Thank you for sharing this one.
This is a shot made by Opportunity near Victoria crater.
The importance of this shot is that it shows how
Field D-Star navigation
capability works: if you look at the Rover's tracks, you can see the "circle": that's the point in which the rover "decided" the best way to
overstep those debris and the small crater that were in front of it.
NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers have been getting smarter as they get older. This view from Opportunity shows the tracks left by a drive
executed with more onboard autonomy than has been used on any other drive by a Mars rover. Opportunity made the curving, 15.8-meter (52-foot) drive
during its 1,160th Martian day, or sol (April 29, 2007). It was testing a navigational capability called "Field D-star," which enables the rover to
plan optimal long-range drives around any obstacles in order to travel the most direct safe route to the drive's designated destination. Opportunity
and its twin, Spirit, did not have this capability until the third year after their January 2004 landings on Mars.
Earlier, they could recognize hazards when they approached them closely, then back away and try another angle, but could not always find a safe route
away from hazards. Field D-Star and several other upgrades were part of new onboard software uploaded from Earth in 2006.
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
The original image can be found here:
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
For those who are interested in looking at the Hi-Res version of the image (25 MB)
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
The full catalog of the Navigation camera (sol 1160) can be found here
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
The full catalog of the Front Hazcam (sol 1160) can be found here
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
The full catalog of the Rear Hazcam (sol 1160) can be found here
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
The full catalog of the Panoramic Camera (sol 1160) can be found here
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
When something hits a planet, should produce ejecta: parts of ejecta may hit another area creating what we see in these FALSE COLOR images: even two,
four, more smaller craters. One of the variables is the impact angle. This is the result of a impact, IMHO:
probably the one which created one of the many smaller craters near Victoria, but i may be wrong.
upload.wikimedia.org...
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...
Anyway, there's not a single rock wich may have a clue to be artificial, and to use a false color image in order to claim that a rock is blue is
never a good idea, IMHO.
About sol 603 image: here's the list of full res STEREO images:
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
marsrovers.nasa.gov...
I don't see the "structures" in the background: what i see, and barely, are
mountains, maybe because there's much less jpeg artifacting in the original images.
About the horizon: no i don't think that we should expect to see relevant differences: if we would decode the files names, which contains many infos,
we would find that the time difference between these images is
129, 145 and 141 Seconds,
Seconds of these stereo images (from the start of the mission)
179900673
179900673
179900802
179900802
179900947
179900947
179901088
179901088
So i don't see what differences should we expect to see in a lapse of time of two minutes.
About the UFO, i couldn't retrieve the original image, so i have no clue what it could be: it looks to be a nice find.
[edit on 18/1/2008 by internos]