Mars 'Grand Canyon' snapped by Beagle mother ship

[windansea]

Mars Express, the mother ship of Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2, has sent back its first pictures of the Red Planet's Grand Canyon.

The pictures show Valles Marineris - more than six times deeper than the famous Grand Canyon on Earth and as long as the whole of Europe.

It is the first image of this size showing the surface of Mars in high resolution in colour and in 3D.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_857486.html

[RobertSeattle]

1. FYI...

On my machine your "Surf" footer pcture shows up about 5 seconds before the mars photo, so my first reaction was Damn! - surfs up on Mars!

:silly:

[Flagg]

Made in Europe and yes France

take that freepers

[windansea]

4. heh heh

well..there was water on mars...so if there were some martian dudes at one time maybe.....

:silly:

[Darwin2002]

2. gift shop at Mars grand canyon says it is only 6,000 years old

being made by god at the time of creation

[windansea]

5. hmmmm

Darwin...the beagle....:tinfoilhat:

[arcane1]

6. lol, you beat me to it!

:silly:

[windansea]

7. pretty freaky huh?? n/t

[Richardo]

3. Removed (in embarassment)

Note to self: always read the article FIRST. :eyes:

[aquart]

8. These strata look like internal organs.

I mean, veins, cartilege....ewwwwww. I feel like I'm looking at a microscope slide from CSI.

Has anyone ever seen a land formation like this?

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Not so "creepy" if you have seen remote sensing pictures

of desert areas on earth. What's interesting here is that the canyon is nearly straight, which indicates that it may have been formed by a force other than flowing water, which tends to create a very meandering pattern (check out a map of Arizona's Grand Canyon, or, better yet, the Green River in Utah for comparison).

[Art_from_Ark]

11. For another comparison, here's a remote sensing picture

of East Africa's Great Rift Valley:

[windansea]

12. nice shot!

wonder what the comparative distances are in the 2 pics

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Not sure about the Mars pic, but

the Rift Valley pic appears to be about 50 kilometers across, based on a comparison with a geologic map.

[windansea]

16. the mars pic

The images were taken from 275km above the planet by the European Space Agency craft as it orbited Mars.

whats the link for your rift valley pic?

[Art_from_Ark]

25. Here's the link for the page of the pic

http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/DAAC_DOCS/geomorphology/GEO_2/GEO_PLATE_T-36.HTML

(Figure T-36.3)

Here's the site where I found that page:

http://www.anzwers.org/free/geolor/East%20African%20Rift%20Valley.htm

[windansea]

36. thanks

Landsat operates from 705 km...a good bit higher than the beagle was
when it took the mars pic...just wanted to know the diference in scale

[Palacsinta]

9. Creepy!

Looks like the "Alien" creature's nursery.

[peterh]

13. What’s that in the upper right hand corner….

Looks like an evolutionized Dune critter….

[DemoTex]

15. Mars-Smars

That's my colonoscopy stills.

[leftofthedial]

17. I had this crappy summer job in college one time

and I swear I had to dig a ditch just about that size.


Wow! Is that spectacular or what? Why aren't we exploring a place like that instead of the dead bed of a dead crater? NASA blows it again.

[windansea]

18. watch more Nova

it's a complicated engineering problem...it's not like landing a piper cub in Tuscon

[leftofthedial]

20. well, duh.

Actually I do watch Nova. I know NASA picked a big flat place so their little bundle of superballs could bounce in more or less a straight line until it slowed to a stop. (Pretty "gee-whiz" design I thought too.) I know they thought it was a dead lakebed, not, as it turned out, an even deader crater bed. I know all that. I also know how hard it is to frigging HIT Mars, much less land sensitive equipment safely and communicate with it once it does.

But they were wrong. And yet again, we've spent billions to accomplish nothing. Unless you think a dramatic backdrop for Bush's Mars-Moon lie photo op is something.

If engineers can figure out how to build a mega sports stadium in every city in America, then with billions of our dollars they can figure out how to get somewhere interesting on friggin Mars.

One begins to think that if NASA *were* tasked with landing a piper cub in Tuscon, that it would cost billions, it would take 15 years, it would involve at least 5 or 6 tragic deaths and we'd end up with a balsa wood hand glider being smashed to smithereens by a hurricane in Miami.

[windansea]

21. errrrrrrrrrr

this was a Euro Mars expedition....

not USA

[leftofthedial]

22. ??? which is why

I asked why NASA couldn't go somewhere as interesting as where the Euros are photographing.

And then you launched into your "watch Nova" spiel.

And I responded about why even my watching Nova doesn't give NASA a pass for fucking up again.

Great photo of an amazing landscape, even if they are European.

Meanwhile, NASA plans to kill Hubble.

[windansea]

23. the euro shot crashed and burned

but they got this great photo

usa shot landed successfully...shall I explain why again?

[leftofthedial]

27. did you explain why the first time?

