Explore Mars: Spirit's Journey Options

[Robert S]

This is a wonderful tribute to Spirit!

http://exploremars.jpl.nasa.gov/Spirit

[Astro0]

If they are going to do stuff like this then I just wish that they went to the effort of making it accurate and immersive.

It does nothing to tell you of her struggle, gives little detail of the discoveries made and uses images that to the uninformed are at best misleading. Importantly, it tells you nothing of the team who made her journey possible. You get a link to the regular website and that's it. I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be.

For a start the video that shows while the program loads contains some footage from JPL taken during Opportunity's landing. During the drives, especially the going back and forth around Homeplate and the turn-in-place 'spins', to the uninformed viewer these make it looks as if either the Rover is lost and confused or the drivers are drunk (it needs an explanation). The final set of spins near Troy make it look as if Spirit corkscrewed itself into the sandtrap at Scamander. Having levers for speed and direction can mislead viewers into thinking that the Rover was driven by a joystick like a remote control toy. There should be a series of options to allow for varying surface detail level depending on bandwidth. The 'battery charge' thing is just wrong. There's a lot wrong and not much right here.

Frankly, this is done a lot better in Google Mars (minus the Rover model but MMB fills that gap).

I hope that they redo this to a museum quality. It should show all parts of the journey accurately (backwards driving would be nice for one), more milestones on the driving path (5 or 6 spots on a 7+km drive is insulting), what about a record of all the brush and rathole targets (a unique first of this mission), key panoramas and mosaics (what about the spots where the classic 'blue sunset' or 'Earth - you are here' shots were taken), relevant dates (press conferences, discovery releases), major moments (Sol18 flash glitch, Tyrone sulfates, the great 2007 dust storm), linked videos (rover updates in sol sequence, actual drive and idd videos), the list goes on.

I sincerely hope that if they do this for Opportunity that they don't give it the same lip service, and oh please don't ruin Curiosity's journey.

Sorry, for me, I can't see this as a tribute to Spirit.

That's my personal two cents worth.