Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Making tracks on Mars

Every time I see these pictures of rover tracks and rovers on Mars, I'm triply impressed.    

The first reason that I'm impressed is that we, the humans of the world, actually have a researching robot on Mars that's making tracks in the dusty sandy surface.  [Actually we still currently have a couple doing that.]  

The second reason I'm impressed is that we, us humans, also have a satellite in orbit around Mars carrying an imaging system that is capable of taking pictures with sufficient spatial resolution to observe the tracks made by the rover, and also the rover itself.  [Actually, there are currently a couple of satellites with imaging systems in orbit, but I'm not sure if more than one can see rover tracks.] 
The third reason I'm impressed is that we, us humans and particularly us humans in the USA, have been able to look beyond our petty and parochial concerns (even though some of those concerns are pressing) and conduct science like this.   And I should note that the Europeans have a satellite in orbit that sends back great pictures of Mars, too.


Click here to see this image much larger.  (And you can see the blue spot that marks Curiosity's current location.)



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