I recall that I already did at least once.

And I agreed with you twice. It's a great photo of an amazing place.

We got it from Europeans, not NASA.

The only interesting things to come out of NASA lately are from Hubble and they're killing that as soon as possible. This Mars thing is a self-congratulatory PR fiasco that cost us almost as much as Bush's war photo ops.

They won't learn much where the rover is. Crater, not lakebed. Rover with too little range to get anywhere worth the price tag. NASA fuckup.

Why are you arguing with me? Do you believe this mission will yield new science? If so, why? What science? If you don't believe so, then let's talk about how great the Europeans' photo is some more.

[windansea]

35. try this link

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html#

then clic on Rover Landing Site Flash Animation

you will see a short but very cool animation...when it's done clic on Deciding where to Land video

perhaps you'll gain a better understanding on the thinking that went into choosing the rover landing site

[Voice_of_Europe]

32. Mars Express successful... Beagle a PR crash not science

I just wanted to inform you that about 80 % of all experiments are done aboard Mars express, not aboard Beagle... which was called the mother ship here...
And its cartographing and surveying the whole damn planet in pretty much every spectrum there is...

Beagle II was just a probe which some stupid sientist thought might be a good idea and PR boost to land it on Mars...it should never have been installed in the first place.

Mars Express is scientifically a full success.
Just the add-on probe crashed.

[windansea]

37. thanks for bringing this up

the photos are spectacular...the press here seemed to portray the mission as failure because the probe crashed...:crazy:

[JusticeForAll]

30. They accomplished nothing?

Not even gaining the knowledge of what a Martian crater bed looks like and what metals and minerals with which it is composed?

eom

[windansea]

38. see post 35 and try the link

very educational

[0rganism]

19. The martian rift is where the richest Martians live

They don't take kindly to space junk landing in their backyard, that's why those probes keep disappearing.

[tibbiit]

24. No telling what richard c. hoagland

No telling what richard c. hoagland will see in the new mars pictures.

He just might get another 20 years worth of money making-- new faces, new ideas-- in fact I bet lots and lots of grand new ideas are bubbling now in hoagies brain. He may be on his tippy toes with excitment and bush love:)
tib

[The_Casual_Observer]

26. Seems like the JPL mars thing

Is a big flop. Lots of offensive big talking geeks but nothing to see, eveybody has lost interest.

But these pictures are remarkable. Viva Mars Express!

[Nihil]

28. Neat photo - now for years of interpretation?

Unless there is significant distortion here (e.g., from a non-vertical
shot) the "canyon" is really weird ...

Look at the surface features on either side: there is no apparent
continuity across the trench - i.e., the trench didn't cut through
an existing landscape (cf. the Colorado river).

To me it looks like a plate boundary with the top edge (in this photo)
going under the bottom edge but I'm dying to see what the experts make
of it!

There again, it might just be the seam where the ball was stitched
together by the Creator in a hurry that day :-)

Nihil

[Dead_Parrot]

29. You need to read the article...

This is a composite - the top 'half' is the view from orbit, the bottom is simulated from the 3D data (as seen by a plane). Nice and confusing...

[Nihil]

31. Oops

Thanks for straightening that out!

:dunce:

[Voice_of_Europe]

33. That photo isn't just a snapshot

it's just a neat photo ESA released...
Mars Express is cartographing the whole planet.

[DUreader]

34. Mars Express Hi-Res Image Gallery Here:

http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/

Actually that is the Home Page but click on either the Image

or the 'images' link in the left hand column to download the big pics

[SodoffBush]

39. Compare everyone's interest w/Mars in this link to Apollo 11

when the main purpose of the moon landing was to beat the Russians rather than for scientific research. What a waste, to send men to the moon for chest-beating purposes, losing out on an opportunity to send men with credentialed scientific backgrounds to learn for the good of all mankind.

[windansea]

40. interesting n/t

[daleo]

41. In my more tinfoil-ish moments

I wonder if the ESA may have decided to withhold Beagle's data from the public, in case it does find signs of life. A crash would be a good cover story. Then, the moment passes, and I realize that things like that just do not really happen.

[windansea]

42. try this link

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html#

then clic on Rover Landing Site Flash Animation

you will see a short but very cool animation...when it's done clic on Deciding where to Land video

perhaps you'll gain a better understanding on the thinking that went into choosing the rover landing site

[Beaker]

43. considering how big the Earth is-

and how relatively shallow the oceans are- is there any possibility that the oceans could someday seep into the interior of the planet?

what if all the oil that we're pumping out is some type of natural seal, that prevents that from happening, and the oceans just draining away to the center of the Earth.

maybe that's what happened to Mars, causing our ancestors to escape to Earth...to start the process all over again...

maybe we'd better start looking into the feasibility of terra-forming Venus...

maybe I should put the bong down and head for bed...

[windansea]

44. LOL

:tinfoilhat: