Posted on 08/27/2012 3:31:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: What's that on the horizon? The light peak is Mt. Sharp -- an eventual destination of the Curiosity rover. The above image mosaic was taken from Bradbury Landing, the landing spot of Curiosity, and shows in the foreground the rover's extended robotic arm. Curiosity's is already on the move crossing the intermediate gravel field toward an interesting terrain feature named Glenelg. Curiosity has also already started analyzing its surroundings by zapping a nearby rock with its laser to analyze the chemical composition of the resulting gas plume. If life ever existed on Mars it might well have been here in Gale crater, with the Curiosity rover being humanity's current best chance to find what remains.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech; Additional Mosaic Processing: Kenneth Kremer & Marco Di Lorenzo]
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Looks a little bit like Kilamanjaro
Fascinating picture. Thank you for the post.
In a “desolate beauty” sort of way, it’s like “the moon but with mountains”.
The “life” of the “Red Planet” so far, seems limited to the macro-level “life of the whole planet” as in the dynamics of what changing wind, sunlight, and other cyclical conditions produce, moving and reshaping the seemingly barren soil, and not much else.
Amazing. Add in some pine trees and some sagebrush and it would look amazingly like where I live.
They’re blocking out the camera crew...I need to contact Alex Jones.
Waiting for Richard Hoagland to chime in.
Those little electric motors on the robotic arm are a long way from a stocking distributor.
Thanks all.
Thanks all.
This whole thing is just delightfully neato!
Thanks again, Mr. Civilizations.
I want color pics and I want audio. I want to hear what the red planet sounds like. Is there audible wind on Mars? Even its silence would be interesting. I’d also like to hear the sounds Curiosity makes, the sound of its motors and the sand crunching under its tires. The audio component has been completely absent on all of the Mars missions, at least that I’m aware of. Anybody know if Curiosity is outfitted with mics?
Which is why I fully understand Val Kilmer giving the finger to Mars in "Red Planet" when he finally split.
As Carl Sagan once said: on this day Mars went from mystery to becoming just “a place”.
We’re lucky to be the generation this happens to.
Going off road.....zapping rocks with lasers.....hill climbing.....there’s a lot of kid left in those people at NASA.
That’s interesting. I don’t know. The way to build and test such listening equipment would be via high altitude balloons; the atmospheric pressure on Mars at the surface is the same as 40 miles altitude on Earth. Probably pretty quiet, and you couldn’t use your naked ears to listen.
That’s an excellent summation, ToL!
The Lewin experiment on the Voyager lander back in the 1970s detected biological activity. There won’t be any “face-builder” civilization though. :’)
Sounds like a great job to have. Of course, it’s all coming to a screeching whoa under the Kenyan.
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