[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spirit_p067.html

Strange things - possibly one of the moons going overhead?

Doug

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

Yes, it's Orion. That was said at the press conference. They also said the streak might be one of the Viking Orbiters :)

I think you mean the horizontal streak, which is not in the images already linked to at the beginning of this topic. For anyone here who maybe missed the JPL briefing today, it was mentioned as an oddity, could be one of the old Viking orbiters but unlikely any of the others according to JPL. Meteor? It is discussed a bit in today's press release images:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20040311a.html



"Observing the sky with the green filter of it panoramic camera, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit came across a surprise: a streak across the sky. The streak, seen in the middle of this mosaic of images taken by the navigation and panoramic cameras, was probably the brightest object in the sky at the time. Scientists theorize that the mystery line could be either a meteorite or one of seven out-of-commission spacecraft still orbiting Mars. Because the object appeared to move 4 degrees of an arc in 15 seconds it is probably not the Russian probes Mars 2, Mars 3, Mars 5, or Phobos 2; or the American probes Mariner 9 or Viking 1. That leaves Viking 2, which has a polar orbit that would fit with the north-south orientation of the streak. In addition, only Viking 1 and 2 were left in orbits that could produce motion as fast as that seen by Spirit. Said Mark Lemmon, a rover team member from Texas A&M University, Texas, "Is this the first image of a meteor on Mars, or an image of a spacecraft sent from another world during the dawn of our robotic space exploration program? We may never know, but we are still looking for clues."