What a "groovy" picture.

I guess, since oppy moved immediately after conjunction, the auto mode reset she had was no big deal.

That surface does look a little different to my untrained eye. There is work to do here!

Thanks. Always wondered how that worked.

Oops. I just wish I hadn't drunk all that cough syrup last night, ya know. :-)

I've been hoping for this for months. Fantastic.

GREAT THREAD! I live in Iowa less than a days drive from path. The day before, I'll watch the weather and pre position outside the path so I can get room and gas etc. Then the next day, drive to the path, depending on the weather.
Even if it's cloudy it could still be cool. I'm thinking I'll wear an eye patch to have one eye dark adapted.

THANK YOU for the "SPIRIT ZOOM". It really gave me context of the area, and how fortunate we were to have those interesting hills nearby to make the mission great!

Hats off and a case of beer to the people who wrote that paper. Amazing.

Well I know they were looking for a unaltered sample of bedrock - this at least looks uniform.

yah. When I saw the photo I thought - apollo15 hadley rille. but the processes at work on these bodies could be very diferent and produce similar features

Wow Tom. Thanks much for the video. It gives me insight into one of my favorite missions and all your hard work.

Yes. I just can't get my head around how we could be seeing a freshish ice deposit on such an old and probably dead world, so salt it is.

And just to think outside the box, is the bright stuff from an impactor?

Doesn't marathon valley run more or less east west, so if it stayed on one side of the valley you would get a good winter tilt?

And what a beautifull launch. In the launch video, just after staging, you could see thrusters firing on the first stage to begin orienting it for landing. Luv those evening and morning launches.

I don't think the U.S. has ever ended a possibly productive mission on the surface of another body. The apollo ALSEP science packages were turned off, but only when the science return became almost nill.

I haven't seen this before either. And it's a great compliment to the DISR descent movie referenced above - especially how it ties in the last few images taken during descent and post landing image to the landing video.

What great material. Brittle soft very fine grained gray and uniform. kind of yellow knife bay-ish.

in iowa i watched half an hour and saw nothing under clear skys. On line I saw an estimate of 5 to 10 per hour at max. hardely worth looking at.

I was struck by how long the after glow lasted. My first thought was that it had to be a metal rich body to retain such heat ,but is that true? my second thought was that it had to be an acute angle impact to retain heat for less smearing of material. Any guesses? MRO will tell us soon enough.

WOW. just WOW!

thank you!!!!!!!!

I hope ISON doesn't follow the life cycle of the man in Monty Python And The Holy Grail's "bring out your dead" scene - check youtube!

According to CNN, tests on the two failed reacton wheels have begun. On thursday they tried to spin the wheel that failed in may. It spun counterclockwise but not clockwise.

YES! Now a simp like me can follow oppy.

"There seem to be remnants of some whitish embedding/surrounding material."



And it has that glinty polished look like it's been sand blasted for a long time.