Mars Eats Probes
April 12, 2013 11:42 AM   Subscribe

 
This is cool.
posted by homunculus at 12:14 PM on April 12, 2013


This a great piece of detective work. But this is the highlight of the article for me:
HiRISE has a fantastic program called HiWish that allows anyone to suggest imaging targets. Anyone, either professional or enthusiast, American or not, can suggest a spot, if they give a good explanation why it should be imaged. I've written about it before, on more than one occasion. So has Alfred. Alfred has expressed to me repeatedly that he is surprised by how few people take advantage of HiWish to image any spot on Mars. Obviously when you ask for an image through HiWish you are not guaranteed to get your photo. But in my experience, if there is even a halfway decent justification -- and Vitaliy's request more than achieves that standard -- the HiRISE team will work to get your image taken.
That blows my mind.
posted by figurant at 12:17 PM on April 12, 2013 [13 favorites]




Next they should try to find Alan Shepard's golf balls on the moon.
posted by Kabanos at 1:02 PM on April 12, 2013 [1 favorite]


No point. You're only allowed to look for your ball for five minutes before you go back to the original spot for a stroke-and-distance penalty.
posted by stevis23 at 1:05 PM on April 12, 2013 [3 favorites]


I had this strange moment of wonderment when I heard this story, something like: there is actually (what is now) trash made by humans on another planet! For some reason that boggled my mind.
posted by Bistle at 1:08 PM on April 12, 2013


I got an email about a website featuring Russian amateurs -- same people, I'd imagine.
posted by brain_drain at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2013 [9 favorites]


trash made by humans on another planet!

What's remarkable is that we've gotten good enough to spot our own trash in the vastness of another planetary landscape or, in one instance, in space itself.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has made it possible to image Moon junk including the Apollo landing sites and other old unmanned probes. HiRise has made it possible to observe future mars junk, and now start to find lost Mars junk. And "asteroid" J002E3 turned out to be Apollo 12's S-IVB third stage. Turns out space is big and our junk there is small so far, but just as on Earth junk doesn't go away.
posted by localroger at 2:18 PM on April 12, 2013


Our junk needs fusion rockets.
posted by Artw at 2:26 PM on April 12, 2013


According to Wikipedia humans have so far left about 180,000 kg of junk on the Moon. That sounds like a lot, but if the Lunarians ever get around to running it through a car crusher it would make a cube less than 20 feet on a side. Fortunately, LRO would be able to see such a cube :-)
posted by localroger at 2:48 PM on April 12, 2013


That story is awesome, right down to the use of "he" throughout. The future of humanity is bright.
posted by beagle at 4:07 PM on April 12, 2013


there is actually (what is now) trash made by humans on another planet!

Well, technically at least since Luna 2^.... That's 1959. So, you know, most of our whole lives....
posted by dhartung at 4:44 PM on April 12, 2013


right down to the use of "he" throughout

There are some "she's" too. Some languages don't have a gender neutral pronoun and so everything has a sex.
posted by localroger at 6:03 PM on April 12, 2013


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