Thats awesome.

Maybe they need 2 engines for insertion and one is a backup ?

Von Braun was a switched on guy............

I also thought Oppy had tried to do the normal turn at the end of a drive, irrespective of a full drive or prematurely cut short drive. You can bet your bottom dollar that they have a manouvere that will get Oppy out of the dune

Nice images, I like the 3rd one. Do we know how far the horizon is in those shots ?

Thats not correct, the first 2 launches are to be in daylight to see what the debris shedding is like, ice will form on the O2 pipes in summer or winter (they are going to try heaters on them to prevent this.)

Very nice.

It has 512 MB.

I am 42, living in the USA, I am British though. I operate an old Unisys Mainframe, and we will shortly be moving over to an Enterprise Server. I saw Armstrong step onto the Moon and have been interested in Space ever since. My father in law actually worked at Stennis Space Center, testing Apollo and Shuttle Main Engine's.

This is an excellent peice of news, the P.I. taking time to post on the web is wonderfull.

my old pentium 2 does grind to a halt when images are being created, setting to below normal does solve this.

"I was a bit surprised though that they used the main antenna as a shield while going through the rings."

I believe the main antenna was designed to act as a shield as well as an antenna.

Cassini will be busy flying by 3 icy satellites

"The new baseline trajectory will now
include three close icy satellite flybys within 17 days - with no Titan
encounters between them - a feat that is extremely fortuitous, and on a par
with the alignment of the planets for Voyager's Grand Tour. The icy
satellite flybys in order are Tethys, Hyperion, and Dione. These are the
only close flybys of these bodies in the nominal mission."

I am glad they are moving on, those were just 2 small craters, not much new to be seen there. On to the older crater with some small cliffs, and some etched terrain

The MER mission extension was mentioned on Fox News yesterday or the day before, nice to see the Mission still having a tiny bit of media recognition.

I was wondering why there were no new images since the 2nd April.

I think the new views as Spirit climbs are just stunningly beautifull.

The LM's computer was very very slow compared to todays PC's, and when the Eagle landed it was overloaded and Armstrong had to land manually with only a few seconds of fuel remaining for the descent engine.

Spring does last 3 months..........

I like this quote "It turns out there would also be a hell of a view from the summit if we get there," Squyres said.
Can't wait to get there.

Hey Marslauncher, welcome to the good old US of A. I sent you a pm.

I read on a Mission Managers report that they always turn the rover at the end of a long drve so its in an optimal position for the communications passes.

The titles of your Spirits images all say Meridiani Planum............Nice images though

As long as Spirit is moving that suits me I think they spend too much time looking at rocks, lol.

Some parts of the SE don't look too steep either.