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Subscribe to RSSDuring the three-year trek of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, rover planners captured a horizon photograph at the end of each drive. This video puts together 309 images taken during the 13-mile journey.
It's been a long, lonely three years for NASA's Opportunity rover, which has just finished a 13-mile (21-kilometer) trek from Victoria Crater across the Martian wasteland of Meridiani Planum to Endeavour Crater. A newly released time-lapse video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory condenses the odyssey down to just three minutes.
The video draws upon a series of 309 images, each taken when the rover stopped driving at the end of a Martian day. The pictures give you a sense of the loneliness that an astronaut might feel while following in Opportunity's wheel tracks. Drifts of sand go on for miles and miles, interrupted only by craters or patches of bedrock.
The soundtrack for the video was created by taking low-frequency recordings from Opportunity's accelerometers and speeding them up by a factor of 1,000. "The sound represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the surface of Mars," Paolo Bellutta, a roer planner at JPL in Pasadena, Calif., said in NASA's video advisory. "When the sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is softer, the rover was moving on sand."
Opportunity's trek to Endeavour is the longest and most ambitious journey ever taken by a probe on another planet. While Oppy was making the trip, its twin on the other side of the planet, the Spirit rover, gave up the ghost after more than six years of operation. Now Opportunity is opening a new chapter in Mars exploration, seven and a half years after its landing.
That ain't bad for a mission that was originally scheduled to last 90 days on the Red Planet. Nevertheless, a little perspective is in order: The crater that Opportunity is exploring happens to be wider than the entire distance that the rover traveled over the past three years.
NBC News' Brian Williams was certainly impressed by the video, declaring on the Nightly News that it was "one of the most incredible motion pictures ever produced."
"Is it just us, or do those Martian sand dunes remind you a lot of the Jersey Shore?" he asked.
Watch Williams go ga-ga in the "Nightly News" video clip below:
NBC's Brian Williams reports on Opportunity's stunning photos from Mars.
More about Mars:
- Where NASA's next rover is going
- Opportunity transmits a 9/11 tribute
- Slideshow: The greatest hits from Mars
- Latest info and pictures of Mars on msnbc.com
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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This is great, but as I've been saying for years, NASA needs to make these kinds of things more often and more accessible as well as more realistic (color HD).
I realize that capturing and transmitting this quality would be challenging, but if you want to, once again, stir the imaginations of the next generation of astronauts and scientists, you've got to make the ground breaking work you are doing clear for the public (and taxpayers) to see.
I second that Scott. The Mars Science Laboratory will have some better camera's on board so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing those images once it lands :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Cameras
Considering that that 7 years ago, HD wasn't an easy tech to slap on a rover back then, and even before that, the ten years of planning before that probably started while HD was a dream. Even the new rover going out will be based off some technoligies that are 10 years old (because changing one thing on the plan could change the whole rovers weight, power usage, heat needed or output) and that something that cannot be changed from millions of miles away
Brokinarrow, I agree, i can't wait to see some of the new camera working on the new rovers!
My point is that NASA should give a higher priority and more thought to cameras and how they will show the public the fantastic work these rovers are doing.
HD was certainly around and available when the rovers were being planned and built.
The pictures of the Mars surface from the Viking probes in the 70's have better color than many of the pictures we get today.
I've been so astounded by the longevity of the two rovers and the photographs and data sent back by them I completely forgot about video.
Yes, video please, color video. At 61, I probably won't live long enough to see astronauts on Mars, but I would love to see color video of Barsoom. Say, did they ever release those photos of John Carter, Tars Tarkas or Dejah Thoris?
Just kidding. Color video please, on the next trip and please make it soon. Tempus fugit you know.
Scott M,
The Viking landers used slow-scan imagers and RGB color filters to produce their pictures. It was a very slow, tedious process. There are several cameras on these rovers, some color, some B&W. I have seen plenty of color images from Mars - some "in situ", some colorized after the fact. Since Mars is pretty much monochrome anyway, I really don't mind when some NASA tech takes a B&W image and colorizes it. There are also lots of false color images that highlight the various minerals, like the "blueberries", which are really anything but blue in normal light.
What amazes me is how awestruck people are over this very boring looking landscape.God created an absolutly gorgeous planet right here and all we can do is destroy it and deplete it from every natural resourse we have. We should take more stock in this awesome planet we live on right here and stop spending money on planets we would die on in 3 seconds.
Amen to that Brother
Wow, thanks for playing Dennis. If god was real and created the "gorgeous planet" we live on, wouldn't that also mean he created mars? What amazes me is how stupid your comment is. How can you possibly be critical of people for being awestruck over this incredible video that shows us something other than our own planet. Have a little curiosity, because the galaxy has more than just our depleted world.
