Mars rover touches down

[Mugzy]

We did it!!

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/03/mars.rovers/index.html

Oh, check out this very cool animation that shows the whole process from launch to getting samples!

http://largefiles.maasdigital.com/mer2003-music-640x480-1000k-cp.mov

Yeah I just saw that on CNN while ago. Pretty cool, hope it automated like it was supposed to.

Hopefully they do better this time than that whole Mars polar lander snafu.

now thats cool, cant wait to see what all they find.

[hightimber]

One big step. Many more big steps to go. A lot of folks will be holding their collective breath until Spirit rolls off of it's pad in about 9 days.

Go, NASA!

[Mugzy]

The first images!

http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040104image1.html

[hightimber]

Don't tease me Mugzy. Bad link!

[Mugzy]

Which link? They all work for me.

Im gettin a red X for the pic you posted

[hightimber]

All I see is a white square with a red X. ????

I did check the properties and I'm now looking at those web pages.

[WeSSiN]

[hightimber]

An initial panorama:

[hightimber]

An overhead view of Spirit sitting on its pad.

It's really cool, but it sucks that the space program has been on the back burner for so long. If we were still progressing at the pace of the Moon race we'd already have tons of probes, if not people, exploring the Jovian moons.

But I guess you can't force people to care about something, but the best way would be to try to make it a silly nationalistic thing such as the Moon race with Russia was. And with China's new interest in manned space missions it just might happen.

But this is very uplifting, especially after the flop with Beagle2 a few weeks ago.

I really hope they find something that hints life, that would be exciting.

As the saying goes:

"We're either alone in the universe or we are not... both ideas are overwhelming."