[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Bobby_*]

http://www.planetary.org/news/2006/0831_Ma...ate_Spirit.html

[Of counsel]

NASA and JPL are not obligated to release Opportunity's and Sprint's camera work to us when it arrives from Mars. They have many policies and rules in place that govern the release of information, and have lots of discretion to decide what to release. Congress has been plenty active in this arena as well, ranging from various secrecy statutes to the Freedom of Information Act. Generally, scientific and technical data does not have to be released by the government in a timely manner. In fact, in many instances data will never be released to those of us in the general public, for example, "defense articles" like much of NASA's launch and tracking system information. However, once the MER photos are released to us, they're simply not "protected"--they can't be copyrighted and we can do anything we d*** well please with them.

We should thank our lucky stars that James Bell, NASA, JPL et. al have decided to release this bounty of images to us, just as they have been doing ever since the rovers landed. Public release of the rover pictures surely advances NASA's goals in space and planetary science. Because of those releases, many members of this forum have been able to contribute greatly to the scientific inquiry. Their contributions would not have been possible without the foresight of those on the rover team to disclose--as much and as soon as possible--all the images we've been privy to.