Mike, people like Dennis who have a religious view of life, are discouraged from being curious by that religious belief. Curiosity breeds thinking, which may lead to questioning beliefs, and ultimately to free, open thought. Religion runs on revelation. Anything lying outside that revelation is either unimportant or considered evil, is a threat and must be avoided or prayed away. Sad comentary on the psyche of the human race.
Hey Dennis, what about God creating the heavens and the earth? Should we ignore it just because we can't go there?
...and how much did this cost? It looks like the desert, big deal. What a waste of money. I can only imagine how much money is blown on this stuff which is ridiculous when we can't even take care of our day to day problems. I would be okay with this in the private sector, but I am tired of paying my hard earned money for taxes for programs that do nothing for us.
@K. Kammeyer
I hear what you are saying and I am aware that there are color images available. My larger point is that NASA should make it a mission PRIORITY to show the public the fantastic things they are doing in the most realistic way they can. No one gets as excited when shown a computer generated simulation as they do when they see the real thing.
I firmly believe that this is one reason why the general public favors spending less on NASA...they can't and don't literally "see" the value of what NASA does.
If NASA has just attached a store-bought HD camcorder to the cockpit window of a space shuttle so that the average "Joe", who will never go into space can see EXACTLY what the pilot sees as he enters the black void of space, or creeps up to the ISS, or the plasma envelope that surrounds the shuttle during reentry, he can get a sense for the adventure and wonder that NASA provides.
One of the coolest things I've ever seen was footage from one of the last shuttle launches that had a color camera mounted on the SRB's. During SRB-SEP, you saw the shuttle at the edge of space fly away under just the power of it's main engines. It looked so good, it looked fake! (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm1Fva68EUk).
Another unbelieveable video was a comelation of stills from a sattelite heading out into the solar system that turned back to watch Earth. It caught the moon orbiting from OUTSIDE the moon's orbit. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrTPuxIYaDw).
Yes, there are some good examples of NASA doing exactly what I'm suggesting, however, I'm saying that they should make it a priority, rather than an afterthought.
What's the most watched television event in all of television history? The live pictures of the moon landing.
People can't "connect" with what NASA does these days because NASA doesn't think about what really inspires the next generation of explorers.
So Mars is black and white, and boring and looks like the Jersey shore. I can tell you now that Mars is very much different than what you see in this video. If Brian Williams were to see actual non-obfuscated, non-tampered, uncensored, true color footage of many areas of the surface of Mars, he would probably go into shock.
From seeing all the red rocks and sand? O.o
What are you getting at wilie? Don't hide what you're saying, just come out with it. What do you know that Brian Williams and I do not?
I'm sure that if budget and technologies continue to improve, NASA has been and will continue releasing lots of wonderful imagery. It does stir the imagination and fascination that I have for this type of exploration.
When
That wasn't worth a jukebox dime, much less billions (and a crashed probe forgetting to convert english to metric units).
Okay, several points.
1) The cost of this mission was not billions. It was 820 million for the initial mission, plus several 100 million more for the mission extensions that kept it going. While the total cost is likely over 1 billion, that still puts it far short of being billions of dollars.
2)The point of the mission was not this video, so you can hardly claim that because the video doesn't equal the cost of the mission therefore it was a waste. Tons was learned about Mars during these missions. The value of the science and knowledge gained is incalculable. Learning about this solar system that is our home is something that should matter to all of us.
3)Most glaring of all your points, this mission has nothing to do with the crashed probe that you reference. They were separate endeavors.
I know how popular it is to reference the cost of our space program as proof of misplaced priorities, but the fact of the matter is that our space program is literally a drop in the ocean that is our budget. Despite that fact, we learn amazing things about this universe every day thanks to our space program. Can you even comprehend how amazingly lucky you are to be able to see a VIDEO of another world? Is your brain even capable of considering how many people have stared into the sky through human history and dreamed of understanding what they saw there? How many stories have been born? How many religions? How many loves? All because people have looked up into the sky and wanted to know...
Every time I have this argument with someone, I get to hear about how we have to 'sort things out down here' first. As though someday there will be perfect world peace and people will finally be allowed to look to the sky. I say screw that. What's the point of 'saving the human race' if we lose what makes us human in the process? We aren't just animals trying to surivive...not when we're at our best. At our very best we're more than that. I believe that with all my being. At our very best we dream! We wonder! We discover! We explore!
When you consiter what is needed hear on earth and the time money and man power to get this, I think it's a waste of time and money.
I would rather put the money into the National Parks, or even into education or my bank.
