I heard Steve Squyres on the radio as I was walking through the park this morning, and he sounded just tongue-tied at the sight of Opportunity's landing site. Many people had predicted that Merdiani Planum (which I keep wanting to refer to by its old name of Terra Meridiani) would look strange compared to the martian landscapes we've seen before, and it certainly does. Most importantly, it seems to boast genuine outcrops - rocks sticking out of the surface, rather than rocks scattered over the surface. Most of the rocks we've seen on Mars up until now have been wandering rocks, rocks that ended up where they ended up because they'd been washed there by floods or they'd been thrown there by impacts. Here, in Meridiani Planum, there appears to be bedrock exposed at the surface. There's the chance to look not at the history of Mars in general, nor of unseen bits of Mars upstream - but of the bit of Mars we're actually experiencing. Time to get the hammers and eye lenses out.
While we wait to see what the rocks are made of, it's worth pausing to wonder whether landing sites will ever again be able to surprise the people whose craft end up there in the way that Meridiani Planum seems to have flabbergasted Steve. The next landing site, the one Phoenix will set down on in May 2008, will have been stereoscopically imaged from space by the Mars Express camera, giving a beautiful three dimensional context for it. It will also have been scoped out, I imagine, by HiRise, the super-camera being developed for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (not least because Peter Smith at the University of Arizona is responsble for both projects). HiRise will send back images with a resolution of one metre or better that cover quite significant swathes of ground; its individual frames will be so data rich that they will quite literally be best seen on Imax screens. It will also be able to operate in a stereoscopic mode to produce three dimensional pictures.
With that much pre-landing imagery, I'd imagine that it will be fairly hard for a landscape to surprise us quite this way again. One more way in which our relationship with the planet next door is changing - the flipside, I suppose, of the ability to actually see ourselves in the sites once we're there (see previous post). Some thrilling surprises lost - an enriched sense of being-in-the-world gained.
I've added your blog to my big list of links and put a posting up about it. Great stuff, I thought that "Mapping Mars" was the best piece of non-fiction I read in 2003.
Did you see "60 Minutes" tonight? Andy Rooney really blew it. After praising space exploration, then saying we needed to concentrate on Earth, he indicated that he thought a manned mission to mars would be one-way.
Why?
Well it seems some scientist out there said that the gravity of Mars was so much that you wouldn't be able to carry enough fuel to do a liftoff once you've landed.
Hoo-boy!
Posted by: Fred Kiesche | January 26, 2004 at 02:19 AM
Great site, Mr. Morton. Keep up the good work. Here's a link for you and your readers who are curious for more!
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
http://axonchisel.net/etc/space/mars-exp-rover-highlights.html
Posted by: Dr. K | January 26, 2004 at 07:51 AM
Hi,
You have a very nice blog here. I was wondering if you could answer a question for me. I have posted a crop of the panorama from the Opportunity landing site. The link to the image can be found in the URL field below. The image shows an object that is casting a shadow, from the angle it was taken it looks pretty symetrical, it is clearly not a rock. It appears in images taken on Sol 2 and is not present in subsequent images taken of the same spot. I'm sure it's part of an airbag, or maybe it's from the explosive bolts that were fired to release the rover. I was hoping for a reasonable explanation from someone familiar with the project before the crackpots get hold of the images. I hope that you don't mind a question of this type.
Thank you,
-tj
Posted by: Thomas McGee | February 03, 2004 at 03:20 PM
Don't mind the question -- but I don't have an answer...
Posted by: Oliver Morton | February 15, 2004 at 06:29 PM
niet over de heilige maagd Maria, de oneltebkve moeder van t kindeke Jezus, maar over Santa Maria, de krater op Mars waara0de Opportunity onlangs arriveerde. Dede krater is door deze Marsrover in drie dimensies gefotografeerd. Pak dus je rood-groene 3D
Posted by: Suryasenan | August 04, 2012 at 09:25 PM