Apparently my car was in the shop. No other news. But I was still intensely following the first real serious Mars landings. As you know I hope I live long enough to hear of life discovered on other planets, particularly ancient life. I'm fed up with people who don't understand evolution avowing the theory is wrong on religious terms. Religion is not evidence. If there is life out there, it debunks every major religion on Earth--no matter how badly they have been scrambling to prepare for the event with excuses, cover stories, and counter-arguments.
This is the Spirit rover, the one landed by the bouncing ball. There were two rovers which landed back in January, but no truly interesting photos have been released until this week. If I can find any from the proper time slot, I'll post.
Note these are not really robots, they are commanded from Earth. By that I don't mean they are steered, but rather somebody uploads computer code to the rover memory. It is then processed, verified, and then run usually the following Martian "day". There was no evidence of life, just a bleak landscape so far. But the focus was arriving, not choosing an optimum area for the search. The difference of this brand of remote control is denoted by referring to the craft as "robotic" rather than as "a robot". Of course, I didn't know much of this in 2004.
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