Paul - You do realize that the aerospace industry is a multi-billion dollar industry generating tons of money for the economy and creating quite a few jobs here in the states, right? Do you also realize that the research NASA has done has produced tens of thousands of spin off technologies that HAVE benefited us down here on Earth? Ever heard of MRI machines? Water filtration systems? Cell phones, satellites, microwave ovens, better weather pattern prediction? Heck, they even used bacteria strains created by NASA (originally used to clean water in space) to clean up oil spills and waste water!
Not to mention that a NASA center employs everyone from the rocket scientists and engineers, down to the security guards and janitors, all here in the US. And the only use .6% of the federal budget. So tell me, exactly how much good could you do with that .6%? (about 19 billion a year). That wouldn't even be enough to fix one states' economic woes today. So if you REALLY want to reduce government spending, I would suggest getting our troops the hell out of these wars they are in and then forcing your representatives to stop taking BRIBES from these so called "lobbyists" and start doing things that are RIGHT for the government instead of things their corporate sponsors think will make them more money.
Anyway, what IS your big solution to the ever growing population on Earth? The way I see it, we have a few options to deal with this:
1. World War III would probably kill off a pretty significant amount of the population, and after a couple hundred years I'm sure the Earth would be healed enough to support the survivors.
2. A nasty epidemic virus could break out, again killing off a significant amount of people to reduce the over all population and slow growth for a while. This possibility though would leave cropland alone meaning the survivors would quickly repopulate.
3. We stop making excuses and put MORE money into space research, figure out a way to reach new star systems, and start shipping colonists. This option doesn't involve death on a massive scale and would require a LOT of innovation and new technologies, some of which may end up providing solutions to common problems here on Earth while future colonists wait to get off planet.
So which one of those sounds most appealing? Because I can guarantee that human kind will NOT just suddenly decide to get along and solve all our problems in the time it would have taken to develop the necessary tech to spread ourselves to the stars.
/rant
Oh lordy lou...
Paul, you have a good point. Education is in some serious need of increased funding. Case in point, your comment. I know it's somewhat petty of me to pick on someone for spelling and grammar but Paul's comment takes the cake.
Your comment should read as follows, "I think, when you consider what is needed here on Earth - and the time, money, and man power to get this - it's a waste of time and money."'
Anyways, Paul, you seem to think that this video is all that was gained from these rovers. If that's the case then you seriously need to stop talking about subjects you know nothing about and begin learning about these amazing missions. Opportunity and Spirit have been an invaluable addition to our growing knowledge of Mars.
Paul Cousins: "When you consiter what is needed hear on earth and the time money and man power to get this, I think it's a waste of time and money.
I would rather put the money into the National Parks, or even into education or my bank."
The Department of Education's budget is 1.32% of the Federal budget, #12 in terms of the various departments. NASA is 0.53%, (which is 17th).
Social Security (#1), Unemployment/Welfare (#3) and Medicare (#4) combined are 50%.
Why pinch a dime when you're giving away $50s & $100s?
Paul is a good example of public education these days. LOL
Looks like a great place to build casinos and all you can eat buffets.
Haha!
You've come to the Wong place!
Dude, Total Recall that place.
I demand funding for Mars University!
I noticed a photo at 1:08 with two sets of tracks. Anybody have an answer for this. Are they going back and forth?
Yes, sometimes the rover needs to back up when it is blocked by an object they deem it cannot go around
Almost as exciting as watching the bug races on tv
Excellent video to emphasis the importance for good environmental stewardship of Mother Earth.
We are all alone folks and Mother earth is the only spaceship we will ever know.
I am going to clean the backyard and plant a tree tomorrow.
You can have one of mine. I've got 47 in my little half-acre and they're about to drop their leaves...
I was expecting to see a Transformer in one or two of the slides. But I guess CIA edited those out.
OK, let's put it another way...the American public spent over $40B on their pets last year. NASA? Not so much, about $17B. Soooo, if you have real heartache about spending for NASA vs education or the national parks or peace/love/dove, or climate change; get rid of your pets first, THEN we'll talk about spending for science and exploration.
Second, by spending money on exploring other planets, we learn an incredible amount about THIS planet, including effects of cosmic rays, solar wind, and the role of the magnetosphere on atmospheric science (ala climate change and global warming); and wind erosion, volcanic, meteoric, and tectonic impacts (sometimes literally) to the surface of a planet.
Third, by spending money on exploring other worlds, we create offsets for THIS world. Things like, oh, computers that fit in the palm of your hand, instant communications with loved ones, medical advances for treating diseases, lighter cars and battery technology to save gas, better insulation in your homes to save money, etc, etc, etc.
