Re:NASA's Perseverance rover sends stunning images
by dredmorbius on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @08:18AM
(#26327889)
That period during the New Horizons mission where every new image represented a major advance in our quantum of knowledge of Pluto was absolutely remarkable.
The situation with Mars is different: the planet's close enough for reasonably good telescopic investigation from Earth, we've had landers on the planet for 50 years (the Soviet Mars 2 lander beat Viking by 5 years), high-resolution orbiters for ... nearly as long? And since 1996, rovers, which have transected paths of varying lengths exploring specific regions of the plant. We've got a very strong overview (something still not complete for Pluto --- New Horizons got detailed close views of only about 60% of the surface), and several very-high-detail pictures.
Astronomical time and distance are both huge relative to human scale. That we (or our robot agents) can cross the solar system in a decade or two is remarkable. A few months to Mars is nothing. The Earth was once as large or far larger (to us).
The situation with Mars is different: the planet's close enough for reasonably good telescopic investigation from Earth, we've had landers on the planet for 50 years (the Soviet Mars 2 lander beat Viking by 5 years), high-resolution orbiters for ... nearly as long? And since 1996, rovers, which have transected paths of varying lengths exploring specific regions of the plant. We've got a very strong overview (something still not complete for Pluto --- New Horizons got detailed close views of only about 60% of the surface), and several very-high-detail pictures.
Astronomical time and distance are both huge relative to human scale. That we (or our robot agents) can cross the solar system in a decade or two is remarkable. A few months to Mars is nothing. The Earth was once as large or far larger (to us).