Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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This Was The Last Photo Taken By NASA's Opportunity Rover On Mars
18 Feb 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonath...hoto-taken-by-nasas-opportunity-rover-on-mars
Just before the rover entered its endless sleep, however, it sent a final image of Mars back to Earth. The image, taken by its panoramic camera, was supposed to show a region known as Perseverance Valley. But instead the image just showed static and darkness as the deadly storm rolled in.
That’s right, that image up above is not showing stars in the night sky on Mars. The blackness here is actually caused by the storm, while the white specks are static due to noise from the camera. The black bar at the bottom is data that was not received from the rover, as its transmission back to Earth was interrupted and the rover switched off.
"We are looking at an incredibly small amount of sunlight – .002 percent of the normal sunlight that we would expect to see," Bill Nelson from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), chief of the Opportunity mission’s engineering team, told Mashable. "If you were there, it would be late twilight. Your human eye would still be able to make out some features, but it would be very dark."
18 Feb 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonath...hoto-taken-by-nasas-opportunity-rover-on-mars
Just before the rover entered its endless sleep, however, it sent a final image of Mars back to Earth. The image, taken by its panoramic camera, was supposed to show a region known as Perseverance Valley. But instead the image just showed static and darkness as the deadly storm rolled in.
That’s right, that image up above is not showing stars in the night sky on Mars. The blackness here is actually caused by the storm, while the white specks are static due to noise from the camera. The black bar at the bottom is data that was not received from the rover, as its transmission back to Earth was interrupted and the rover switched off.
"We are looking at an incredibly small amount of sunlight – .002 percent of the normal sunlight that we would expect to see," Bill Nelson from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), chief of the Opportunity mission’s engineering team, told Mashable. "If you were there, it would be late twilight. Your human eye would still be able to make out some features, but it would be very dark."
