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NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell
This enhanced-color view, showing an outcropping of bedrock on the rim of Intrepid Crater on Mars, is just one little piece of a panorama sent back by NASA's Opportunity rover. The full view is available at NASA's Mars rover website.
Two of the latest craters encountered by NASA’s Opportunity rover during its nearly seven-year trek on Mars pay tribute to the sailing ships of old -- 41 years old, to be precise. Intrepid Crater and Yankee Clipper Crater are named after the lunar lander and command module for Apollo 12, which landed on the moon on today's date in 1969.
Opportunity drove past Yankee Clipper Crater on Nov. 4, and stopped at Intrepid Crater five days later. It's been a tradition for the craters encountered by the rover to be named after historic ships of exploration, such as Endeavour (Pacific explorer James Cook's vessel) and Endurance (polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's ship).
James Rice, a member of the rover science team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, picked up on that tradition -- and added in the topical twist from Apollo 12, the second mission to land on the moon.
"The Apollo missions were so inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates," he explained in a news release from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which serves as the Mars rovers' mission control. "When we were approaching these craters, I realized we were getting close to the Nov. 19 anniversary for Apollo 12."
Rice sent pictures of the craters to Apollo 12's Alan Bean and Dick Gordon, and this week the rover team received this reply:
"I just talked with Dick Gordon about the wonderful honor you have bestowed upon our Apollo 12 spacecraft," Bean wrote. "Forty-one years ago today, we were approaching the moon in Yankee Clipper with Intrepid in tow. We were excited to have the opportunity to perform some important exploration of a place in the universe other than planet Earth where humans had not gone before. We were anxious to give it our best effort. You and your team have that same opportunity. Give it your best effort."
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell
This stereo view of the Yankee Clipper crater on Mars is based on imagery sent back by NASA's Opportunity rover. Use red-blue glasses to get the 3-D effect. This larger version provides a better 3-D experience.
The aptly named Opportunity is just past the halfway point in a years-long trek from Victoria Crater to the 13-mile-wide Endeavour Crater, which would be the biggest impact site ever explored on Mars. Intrepid and Yankee Clipper are puny in comparison, measuring about 66 feet (20 meters) and 33 feet (10 meters) wide, respectively. Intrepid is about the same size as Eagle Crater, the place into which Opportunity rolled during its "hole-in-one" landing on Mars, almost seven years ago. (In case you're wondering, Eagle Crater was named after the Apollo 11 lunar module. Remember? "The Eagle has landed.")
Since Opportunity's landing in January 2004, the rover has rolled 15.53 miles (25 kilometers), which serves as a milestone in the metric system.
"Importantly, it's not how far the rovers have gone, but how much exploration and science discovery they have accomplished on behalf of all humankind," JPL's John Callas, Mars exploration project manager, said in the news release. Over the past six years, Opportunity and its twin Spirit have turned up ample evidence that Mars was once much warmer and wetter than it was today, and could conceivably have harbored life.
Speaking of Spirit, that rover is still mute on the other side of the Red Planet, stuck in a sandy mire with two gimpy wheels. NASA's team tried to put the solar-powered robot in the best position available to weather the dim Martian winter -- but there's a chance that the big chill killed the rover's electronics.
No communication has been received from the rover since March, but NASA is continuing efforts to contact the rover using a paging technique known as "sweep and beep." If Spirit wakes up, NASA is ready to put it to work on a full agenda of stationary science. If Spirit has given up the ghost, as some scientists suspect, NASA can still take solace in the fact that it's gotten six years of exploration from a machine that was projected to last just 90 days on Mars.
Update for 6:55 p.m. ET Nov. 19: In a follow-up phone call, Callas said it's too early to give up on Spirit. The weather models for Mars indicated that last month was the earliest time for hearing from the rover, but as the Martian summer approaches, the sun is getting brighter every day where Spirit is sitting. "The peak of the solar insolation is around mid-March," he said. The sweep-and-beep strategy is aimed at getting the rover's attention just in case it wakes up but has lost track of time. So does this mean the rover team is keeping hope alive? "That's right," Callas said.
Correction for 12:15 p.m. ET Nov. 20: I originally referred to Dick Gordon as a moonwalker, but as Brant and Jeff pointed out in their comments below, Gordon never walked on the moon. He was orbiting above as the command module pilot while Bean and Pete Conrad went down to the surface. Gordon was slated to have his moonwalk as the commander of Apollo 18, but that mission was canceled due to budget cuts. Sorry about the error, and thanks for keeping me honest. (I've also corrected the projected lifetime for the rovers.)
More about Apollo 12 ... and Mars:
- Apollo 12's Alan Bean: The right-brained astronaut
- Timeline: NASA's Glory Days on the Final Frontier
- See a Martian milestone in 3-D
- Still more from the Mars rover website
- Still more about the Apollo 12 mission
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Sorry to be the one to tell you, but Dick Gordon never walked on the moon.....
Wow! It is always awe inspiring to see these images from Mars, and just how similar to Earth they look. If it wasn't for the color of the sky, that image could have been taken in some desolate area of Arizona. In the entire vastness of the Galaxy, with more and more exoplanets being discovered, it speaks a lot that we did not have t go very far to find a place so similar.
Keel is right. Dick Gordon was the Command Module Pilot. Pete Conrad, the mission Commander, walked on the moon with Alan Bean.
