Revealing Mars

Posted 1 Minute Ago

I almost got an out-of-body experience looking at that 360 view from the surface of Mars. As Robert Anton Wilson pointed out this obvious but overlooked (at least by me) idea in his compelling speech on [Jumping Jesus Phenomenon], described at a seminar given in 1988 titled "The Acceleration of Knowledge", planetary knowledge continues to grow its rate of increase.

On August 12, 2005 NASA launched Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter designed to explore the Red Planet from the orbit. The M.R.O. will make a more comprehensive inspection of Mars than any previous mission, examining landscape details as small as a coffee table with the most powerful telescopic camera ever sent to orbit of a foreign planet. This 47 min. long documentary will walk you through the orbiter's scientific payload, illustrate how each instrument works and give you a sense of the high-quality images and data these tools will produce by comparing them to tools used for the investigation of the atmosphere and geology of Earth.