One Martian Year

[MacSA]

Both the rovers, Spirit and Opportunity have passed the one Martian year mark on the Red Planet now. http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

The image was created using a photorealistic model of the rover overlaying a mosaic from the rover itself. Opportunity captured the underlying view of "Burns Cliff" after driving right to the base of this southeastern portion of the inner wall of "Endurance Crater." The view combines frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera between the rover's 287th and 294th martian days (Nov. 13 to 20, 2004).

This synthetic image of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover on top of a rock called "Jibsheet" was produced using "Virtual Presence in Space" technology. Developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., this technology combines visualization and image-processing tools with Hollywood-style special effects. The image was created using a photorealistic model of the rover and a false-color mosaic. The size of the rover in the image is approximately correct and was based on the size of the rover tracks in the mosaic. The mosaic was assembled from frames taken by the panoramic camera on the rover's 489th Martian day, or sol (May 19, 2005)

Image Note: Rover model by Dan Maas, synthetic image by Zareh Gorjian, Koji Kuramura, Mike Stetson and Eric M. De Jong.

mage credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

 

[iSaint]

Awesome pics, thanks for sharing!

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Very cool. I don't know about you guys, but every time I see new pics from Mars it stirs the ancient human wanderlust in me that caused us to explore the world and beyond in the first place. Someday fairly soon we'll go there.

 

[Dr. Dastardly]

Blue sunsets, what a trip.

Up is down, black is white, and hamburgers eat people on Mars.

Scientific Fact! Read it on the interweb.

 

[Bubbasteve]

I personally think that that's amazing how NASA sent up the Rovers and they've taken all of these detailed pictures... but maybe that's just because I'm easily impressed

 

[MacFan25863]

I personally think that that's amazing how NASA sent up the Rovers and they've taken all of these detailed pictures... but maybe that's just because I'm easily impressed

Not only that, but its been 2 (earth) years, and they are still going strong. I would like to see a car go 2 years without needing hands-on maintenance!

Even more amazing is that they were only supposed to last 90 days!

 

[EricNau]

Wow, weren't they only supposed to last 90 days?

 

[MacFan25863]

Wow, weren't they only supposed to last 90 days?

Yup.

If anyone is interested, Steve Squyres wrote a documentary called Roving Mars which details the whole mission. I was able to meet him (the dad of a friend of mine worked on the project at JPL and is friends with him) and he is a very cool man.

 

[JW8725]

stunning pics! Wow!!

 

[Kobushi]

Up is down, black is white, and hamburgers eat people on Mars.

Scientific Fact! Read it on the interweb.

That's in the far off land of Rand McNally


Awesome pics. These are the things I think of when people bad-mouth NASA. To think that these were only to last 90 days and the plethora of information/images that has been sent back post 90 days....zowie.