Mars Curiosity Rover - Mission Progress

she ??

good god. Mars looks like the Australian outback at sunset.

Interesting details, even in the preliminary image of Mt. Sharp in the distance. A rocky area near the rover, then a smooth one nearer the base of the mountain. Two long, low, dark shapes, distinct from the flat, lighter colored terrain. Obvious targets for early investigation.

How's this for a pic....

Taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it shows Curiosity descending to the surface of Mars on its parachute.

Judging by the photograph of the landing site from orbit, there is a sinuous rill or channel that begins only about 500 meters East of Curiosity. As this is quite near a spot where three different types of terrain, numbered 1, 2, and 3 converge, this area will probably attract interest.

The first high-res color mosaic from Curiosity's mastcam shows a landscape that closely resembles portions of the southwestern United States.

Indeed it does.

Lynn

Looking at the photo, Lynn; you do get a distinct impression that Mars
has all the looks of landscapes that have been subjected to weathering.
I feel that the outlook for Curiosity discoveries will be quite exciting.

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The Kite Fliers

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Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

Having translated Carl Sagan's COSMOS in Italian, I remember a similar feeling of Sagan. These are his words:

I remember being transfixed by the first lander image to show the horizon of Mars. This was not an alien world, i thought. I knew places like it in Colorado and Arizona and Nevada. There were rocks and sand drifts and a distant eminence, as natural and unselfconscious as any landscape on Earth. Mars was a place.

This was the Viking 1 lander in 1976.
Tullio
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+1...yes, it's a "place"...lets hope we find evidence that it had something
happening there at one time in the past worthy of discovering.


____________
The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.

I'd be its a sand dune
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Proud member of TSWB.

End terrorism by building a school

There is no grass on Mars and yet there are polar caps and probably there was water, as proven by the sulphate rocks. Where did the grass go? Giovanni Schiaparelli in the XIX century thought he has seen canals bringing water to the plains from the polar caps. He thought he had seen the plains blossoming in martian spring and decaying in martian autumn. Now all we see is dry,rocky and sandy.
Tullio
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I clearly see a road in center of that image which zigzag to go hide behind a dune and then reappear from the dune to the left and then go up the mountain.