Your Daily Dosage

More Detailed View of the Pathfinder Probe and Possibly Sojourner

From NASA's site

 

Another lander found on Mars

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has located the Pathfinder landing site.  Additionally, the Sojourner rover may also be visible.




The larger imaga available from the MRO site can zoom it to the point the lander is relatively easy to identify.

More News from the Red Planet

CNN is reporting (as does MSNBC) the recently reviewed photos from the lost Mars Global Surveyor may show evidence of recent flowing water on Mars. 

"The crisp images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor do not directly show
water. Rather, they show apparently recent changes in surface features
that provide the strongest evidence yet that water even now sometimes
flows on the dusty, frigid world."

Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Returns Photos Four Martian Probes

Amazing new photos have been released the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  The MRO is using the landing sites of both the Viking Probes (from 1976) and the Mars Rovers to calibrate its high resolution cameras in order to search for a potential landing site for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission slated for launch in 2007. 

According to the press release, "Applying that knowledge as we view the
new orbital images will help us interpret what we see in orbital images
from other parts of Mars never seen from ground level."

The Antikythera mechanism

Yesterday, the blogosphere (see Daring Fireball, kottke.org, and even Slashdot) was ripe with links to a New York Times or a  Guardian UK article regarding the Antikythera mechanism.   The device was discovered in 1902 and was known to be an mechanical calculator for astronomical events.  New research presented at an international conference  and as documented in the November 30th issue of Nature appears to be the catalyst for the torrent of articles appearing yesterday and today.   New imaging has revealed  more of the complexity, models the device, and appears to have solved which events the device tracks.  Why these events were tracked remains a mystery. 

Edit - even MSNBC and CNN are  now in on the act.