The Rover Spirit
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The yellow arrow marks Spirit. Click for expanded image. Image credits: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter / False-color image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Spirit is located just south of the Martian equator and is just now getting over its bout with the Martian winter. The rover was never without the Sun completely because it was near the equator, the “Martian tropics” as is were. Phoenix isn’t so lucky, located in the Martian arctic, soon to have no Sun to produce power to keep the internal components somewhat warm, the Martian winter will claim the lander, sadly the end is just a couple weeks away.
Spirit is shown in this nice Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image, here’s the description from the MER website (they also have a much larger version than I have here):
Clear skies and low-angle sunlight are an outdoor photographer’s dream. On the shortest day of Martian winter, June 24, 2008, Spirit had both. Conditions were ideal for an orbiter’s shot of the Mars rover parked on the sunlit slope of a volcanic plateau. Shadows outlined shapes in the landscape, such as the upturned edges of the bowl-shaped plateau known as “Home Plate.” Shadows also reveal nearby ridges, slopes, and large boulders. Spirit is the dark “bump,” marked by a yellow arrow.
Detailed images such as this one will help scientists select a future path for Spirit. For plotting a path on Mars, a powerful orbiting camera, long shadows, and a clear sky are about as good as it gets.
[...] Tom notes that HiRISE spotted Spirit on Mars. Massively embiggenated version is [...]
URL on the picture link has an extra “s” in it.
>URL on the picture link has an extra “s” in it.
Fixed, thanks!
[...] yet another demonstration of its awesomeness, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter managed to get an image of the Spirit rover from orbit using HiRISE, even though the rover only shows up as a dark dot. For a rover that has been on Mars [...]
[...] Dat stipje is SpiritIk had vandaag een hele sloot visite over de vloer (verjaardag van vrouwlief en één van m’n dochters). Vele borrelpraat (o.a. de nodige roddels over de Rabobank) plus borrels (hips) later eindelijk tijd een kort blogje te schrijven. De Marsrover Spirit, die zie iets ten zuiden van de evenaar van Mars bevindt, is vanuit de ruimte gefotografeerd door de Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Het tafereeltje dateert alweer van 24 juni 2008 en we zien Spirit aan de rand van het plateau genaamd Home Plate. Foto’s met meer pixels zijn hier te vinden. Bron: Tom’s Astroblog. [...]