Stunning images again
Great work by all involved!
NASA's Curiosity rover has delivered a fine panoramic postcard of a Martian sand dune, snapped as the trundling explorer ascends the Red Planet's Mount Sharp. The full dune panorama as snapped by Curiosity A distant Mount Sharp rises above the Namib Dune. Pic: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS (big version here) The four-metre-high " …
https://didith1988.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/2-year-long-sahara-desert-dune-time-lapse/
More in the second half here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5d5_1361980465&comments=1
I think they spotted the movement from orbital images over a period of time. Would make a great time-lapse, for sure.
Wow. Commentards and Regtards queuing up to watch sand blown by the wind.
I'm planning to do some painting soon, if you'd like to come round and watch that dry?
"Stunning images indeed, but rather less inspiring science going on. "
Personally the images themselves are worth it for me. I'd have been even happier if they'd sent a probe to a more photogenic place such as the Valles Marinas or the Helles Basin even if the science was slightly less interesting (though I doubt it would be). Geology is all well and good, but its not the reason most people are interested in planetary exploration.
I'd rather we didn't, to be honest, unless there's a serious immediate benefit to doing so. It's very expensive to get there, it's basically going to be shots of a lot of rocks, and most importantly whoever is sent will die out there. Satellites and robots are increasingly cheaper and easier to land.
When there's a chance of the crew surviving, and not having decades knocked off their life expectancy it'll be a better idea.
odfo dear. There is a difference between legislating against something that might, in a blue moon, possibly affect a particularly unfortunate and stupid child, and something that is definitely extremely expensive, will certainly take money away from other spacecraft, and almost certainly won't allow the astronauts to return home.
I'd like more spacecraft on comets, planetary moons, solar exploration - it's gathered new and exciting science across many environments, rather than limiting it to Mars.
"most importantly whoever is sent will die out there."
If it's a choice of dying forty years from now in a nursing home, dribbling and pissing myself, or dying in twenty years* on a far off world, after spending my time being a pioneer and living the adventure of a lifetime; Well, I know which I'd choose!
*Shit, I'd still go, even if I lived less than ten.
and it's exactly why actually going places and doing stuff is so good for science. Either the science underpinning your expectations is wrong or incomplete (in which case we need to know more), or your application of current science wrong or incomplete (which is also good, since mistakes can be highly informative).
"I'd have thought the much lower gravity would have allowed much steeper gradients to form"
Nope. It is the gravity that creates the forces that lock the particles together. More gravity means the particles lock together more strongly and thus less prone to landslides.
To an extent you can observe this by looking at sand in water where the buoyancy created by the water reduces the weight of the sand and allows it to flow more easily. Of course the water itself has lubricating properties too, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
An interesting simulation of moving dunes is Zhang's sandpile model. http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/handle/1871/11714.
Reminds me to upload a compilation to YouTube.