Sol 3's images just in. All in glorious colour!

Here is a link to a much higher resolution version of the colour panoramic image: photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov...

The full res .jpg is 9mb. It may take a minute or so to load, but it looks great!

reply to post by jra


Awesome! Thanks for sharing man!

For myself I am NOT impressed with the pictures.

When I sit here and think of the money that contraption cost and how someone is dying of something as simple hunger or disease because they don't have MONEY to pay for these things is a disgrace.

reply to post by observe50


Your opinion is shared by lots of people in lots of threads. And in each thread that assumption has been debunked numerous times. Long story short - most of the money that is invested in NASA is pumped back into the U.S economy.

It's getting boring now...

Originally posted by observe50
For myself I am NOT impressed with the pictures.

When I sit here and think of the money that contraption cost and how someone is dying of something as simple hunger or disease because they don't have MONEY to pay for these things is a disgrace.

You can say that about almost anything that cost money: the Olympics are a disgrace, that building is a disgrace, that movie is a disgrace, that sports team is a disgrace, that car is a disgrace.

I think the potential to find that Mars was once suitable for the development of life is quite an important part of human exploration. Yes -- taking care of the present needs of people on earth is certainly important. However, if we ever stop exploring, humankind will stagnate.

You could argue that there is a need on earth -- but there will always be a need to fulfill here on earth, so what time in the future would be a good time for humankind to explore greater things? Why not now?

Click here for more information.

reply to post by LoveisanArt

*End of rude rant* .. sick of this Nasa-Curiosity *snip* ..

Then stay out of threads with the word curiosity or Sol 3 in the title. Simple.

Originally posted by drakus
This one looks "pretty":
(or at least it will in the full version)

I'd like to know what those dark patches are...

And heeeeere's johnny!
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/oo5027d08b.jpg[/atsimg]
These pics are freaking awesome, man...

reply to post by drakus


Awesome! That looks very promising!

Here's a snippet from Mars: The Living Planet (Chapter 9):
www.icamsr.org ...

Here's Gilbert Levin's website:
gillevin.com ...

I think anybody who loves to keep track of the Mars missions and doesn't know who Gilbert Levin is is doing a disservice to the whole space program. I think he's being scapegoated. The church orthodoxy ruled the dark ages. But now anthropocentric scientists rule our current dark age.

You know they don't have to clean probes that go to Venus? That's because they determined that it probably doesn't have life and that they don't have to worry about it.

See here:
www.space.com ...

This is interesting:
www.thesun.co.uk ...

But they will discredit Chandra Wickramasinghe. It doens't fit the current dogma about life being only on Earth or extinct elsewhere. It has to do with anthropocentric attitudes towards the universe. You may think most people on earth would love to hear about life elsewhere. But you'd be wrong.

I can virtually guarantee you that they'll drag their feet as slowly as possible to find life elsewhere. They prefer extinct life. If they do find active life, it has to be isolated and barely surviving.

But humans survived! We rose to the occasion. We're special and persevering! And we must believe this. This is why we must cautiously move forward and not look under every rock.

Examining the high res close ups of the ground near curiosity, it looks to me like there is a lot of obsidian?

Sorry for my last post here. I think that this mission is a bountiful well of information about the history of Mars. My knowledge of geology or mars geology (for that matter) is too weak to truly appreciate it. But how life might have been long ago doesn't tell us about the present time...

But I know we wouldn't be there if there wasn't a mountain of information. Or a crater... There'll be lots of things to talk about for scientific minds and lots pictures for us onlookers to ponder.

reply to post by AmatuerSkyWatcher


Yes, and look on the upper half of the pic, above those dark patches, are those lines exposed strata?
I don't have a frame of reference (maybe in the panoramic it's easier to figure out) but it certainly looks like exposed strata...

Originally posted by drakus
Yes, and look on the upper half of the pic, above those dark patches, are those lines exposed strata?

I think that's what we see at the bottom right of the following image (sorry for such a bad compilation of three images ).

We can also see the dark dunes (the blueish areas on the panorama) between Curiosity and the mountain.

(click for a bigger version, at approximately 4 metres per pixel)

Curiosity is the yellow triangle in the top left of the image.

reply to post by AmatuerSkyWatcher


I don't think so, it looks more porous, not glass-like like obsidian.

I think we just have to wait until they point the MAHLI camera to one of those.

What's your opinion of having future landers use explosives to expose the contents beneath the surface of Mars?

We have plenty of technology for the purpose, not to mention funding. I'm assuming the Martian atmosphere can host at least some of our innovations in this field.

With NASA's lack of funds, perhaps we can get the defense department to chip in on a bomber satellite that can perform a precision drop of explosives near the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers thereby extending their missions with fresh and readily accessible geological data.

I'm only partially serious, but you know this would get funded, no question. And then we can argue "we're saving thousands of American lives" and everyone would buy it.

reply to post by ArMaP


These are some of the examples taken from the mast cam:

.

Obviously the last one I marked with a question mark isn't obsidian as I know it, but thought I'd include it for interests sake. Looks like some metamorphism or "marbling" has occurred!

I noticed some very porous rock too. Pumice? If it is pumice, and the examples that I gave are Obsidian, then it's highly likely that this was a Volcanic area.

If there is pumice, it means there was effusive (obsidian) and explosive (pumice) eruptions. If there was an explosive eruption, it's highly likely it was caused by water meeting the hot gases and lava from the volcano. Obsidian is formed by the rapid cooling of lava. Another indicator water was present in this area?

Anybody know where the closest known Volcano is to Gale crater?

Originally posted by flexy123

Originally posted by Just Chris
Very un-inspiring...

What's the difference between this photo from Mars,

And this one from Earth?

Maybe, for starters, if i take a sample of "some rocks" on Earth, I will find life?

Funny, because nobody managed to point out "Once" that the images above are actually wrong. The 1st image is actually a desert in Qatar and the Earth photo I showed is actually of "Mars" (If it actually is Mars of course!)

The point is you can't tell what so ever what we're looking at!

reply to post by Just Chris


I knew, I just couldn't be bothered answering an obvious troll post.