News By James Plafke Apr. 16, 2014 2:39 pm
While excitement about space may have shifted to other new or impending discoveries — such as New Horizons making its way to Pluto sometime next year, or Saturn’s moon Enceladus potentially harboring alien life within an extraterrestrial ocean — the Curiosity rover is still going strong, exploring the surface of another planet. It’s mind-blowing to think we put a driverless car on Mars and it’s cruising around taking pictures for us, but it’s also doing something else to the Red Planet — scarring its moneymaker.
Yes, Curiosity driving around Mars is causing very noticeable tracks to be left on the planet’s surface, and due to the precise trajectory of the space-car, the tracks look like mysterious markings intentionally left by an ancient civilization. Take a look:
The tracks run down the middle of the image leading to the rover. Click to zoom.
At first, the above image might appear to be a close-up of skin or a rock, but it’s actually an image taken by*the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, conveniently abbreviated as HiRISE. Currently, the rover is exploring a location called the Kimberley. NASA scientists are aiming to explore a layer of rock at the base of a small butte that they call Mount Remarkable.
Yes: Curiosity has led NASA scientists to explore Kimberley’s Remarkable butte. As a matter of fact, Curiosity is going to drill Kimberley’s butte — you know, to study samples of the Martian sediment. We can’t help but wonder if NASA scientists intentionally chose all these words or if they’re blissfully unaware of how hilarious they all are.
The goal of all this butte drilling — aside from unintentional press release comedy — is to learn about the potential past habitable conditions of the planet. It’s also interesting to think that Curiosity’s tracks might persist on the Martian surface for a long time, and might spark a conspiracy theorist riot when they resurface in future images without context and are referred to as “mysterious artificial markings.”
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Yes, Curiosity driving around Mars is causing very noticeable tracks to be left on the planet’s surface, and due to the precise trajectory of the space-car, the tracks look like mysterious markings intentionally left by an ancient civilization. Take a look:
The tracks run down the middle of the image leading to the rover. Click to zoom.At first, the above image might appear to be a close-up of skin or a rock, but it’s actually an image taken by*the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, conveniently abbreviated as HiRISE. Currently, the rover is exploring a location called the Kimberley. NASA scientists are aiming to explore a layer of rock at the base of a small butte that they call Mount Remarkable.
Yes: Curiosity has led NASA scientists to explore Kimberley’s Remarkable butte. As a matter of fact, Curiosity is going to drill Kimberley’s butte — you know, to study samples of the Martian sediment. We can’t help but wonder if NASA scientists intentionally chose all these words or if they’re blissfully unaware of how hilarious they all are.
The goal of all this butte drilling — aside from unintentional press release comedy — is to learn about the potential past habitable conditions of the planet. It’s also interesting to think that Curiosity’s tracks might persist on the Martian surface for a long time, and might spark a conspiracy theorist riot when they resurface in future images without context and are referred to as “mysterious artificial markings.”
More...