Ugh, sorry about that. Will fix
The exploration of the Martian surface by robots is the greatest scientific/engineering feat of this or any other age in human history. That Spirit and Opportunity survived for years proves quite clearly that "contraptions" built on Earth can operate in extreme hostile environments extant throughout this solar system. If the will persists and financial substrate can be emplaced, human explorers can be launched to Mars within a decade.
I agree petley. The next great scientific/engineering feat for robotic space exploration is to put probes on the Jovian and Saturnian satellites(moons).
If only we would spend trillions of dollars on space exploration instead of petty wars... one can only dream I suppose.
Just the thrill of seeing these amazing shots so very very far from home is something I never would have thought to have seen in my life time. Im just blown away by it all! From what Ive seen and learned, on a very fundamental plain, is that everything has a common thread to it. Could this prove that a Creator has made all things possible?
Awesome, just plain awesome every time I see, read or hear about anything in our vast universe.
"Jesus Only", Seriously - that's you MO? Like you, I am also a man of believe (Agnostic) but wearing your faith on your sleeve would seem to be an obvious case of "who is trying to convince who"! Though I do agree creation certainly does declare the glory of God.
Mars has O2 that's why in the color photos the sky is blue. Entities are already on mars same as most places in our solar system. Good documentary watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGXXzctwbPI&feature=related
There's lots of oxygen in the solar system. we may well extract it from Lunar rocks in the not too distant future, for life-support, chemical rocket oxidizer, and industrial processes there.
But only Earth (at least in this solar system) has a meaningful amount of free oxygen gas, not just bound up as oxides. And it's only life that generates and maintains this non-equilibrium state of affairs...
But first, the blue of Earth's sky is not directly related to its O2 content...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation
Second, the skies of Mars are not truly blue:
http://mars-news.de/color/blue.html
Nice to see the blue back in the sky. Missed it since the color seemed to change from the old Viking photos. Odd that in many recent photos, the color seems to have been tweaked to the red. Especially in photos of connectors and color wheels when compared to clean room promotional pics.
Wonder why NASA feels the need to color change the photos so often? Maybe you can ask them Alan? probably won't though huh? Investigative reporting is so 70s I guess.
Jim
The colors in the Viking images are probably incorrect in so far as how the human eyes would respond if a human was on Mars. Even today, digital camera's have to be tweaked in order to be able to approximate what the human eye would see, and with the 'sameness' of the martian atmosphere, the auto color balancing would probably be fooled and would give an incorrect image.
NASA could however go back to the Viking images and change them to approximate what the human eye would see based on the chemical composition and density of the Martian atmosphere, but that would create another one of those 'changes' that you mention.
I think I know the answer to this one ... in this case, the colors are actually "stretched" to emphasize differences in surface composition. The Martian sky is not actually as blue as you see it here. In fact, it's just a different shade of red, as you can see when you follow the links to the true-color picture as well as the false-color picture. Here's a slightly technical explanation from the Cornell team in charge of the panoramic camera on the rovers:
http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_instrument/projects_5.html
Alan, Spirit was originally slated to live 90 days, not 30.
Don't know why I'm so stupid about this item ... I fixed that as well, thanks for calling to my attention. I should know that after nearly seven years of this. (I think I got that figure right, at least.)
Capricorn One.
we are a good bit yet from manned mars missions but it is good to dream. It will happen. of that I am sure. i bet this country could do it in a matter of years if we really wanted to. not like we lack for a labor force or anything. in times of unsurety like these, it often helps to get all the ideas on the table and then go looking for more ideas. one thing for sure. we need a goal. mars. sounds better than venus to me. that planet surely was once right inside the goldilocks zone, then the sun backed off a bit and cooled, leaving us where water is water. in fact water that once may have been on mars may of streamed on towards earth. probably came from the water pump moon around saturn anyways. point being that if we could nurse the martian atmosphere back (without a rotating core?) we could surely avert the max and mins of our own atmosphere. thats an intensive goal. last point. a moonbase would make things a lot easier.
I know the photos are color corrected guys. I also know they most often are falsely tinted red. The Viking photos were not as inaccutate as we are led to believe. Yeah, I know, tin foil cap time, don't care. I know the Martian atmosphere is being misepresented to the public. I don't know why, but i know it is.
There is too much photographic evidence out there. The clean room photos of colored connectors on Sojourn that are the wrong color in official photos from the surface because blue has been removed from the images is only one of many examples.
There is something about Mars they are not telling us and it has something to do with the color and density of the atmosphere. There ia no way that an atmospheric density of .6mb can whip up zephers and sand storms that can cover the planet. That's less than 1% Earth density. It is practically a vacuum. Where is all that wind coming from?
No, we are not getting the true picture..yet.
We live in amazing times and it is wonderful that we can be worried about color control in pictures from a differeent planet.
Lloyd Woods Devix co Prop
I've lost track of the number of moons circling the outer planets. Several dozen, at least, waiting to be explored. All of these strange orbs are mineral troves, as is Mars, and contain the raw materials to sustain the necessary industries of the Hi-Frontier. Everything needed is already out there. Don't forget that O2 is the lesser component of breathable air! Nitrogen provides the necessary balance for humans as well as plantlife. Mars has abundant CO2 and 3% atmospheric N and plenty of H2O. All plantlife needs to flourish there is protection from the severe cold. Building and maintaining greenhouses should be an early colonizing priority to provide food for the populace. And certainly, when the time comes, one-way trips to The Moon and Mars will become commonplace choices for those willing to accept the risks and challenges to live out their lives beyond the "Green Hills of Earth." Science fiction has a way of becoming reality!