Explorer Recounts Deepest-Ever Ocean Expedition
"Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and Navy oceanographer Don Walsh descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, seven miles below the sea's surface. It's the lowest point on Earth, and deeper than any human had gone before - or since.
Above is a new video chronicling the explorers' journey, weaving animation with audio from an interview granted by Piccard in 2005, three years before his death. The interview was conducted by New York writer Victor Ozols, but went unpublished and eventually ended up on his blog. There it was found by German design student Roman Wolter, who made the film."
(Dave Mosher, 21 January 2011, Wired Science)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down
"Icy cold, pitch black and with crushing pressures - the deepest part of the ocean is one of the most hostile places on the planet. Only two explorers have made the epic journey there: 11km (seven miles) down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. As a new wave of explorers is gearing up to repeat this remarkable dive, take a look at the mysterious world that they will be plunging into."
(BBC News, 23 February 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Mars Pathfinder: Landing On And Examining Mars
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (2003)
Mars Pathfinder landed on the surface of the Red Planet on [...] July 4, 1997, the first vehicle to make a soft landing on Mars since the Viking 1 and 2 craft 21 years earlier. Upon landing, a door of the lander opened and a roving inspection vehicle, called Sojourner, rolled out and immediately began analyzing nearby rocks. [...] Mars Pathfinder relayed some 2.6 billion bits of data back to Earth. This enormous volume of data includes (i) over 16,000 pictures taken by the probe's lander (functioning for a period three-fold its design life), colour images of the Martian sunrise and sunset, images of clouds drifting in the Martian sky, etc, as well as (ii) 550 images taken by the small robot rover "Sojourner" (functioning for a period twelve-fold its design life), (iii) chemical analysis results for 15 specimens of Martian rock and valuable atmospheric data on wind, temperature, etc. The final task performed by the lander was a 360 degree panoramic imaging of the Martian horizon. Communication with the probe was unfortunately lost at a point of 83 percent completion of this image data delivery.
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The Constellations ProjectSHARE
