Posted on 12/05/2006 10:18:35 AM PST by blam
Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars
12:29 05 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
David Chandler
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spots Spirit's backshell and parachute (Image: NASA)
After three decades lost on the Red Planet, Viking 2's backshell is spotted from space (Image: NASA)
It is a feat millions of times more impressive than finding a needle in a haystack. The new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted about a dozen spacecraft on the Martian surface and, incredibly, taken pictures of such sharpness that scientists have been able to identify individual rocks that were first photographed by the Viking landers in 1976.
The new series of pictures released late on Monday show both of the Viking landers, never spotted from orbit before, as well as their nearby heat shields and backshells. These are the top and bottom covers of the capsules in which the rovers decended through the Martian atmosphere to land.
The MRO has also found the Mars rover Spirit , the pyramid-shaped structure in which it landed, its backshell and parachute. The satellite probe had already found the rover Opportunity and its landing structure, sending back images within its first week of operations in October 2006.
Picturing the Viking landers from orbit is quite a coup for MRO. Tim Parker, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, told New Scientist that it was possible to clearly identify them by analysing the Martian landscape, even though the images show little detail.
Parker carefully matched rocks and other topographic features seen in the orbital views with those seen images the landers took on the ground. "I found a much better location match" than had been made from earlier orbital pictures, he says. It turns out Viking 1 is about 6 kilometres (3.8 miles) away..
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Wow. It must be very cool to see the end product of your efforts on the third rock from the Sun.
This really is mind-blowing. Never mind that they found the location - but took pictures of the previous spacecraft and here we sit in our homes looking at them.
Why did you capitalize earth but not Mars?
Had no idea this many had made it to Mars, and this implies there are more to be found.
Hope the change of scenery has improved their play.
So tell me again, what is the reason that we can't photograph the U.S.flag on the moon?
It figures.
Because the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is around Mars, not the moon.
The studio where the landing was shot has been sold. Buyer's insisted the flag be included in the deal.
There is no satelite orbiting the moon taking pictures of the moon.
Because we don't have a Moon Reconnaisance Orbiter?
No way! And here I thought you only played basketball!
;)
Dozen?...........Some must be from somewhere else..........Area51?.......Roswell?.....
We spent millions of tax dollars to find.............garbage on Mars?....
I thought that Hubble was pointed at the Moon several years ago and the Tranquility Base memoribilia was photographed.
There was, but the ESA crashed it into the Moon........on purpose........
Well, if they got to Mars maybe they could have made it to Minnesota...maybe the Kensington runestone isn't a fake after all. I need to go take another look at those sagas.
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