mars around the blogosphere

Mars Rover Blog is now offering an image RSS feed. Great stuff!

Everyone and his brother are pointing to the Reuters "Java runs Mars rover" article, which highlights Maestro, the Java-based application (available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Solaris) that is being used by the engineering and science teams to sandbox the rover drives. You can download a scaled down version of the software and get real datasets to play with. It's worth the downloads (get that first data set update) just to replay the EDL and browser through the 3-d space derived from those first Hazcam and Navam images. If you're like me, you'll blow hours playing with the thing :-)

There are also lots of links to the MER music video from Maas Digital. (For you serious fans, you can download via bittorrent, 310 MB of DVD-quality MPEG-2 video.) I've seen this animation at least 3 dozen times and it still amazes me. If you haven't listened to one of the various NASA/JPL commentators describing the sequence, you can read about what you're seeing at the video narrative pages at the Athena science payload website..

From New Scientist, via A Visible Hum, we learn that the science team is analyzing the Microscopi Imager data for what may turn out to be evidence of salt water on Mars. The images show hollow spheres or tubes similar to what's found in desert lakebeds here on Earth.

UtterlyBoring has some cute pictures from the surface of Mars :-)

Kano, over at ATSNN has a decent write-up on the "colorizing" of Mars.

Mars Daily has a story on the nuclear-powered "mini-van" [sized] rover that could be roaming the Martian surface if the upcoming 2009 Mars Scientific Laboratory comes to fruition.

The Parson's Pantry preserved the wonderful Google MER banner. Thanks Paul!

And last, but not least, Mars Rover Blog points to a Lego MER! (Nice touch with the trenching front wheel.) More at the AP story on MERs in toystores! Go Caltech! Also, a 1/10th scale model will be available for $150. If any of you would like to buy one of those for me, email me and I'll be happy to provide you with my shipping information :-) And even more info on Martian toys can be found at The Esotaric Science Resource Center