Mars rover Curiosity makes first test drive

AP / Terra.Com ^ | 8/22/12 | Alicia Chang

[jb729]

[GeronL]

this thing is a lot bigger than those 2 little end tables were, right?

[jb729]

Does that answer your question? ;).

[MHGinTN]

Cool! ... Any coding on the treads this time?

[SpinnerWebb]

oooh, oooh! Is that the laser cannon on the right? WANT!

[jb729]

Morse Code that says “J-P-L”

[Raycpa]

Any sign of Neal Armstrong’s footprints?

[theDentist]

Coding on the treads? Enlighten me on that, pls. I hadn’t known of it.

[theDentist]

Coding on the treads? Enlighten me on that, pls. I hadn’t known of it.

[dfwgator]

[Lee'sGhost]

LOL! That’s STILL funny.

[GeronL]

not getting stuck on a pebble

priceless (or rather $2.5 billion)

[bert]

JPL is encoded in Morris on the left front wheel. You can see the openings that leave little raised dots and dashes

[Raycpa]

A newbie usually corrects me by now.

[bgill]

Is that a Martian footprint?

[from occupied ga]

Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Allen Chen on Wednesday tweeted an image of marks left in the soil and declared, "Wheel tracks on Mars."

Scientific discovery of the first magnitude easily worth $2.5 billion. Maybe they'll discover the valley of lost SUVs next.

It looks like Mars is still made of rocks and dirt - just like the last set of expensive taxpayer funded robots found.

[diogenes ghost]

"JPL is encoded in Morris on the left front wheel."

Whaaatttt?

Morris the Cat?

Johnny Morris?

Philip Morris?

Dick Morris?

[aquila48]

Those two martians look a lot like terrestrians!

[Mr. K]

they have been on the planet for a week- what have they been doing?

[MHGinTN]

IIRC, one of the earlier little remotes was sent to Mars without a distance gage and when the techies tried to firgure out how far their little remote had driven and thus how far from some item of interest, they were stumped. Until one of the techies realized the tread ont he tired was something they could measure on earth (as a duplicate was here for comparisons) and extrapolate distance covered by counting the number of times a pattern on one wheel tread repeated.