Thursday, June 02, 2005
This Day:

Oppurtunity and Spirit are two semi-autonomous rovers that are currently surveying the Martian landscape. Built by NASA, Opportunity is the second of the two rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission. She landed successfully on Mars on January 24, 2004.
In addition to enormously valuable scientific work, both the rovers have also wowed us with lovely pictures (Spirit here, Oppurtunity here) from the red planet:). The latest image from Oppurtunity is a particularly poignant one, as the rover looks up in the sky, and finds its home planet, the planet it will never again be able to visit.

Hello Earth! (Courtesy: Mars Exploration Rover Mission)
On its 449th martian day, or sol (April 29, 2005), NASA's Mars rover Opportunity woke up approximately an hour after sunset and took this picture of the fading twilight as the stars began to come out. Set against the fading red glow of the sky, the pale dot near the center of the picture is not a star, but a planet - Earth:):).
Earth appears elongated because it moved slightly during the 15-second exposures. The faintly blue light from the Earth combines with the reddish sky glow to give the pale white appearance.
I wonder when it will be us humans who will be able to take such pictures of Earth, from the surface of Mars.

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6/02/2005   3 comments Post a Comment

3 Comments:

At June 03, 2005 6:13 PM, Blogger Sray said...
The picture really moved me. Just imagine... when we are looking up in the sky, the rover was perhaps looking back at us :). One day, perhaps we can look at other stars and point to them and say: perhaps this species is staring back at us. How cool wil that be?! :):):).
 
At June 04, 2005 12:43 PM, Blogger Wayne Smallman said...
I've no doubt man will eventually set foot on Martian soil, but I have to wonder whether we'd want to go and live there.

One of the characteristics of Mars that is rarely covered in science fiction movies and the like is the difference in gravity.

Getting about Mars would be much different to what it is on Earth.

For one thing, a sort of running jumping motion is probably the most efficient way of getting around.

Also, spending too long on Mars would lead to muscle atrophy and other complications.

I suppose if we lived there long enough, we'd adapt. But if Terrans were to travel to Mars, they would be vastly stronger than their Martian cousins.

Much like the alien in the movie The Predator who weighed in at a svelte quarter of a metric ton and was enormously strong, simply because he came from a planet that was larger than Earth...
 
At June 04, 2005 1:13 PM, Blogger Sray said...
Martian gravity is about one-third of Earth's. Artuhur C. Clarke has really nice stories on how people who were born on Mars can never come to Earth, as the gravity would probably crush them. Initially, I think people might wear some heavy loads to simulate a slightly higher weight, but of course, the increased inertia will take time to get used to. But later generations will adapt...
 

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