Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The First Color Panorama from Mars by Curiosity

NASA ^ | August 11, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: You've just landed on Mars and opened your eyes -- what do you see? If you're the Curiosity rover, you see a strange gravelly place with a large mountain in the distance. You've landed on target near the edge of 150-km wide Gale Crater, with Mount Sharp on the horizon being the rise in the crater's center. As a car-sized rover with six wheels and a laser, you prepare yourself to go on a two-year mission of exploration, climbing Mt. Sharp, and looking for signs that Mars once harbored life. Currently you sit motionless, check yourself over, and receive a detailed briefing from Earth on things you will need to know while rolling around, trying to avoid flipping over or getting your wheels stuck in sand. Your rolling explorations will likely start in a few days. What will you find? What's out there?

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS]

[SunkenCiv]

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[South40]

We never went to Mars. We never went to the moon either. It's all a hoax. /s

[wastedyears]

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Nope, don’t see Alice on there either.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

LOL! She’s everywhere! AAAH!

[Las Vegas Dave]

I wait for the day when humans explore the planet Mars!

Thanks for posting SunkenCiv!

[Ken522]

Who is that woman? Is she trying not to pick her nose? Or is this her “disapproval” face?

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, we’re doing it right now — just not in person. :’) The only reason we’ve done more to explore the surface of the Moon than the surface of Mars is, we’ve had no sample return mission from Mars.

[hattend]

Who is that?

[SunkenCiv]

She got the silver instead of the gold.

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[wastedyears]

US Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney. I think she was making that face because she didn’t win the gold.

[Carriage Hill]

Here's one you missed:

[cripplecreek]

I wait for the day when humans explore the planet Mars!

I agree. The Robots are great for what they do but they just can't match humans in speed, curiosity, intuition, intellect, etc. Humans have the desire to see what's over the horizon. We also have the ability to make instant decisions while a robot has to sit there for up to 40 minutes while it waits for a command to move a few inches.

Ideally would be a mission conducted jointly with humans and robots with the robots under direct control of the men on the surface.

The robots have really restricted us to some fairly uninteresting areas of mars. They have to land in flat places when we really need to be looking into mountains, canyons and caves.

[ronnie raygun]

Local interview with one of the nasa scientists who worked on this project was asked whats next? he said............nothing is next, this is the end of the line, nothing is planned for the future.

[silverleaf]

bttt

[beef]

Human spaceflight is romantic and appeals to the public, but the lions share of the real science so far has come from these robotic missions. If we really want to pursue manned spaceflight as most people envision it, we should terminate the current manned program (which hasn’t changed much since the 60s) and pour the money into basic physics research. We need warp drive or something like it and we haven’t the foggiest idea how to do that.

[Fresh Wind]