Opportunity Mars lander is about to land on Mars

[IndianaGreen]

LIVE on NASA TV

On the web:

http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html

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

[bubblesby2002]

1. I'm listening now as I

browse through DU tonight. It should land in a couple of minutes.

[IndianaGreen]

2. 1 minute to go

tense...

[wroberts189]

3. Very cool...

THANKS!!!

watching now 128 miles out ..atmosphere is at 80 miles

[IndianaGreen]

4. CNN just went live with their coverage

on TV

[Cush]

5. parachute is deployed

[Cush]

6. its bouncing

meaning touchdown

[bicentennial_baby]

7. Touchdown!!

Woohoo!! Very strong signal!!

[bubblesby2002]

8. It just landed

Cool huh

[IndianaGreen]

9. Al Gore is in the control room

Wow!

[IndianaGreen]

10. And Arnold is there too!

big party!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

11. The Gropenator has arrived. Barf.

[IndianaGreen]

12. Maybe he is going to Mars

as in Total Recall.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

13. One could only wish.

[IndianaGreen]

14. TV Coverage is live on Discovery Science Channel

COMCAST channel 110 if you live in Indianapolis.

CNN will resume coverage when the first pictures arrive in 2 hours.

Webcast continues:

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

[delhurgo]

16. Wow, first pics in 2 hours? I had no idea. I thought it would take days.

I'm looking forward to that. Hope they picked a more intersting area than where Spirit landed.

That is so cool that Ahnold and Gore is there.

[IndianaGreen]

19. They get those thumbnail pictures

if you remember from Spirit, one of the first pictures was taken from the probe while still approaching with its parachute deployed.

[delhurgo]

21. Oh ok. I was thinking of pics at ground level on the planet.

I guess we'll have to wait awhile for those. I'll still be interested in seeing these thumbnails though.

[IndianaGreen]

22. It includes those too!

One of the thunbnail pictures that was taken was of the landing zone while the lander was still coming down with its parachute open.

[calimary]

24. We just watched it on the Science Channel, too. Too bad it was

marred by Arnold. As they said in "Total Recall," "get your ass to Mars." Well, why dontcha, Arnold?

Damn! Gore was there, which was kinda neat. Very low-key. That Sean O'Keefe republi-CON shill apologist let's cut-back-everything-for-the-sake-of-being-cheap asshole was there but you'd kind of expect that. All was going smoothly. Then all of a sudden it turns into an Arnold photo-op. Crap. See Arnold Go to JPL. See Arnold make it all about him. Who the hell invited him, anyway? Go AWAY, Arnold! We were doing just fine without you. And having a rather nice evening, thank you very much.

I just had this vision of myself as a NASA nerd, getting up from my monitor to shake hands with Gore and Schwarzenegger being right there, too, and saying to Gore, LOUDLY ENOUGH so that Arnold couldn't miss it - "GOD, I WISH YOU WERE THE PRESIDENT! THESE AWFUL REPUBLICANS ARE RUINING EVERYTHING!!!" And then sitting back down, having failed to acknowledge the Gropenator's presence.

edit for spelling, grammar

[IndianaGreen]

15. The vehicle is still rolling on Mars

they don't know if the vehicle is teetering on an edge.

[meisje]

17. No Fault Tone - It Made It!

It still has to open

[IndianaGreen]

18. CNN: Opportunity lands on Mars

To comply with LBN rules, I am posting the CNN story:

Opportunity lands on Mars

Spirit 'upgraded from critical to serious'
Sunday, January 25, 2004 Posted: 12:09 AM EST (0509 GMT)



This white oval shows Opportunity's
expected landing site.

PASADENA, California (CNN) -- Opportunity, the second of NASA's twin rovers, has made the descent to the surface of Mars, touching down successfully at about 0505 GMT Sunday (12:05 ET).

NASA now has two rovers on the ground, after Spirit landed on the red planet January 3. Though Spirit's landing was near perfect, the rover mission has had serious complications in recent days.

Opportunity is an exact replica of Spirit but was programed to land on the opposite side of the planet, in an area known as the Meridiani Planum -- a smooth plain near Mars' equator, believed to be full of iron-bearing hematite.

The semi-precious mineral usually forms on Earth in the presence of liquid water -- leading scientists to think that water once flowed there.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/25/mars.rovers/index.html

[IndianaGreen]

20. They lost communications with the lander

????

[IndianaGreen]

23. Okay, NASA is saying the lander is stationary but

the Earth is setting so that is why the signal appears to be moving.

[IndianaGreen]

25. NASA Briefing at 10:30 PM PST

12:45 AM PST Commentary
2:AM PST Briefing

I believe ET is about 3 hours ahead, which means the briefing is at 1:30 AM ET.

[IndianaGreen]

26. NASA briefing is now on CNN

and on the NASA websites listed on this thread.

[IndianaGreen]

27. Live pictures from Mars, live CNN

on now!

[delhurgo]

28. Yep, I saw em. At ground level too. They're very interesting.

I like that area with the white outcropping. No pyramids or animals though :-( Heh. They should be very cool in higher res though. Looking forward to that. I guess I might as well stay up till 5:00 am now. LOL.

[Capt_Nemo]

29. Success in reaching Mars with just a couple of hundreed thousand $$

And if something goes wrong nobody gets hurt.

The same can't be said about dumbya's harebrained space plans...

[Dogmudgeon]

30. Make that $900 million

I still think space exploration is worth the price. Imagine if we could cut the military by 50% -- to $300Bln per year -- and dedicate a scant $100Bln per year to NASA, instead of the $18Bln we spend on it now.

Bush's plans to go to the Moon and Mars aren't really hare-brained. The real problem is that he has no intention of following through. That's why he didn't submit any kind of detailed plan, just made a few speeches. Remember combatting AIDS in Africa? All those billions turned into a few million for some of his "faith-based" buddies. "No Child Behind" imposed huge unfunded mandates on the states, and only a few percent of the promised budget has been delivered.

The Moon/Mars initiative will likewise be little more than a porkbarrel program for Bush's political friends who haven't previously been able to monopolize NASA's funding teats.

--bkl
Got Pork?

[Capt_Nemo]

31. Thanks, BareKnuckledLiberal, the thousand part was an error

and the "couple" was figuratively speaking. These missions usualy
come in the hundred million balpark

[Ediacara]

32. Some Images From Opportunity

Overall, it seems more interesting geomorphologically than the place where Spirit landed, but only time will tell.