is off to the navigation team because they did a fantastic job of getting us right where we wanted to be," said geologist Steve Squyres, in charge of research during the mission.

By comparing images sent by Spirit and older images acquired by satellites, researchers have identified certain craters near the robot and thus pinpointed its location, a dust-swept region well suited for geological research.

"We hit the sweet spot. We wanted someplace where the wind had cleared off the rocks for us," Squyres said.

The region appears different from those already explored during three previous missions on Mars, the two Vikings in 1976 and the Pathfinder in 1997.

A second NASA rover, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on Mars on Jan. 25, on the opposite side of the planet.

The Mars mission, at a record cost of $820 million, involves some 250 NASA specialists and researchers who over three months will micro-manage the six-wheeled rovers, each weighing 180 kilograms (400 pounds) and roughly the size of a subcompact car.

Powered by solar energy, the robots will be able to move 40 meters (125 feet) each Martian day, more than during the entirety of NASA's 1997 Pathfinder mission, with its 10-kilogram (22-pound) mini-robot Sojourner.

This latest effort to unlock the secrets of the red planet is beginning just days after the planned December 25 arrival of the ill-fated European robot Beagle 2, which has not been heard from since that date.

British scientists behind the Beagle 2 Mars mission congratulated NASA Sunday, but insisted they had not given up hope of contacting their own probe.

I am just beyond excited and happy that this is really happening. Did anyone catch the Nova special on PBS last night? It was great, all the engineers and scientists were in turns giddy and terrified about the project. I guess Nova is going to have all the most recent pics and updates on Tuesday evening.

Originally Posted by ignoramoose I am just beyond excited and happy that this is really happening. Did anyone catch the Nova special on PBS last night? It was great, all the engineers and scientists were in turns giddy and terrified about the project. I guess Nova is going to have all the most recent pics and updates on Tuesday evening.

I only caught the end of it, just amazing. I would love to be working at JPL during such an amazing time. I only wish we would spend more on the space program. My 2cents....the leaders of this country need to play civ. After a while (ok, so it was a LONG while), it was just boring taking over country after country. I had more fun ending the game through the space flight/colonization option. If more of our leaders would feel the same way, maybe the future would look a bit brighter.

cindi