National News NASA rover takes most detailed picture of Mars' surface so far

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PASADENA, California (AP) - NASA's Spirit rover yielded the sharpest picture ever taken of the surface of Mars, revealing in breathtaking detail a completely rust-colored landscape strewn with rocks.

NASA scientists said Jan. 6 the "postcard," sent across 169 million kilometers of space to Earth, had three to four times the resolution of any other pictures ever taken of the Red Planet. Spirit used a camera with the robotic equivalent of 20／20 vision.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced that Spirit's landing site would be named Columbia Memorial Station, in memory of the six astronauts who died in February 2003 in the space shuttle disaster.

"Spirit carries the dream of exploration the brave astronauts of Columbia held in their hearts," O'Keefe said.

Spirit is half of an $820 million (¥87.17 billion) project. Its identical twin, Opportunity, should land on the opposite side of Mars on Jan. 24. The rovers, the size of golf carts, were designed to probe Mars for evidence it once might have been a warmer, wetter place conducive to life.

Scientists said the picture was just a taste of bigger and better things to come from Spirit.

The postcard shows a vast plain scattered with a wide variety of rocks, including one in the far distance thought to be the size of a Volkswagen.

Poking above the horizon, perhaps 25 kilometers to 30.5 kilometers away, a mesa could be seen standing against the reddish-pink of the Martian sky.

A zoom-in showed off the crisp detail. Thousands of rocks peppered the scene, each blasted smooth by iron-rich dust lofted by the stiff winds thought to scour the area.

The new image is actually a mosaic of 12 pictures shot by Spirit's high-resolution panoramic camera, or Pancam.

"The object of our affection is doing quite well on the surface of Mars," said Firouz Naderi, manager of the Mars exploration program. "This baby has skipped all the baby talk and gone right into full sentences."

火星探査車、カラー写真を初公開

米航空宇宙局(NASA)は6日、無人火星探査車スピリットが撮影した着陸地点周辺のカラー写真を公表。また、米シャトル空中分解事故の犠牲者を追悼し、着陸地点を「コロンビア記念地」と命名した。

Shukan ST: Jan. 16, 2004

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