Spirit Lands On Mars and Sends Postcards

[ConcernedCanuk]

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Spirit Lands On Mars and Sends Postcards

A traveling robotic geologist from NASA has landed on Mars and returned stunning images of the area around its landing site in Gusev Crater.

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully sent a radio signal after the spacecraft had bounced and rolled for several minutes following its initial impact at 11:35 p.m. EST (8:35 p.m. Pacific Standard Time) on January 3.

"This is a big night for NASA," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "We're back. I am very, very proud of this team, and we're on Mars."

Members of the mission's flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., cheered and clapped when they learned that NASA's Deep Space Network had received a post-landing signal from Spirit. The cheering resumed about three hours later when the rover transmitted its first images to Earth, relaying them through NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

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First Look at Spirit on Mars
This mosaic image taken by the navigation camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows a 360 degree panoramic view of the rover on the surface of Mars.



First Look Behind Spirit
This image taken by the hazard avoidance camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the rover's rear lander petal and, in the background, the Martian horizon. Spirit took the picture right after successfully landing on the surface of Mars.


First Look at Spirit at Landing Site
This is one of the first images beamed back to Earth shortly after the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit landed on the red planet.

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[Champion Jack]

1. And another Pic

[Sir Craig]

2. Bwa-ha-ha!

Thanks for starting my day off with a laugh!

:7

[Roon]

3. Why black and white?

These should be digital pictures of the highest quality known to man. These pictures are dissapointing :-(

[mobuto]

4. only initial photos

high-resolution color photographs take a fair amount of time to transmit and the cameras that take them almost certainly haven't been calibrated yet. These first photos are just to show that the thing has landed safely and everything's hunky dory. Wall-mountable photos come later.

[Roon]

6. Hee-Hee!

Thanks!

[0007]

5. This is an outstanding tour de force!

So for man to make this journey, it would take about a year going and coming back, is that right?

[jpgray]

7. Yeah. That would wreck the hell out of their bone mass

Unless they've made progress on some of the devices that simulate the stress gravity puts on the muscles and bones.

[Heyo]

8. A mission to Mars with humans..

Would be about 3 years round trip...

It's about a 6 month journey, but is only possible every 26 months or so when the planets are at oposition...so you'd have to wait for the next opposition to come home

6 months in space, and then a year or two of 1/4 the Gravity of earth (Martian gravity) plus the return trip would certainly tend to do a number on bone and muscle mass... but people have stayed in orbit in zero G for up to a year with only mild ill effects, because they do their best to keep up with it, having some excercise that simulate gravity. (i.e. the strap over the soulders on the treadmill, etc. It's not a perfect solution but it helps)

A manned mission could be done... the biggest problems are food, air, water and fuel. (Ain't no re-supply missions to Mars)

Also a side note to the poster above re: b&w pictures... first color pictures are expected this evening.

-Heyo

[Occulus]

9. I still don't understand

why we don't yet have a plan for artificial, centrifuge-type gravity sinulation on such a long trip. We see those spinning hab pods in sci-fi all the time, and it would seem to me the tech is there to build such a thing, yet whenever the question gets asked to someone knowledgable in such engineering, they inevitably say that it can't yet be done.

What gives? Why are our astronauts having to rely on resistance-based exercises, when we could just have a spinnig hab pod on their ship that could generate gravity that way?