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Sunday, January 04, 2004

As I'm writing this, applause from the Mars Exploration Rover mission contact the Mars odyssey control center seemed to indicate that the Spirit rover was able to successfully communicate with the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, which is then able to relay it to Earth. This means that the "critical deploy" phase worked, and the rover is safe on Mars.

→ http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/challenges.html...

The rover's radio dropped out when it first landed on Mars, which lead to the promised six minutes of terror occurring after the landing, rather than before. The tone system worked well right up until touchdown, but stopped until rollout was complete.

This mission has already uploaded 3 MB of data, and has demonstrated the ability to relay information through a communications satellite in orbit around another world.

It's sending back pictures... So cool.

This just in: A quick screengrab of the first picture back:

Not much to look at, but you saw it here first, or at least it was posted here quickly. :-)

- Tom | permalink | changelog | Last updated: 2004-01-04 02:35

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