MER Opportunity down safely!

[Jon P. Inghram]

Everything worked great, just has to deflate it's airbags and right itself as it opens since it ended up on a side petal, which isn't surprising considering there's only a 1 in 4 chance of ending up on the base.

[Jon P. Inghram]

BTW, it's freaky to be watching a live webcast, see everyone cheering and everything, and then wonder "Hey, that guy looks a lot like Al Gore... and Arnold Schwarzenegger?!?"

[az]

What, he looks like Al Gore AND Arnold Schwarzenegger?

AZ

[Jon P. Inghram]

Wow, just watched the pictures come down live, and the landing site looks VERY different than any other previous one.

[MultimediaMan]

Good looking pictures.

Could that be Ice on that first Pic?

You can clearly see the imprint of the airbags on the surface....at first blush the soil looks like talcum powder.

Edit: No...it looks like Icing on a cake. May have hit upon what we were looking for right there.

[Jon P. Inghram]

I just slapped a color image together, it's using blue, green and near IR filters so it isn't "true" color, and due to the onboard compression and level equalization they use the colors are stretched a lot. But the surface stuff is clearly a different material than what was exposed by the bags.

[MultimediaMan]

The Geology team members have jizzed all over themselves, and are not likely to stop over the next 90 days or so.

[MultimediaMan]

The Webcast is over...I'm gonna get some sleep, but man, two for two, very not bad.

[Wombat]

Pretty.....

http://www.marsnews.lunarpages.com/mer2004/rover-images/jan-25-2004/Pancam_Sol1_Postcard-med.jpg

[Jon P. Inghram]

My best bet as to the landing location, the red dot marks the spot, more or less.

[MultimediaMan]

They should have a flyover in the next couple of days.