How about the billions wasted on political lobbying, and campaign finance, and War... Bank of America alone spent $1.5 Billion last year just on lobbyists! The US Military spends in 1 year about the same amount that NASA has spent in it's entire 60+ year history!
For all of the good NASA has done and continues to do on a daily basis, NASA's budget should be at least twice what it currently gets.
We need to get money out of politics is what it comes down to. There's a petition you can sign at getmoneyout.com
We need to send a couple of probes to Valles Marinerus to really see the sights on Mars. Especially using a drone aircraft that could fly over the area.
That trip's pictures would be worth billions to us armchair Scientists. I am sure someone in the movie business could use the film footage to create a really cool IMAX film about that piece of Mars.
Im hoping someday soon we can get a view from the top of Olympus Mons.
Fantastic images, but not really a "movie". It's a set of mostly incoherent images pointing in all different directions, mostly. I hope that future rovers can actually piece together a film clip that actually resembles motion. Still, it's an amazing collage.
It is also known that the temperature on Mars is rising. Is that also know as "Global Warming"? Damn SUV's!!!!
Yes and cow farts are also contributing to the global warming on Mars.
And for those vegi/left/enviro types worried about "cow farts" -- I propose to drain all the "habitat" locations called swamps that produce a much greater volume of methane.
Soo explain again why this is vital, important in the scheme of things? What's the benefit(s)? Or is this a generational hobby that we just don't want to let go of? When weighing the particulars - NASA resources can be better used here I think.
How so FayRay?
Well, let's see. If you bought a washer that should last you 6 years, and it's still running 84 years later (6 month mission, and 7 years later) then I'd say we got our dollars back out of the mission. In addition, you may think this planet we're on will last forever, but I have my doubts. I'd prefer to spend money on exploration and pushing the boundries of human limitation, and not on how big a gun I can make to take care of you after you make a bigger gun than I have now. And a few billion on the NASA budget, compared to the 700 billion spent on the developement of the B2 bomber alone, is rediculous. If we spent half our time trying to improve our space in this universe, instead of trying to remove each other from the planet, life would be a hell of a lot better off. And if you don't agree with that simple statement, then you are a bigger yutz than I imagine.
I hope next time they send the Corvette rather than the Prius....
@FayRay: "Soo explain again why this is vital, important in the scheme of things? What's the benefit(s)?"
Well, if you observe the people protesting on Wall Street and compare their collective mental capacity with that of the folks at NASA that are able to design, build, launch, fly, land and gather data from a planet that is millions of miles away, it should appear rather obvious what the "benefit(s)" of scientific exploration are.
Ok, so, "Gem of the solar system" Mars isn't.
Couldn't we be spending this money on something more tangible & worthwhile on earth? I'm all for science & science fiction & outerspace. I love that stuff! But ummmm, don't we still have things like CANCER, POVERTY & HOMELESSNESS here that those billions of dollars given to these space agencies could be used much more wisely here?
Are you suggesting that we load up the homeless and send them to Mars?
Dan - They had cancer, poverty and homelessness in Spain back in 1492, too. And even with all the silver, gold and treasures that the New World provided, they never solved them.
Why would you think that something that's 0.53% of our budget would make a dent in any of those things? The Department of Housing & Urban Development's budget is 60% LARGER than NASA and has been for over 30 years. If you tally up all the money ever spent on NASA and compared it to all the money ever spend on The Great Society, I think you'd find the comparison equal to a golf ball versus a set of clubs.
Mark, that's a REALLY good analogy - I'm saving that in my "simple arguments to use against ignorant conservatives.txt" file
Hey, thanks SP-3268112!
However, I hope your text file becomes bipartisan... unfortunately ignorance is something that no political party has a lock on.
I've got a separate one for hyper-liberals ;)
There's not much on Mars, is there?
That's what they said to Bugsy Siegal...
I'm sure in next years video you'll see a Starbucks, Subway, WalMart, and one of those creepy foot massage places all lined up in a Martian strip mall...
why is it that the same shaped mountain (for lack of a better word) is in exactly the same spot on the horizon in almost every pic?
Well as far as the pictures go, Mars needs women.
Why on earth would NASA want to send a man there? That is one dead planet.
Cuz it's going in the same direction, I'd reckon.
Maybe this is silly... but the foreground is constanly changing but it seems that the mountains or rocks in the the background almost never change shape. Why is this? Does the camera only shoot in one direction? Toward the end of the collage of course the mountains were not visible.
Fake!
Take your foil hat off and give us some evidence
No!! Just Kidding,, Its actually very cool. When you see the vast land of nothing it makes you think of how precious life is. Now who's up for a cheese burger!! Oh and by the way Nasa the 80's called and they want their Atari vision back! Are you guys planing on rocketing back some Polaroids in another 3 years?