Visual Imagery in Solar System Exploration
Peter J. Westwick · Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks · 2013
O n January 3, 2004, a small robotic car, snug inside an aeroshell, plunged through the sky above Mars trailing fire. Parachutes and rockets slowed it down, and an airbag cushioned its final 15-meter drop to the Martian surface. Tense engineers waited nervously in the control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena for the radio signal of a safe landing. When the signal arrived the assembled engineers erupted in cheers, but the evening’s highlight came a couple of hours later, when the Spirit rover unfolded its cameras and returned a panoramic image of its landing site. Breathless scientists declared that further images promised major discoveries, and, indeed, pictures from Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity soon provided persuasive evidence that Mars once had extensive standing bodies of salty water.