Second Mars Rover Sends Pictures to Earth

[RC]

By ANDREW BRIDGES
AP Science Writer

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- NASA's Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth on Sunday, delighting and puzzling scientists just hours after the spacecraft bounced to a landing.

The pictures show a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others. Bounce marks left by the rover's air bags when it landed were clearly visible.

>snip<

Together, the twin 384-pound rovers make up a $820 million mission to seek out geologic evidence that Mars was once a wetter world possibly capable of sustaining life. NASA launched Spirit on June 10 and Opportunity on July 7. Each carries nine cameras and six scientific instruments.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MARS_ROVERS?SITE=HIHAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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$820 million. Isn't this a hell of a lot better than $100 billon+ so far wasted killing people in Iraq for their oil?

[Codeblue]

1. And the trillions of dollars

that Bush plans to spend trying to send actual human beings to the surface of the moon and Mars.

[Throckmorton]

2. I'd reather spend the trillion on space,

than the billions on offensive war.

[NNadir]

3. I'd rather spend a reasonable amount on robotic missions like this one.

And almost nothing on foolhardy manned missions.

I'd like to take the savings on the foolhardy manned missions and invest them on earth in solutions for our profound environmental crisis.