....has just made a suite of images from Spirit and Opportunity available. See:

http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/0/8/120...-h/12082-h.htm

If you look carefully at the shapes of some of the rocks it is clear that Mars was previously colonised by Galactic Pornographers.

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WOW!!! What an image collection! This will take hours to go through...very pleasant and informative hours, I might add...

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.

Way cool. And I notice that at least in one shot, the NASA meatball's the right color, so it looks like this guy might be getting it right (to some extent).

Oh yeah, and there's Legos on Mars!

But what's the coded message?

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I'd have to close my eyes before I could eat carrots that shape.

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That's a CD or DVD with names on. My name is on one of those. How cool is that?

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Dang it, I know my name is on one of those things, but I forget which one. Don't remember if it was Sojourner, one of the failed Mars missions, Cassini, or the current MERs. Anyone know authoritatively which of those did carry such CDs/DVDs?

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GhiaPet Home Page

If your name is on one MER Lander DVD, then I'm pretty sure it's on the other, too. They are the same -- redundancy!

As for names on other missions, a few months ago, I tried to catalog where mine appeared. Here's what I came up with:

- Two MER DVDs, with ASCII names. On Mars. Searchable database: http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/namequery.htm

- (Names from the failed Mars Polar Lander were carried over to MER.) [Later: No. On second Googling, it was the names from the cancelled 2001 Mars Lander that were carried over to the MER DVDs.]

- Cassini, CD, with scanned images of names off postcards. Will orbit Saturn. No searchable database: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/96/cdsign.html

- Deep Impact, ASCII names on disc, of some sort, on impactor. Will be vaporized in collision with Comet Tempel 1. Searchable database: http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/sendyourname/index.html

- Stardust, roman characters from submitted names etched on two microchips (and two backups). Went to Comet Wild 2 and now on way back to Earth. One pair, Microchip #1 and #2, is on the return capsule. The other pair, Microchip #1 and #2, stays on the drifting spacecraft. Searchable database: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/microchip/

Are there other missions that took names?

[Edited to correct my misuderstanding that Stardust Microchip #2 did not return. It does.]
[Edited to correct the fact that Mars Polar Lander names were not transferred to MER.]

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You had the wrong URL on this one. Which I think is the one that has my name on it, especially now that you mention they were originally slated for the MPL. I'll check once I have that URL in place....

Added: Hmm, the MER printout certificate certainly looks familiar, but there are four "John Owens" on there, so who knows which one might be me? On the other hand, on the Cassini, has one with the right middle initial, too, but the certificate doesn't look at all familiar, and the date's so recent I would surely remember it. I thought I'd done mine back in '97 or '98, and the MER dates are all in 2001 or 2002. I guess it might remain a mystery for a while.

Are the MPL ones listed on the same database as the MER ones?

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GhiaPet Home Page

Wow I didnt know about this enter ur name stuff before

Any new missions with this "feature" ?

Yeah, I had to fix the URL for the MER names. Sorry.

I've got a different story about the Mars Polar Lander names, now. They probably weren't transferred to the MER DVDs. It looks like the people who got their names on MPL will have to be content to be part of the wreckage.

What apparently was transferred to the MER DVDs were the names collected for the cancelled 2001 Mars Lander. Ah... that much better explains how I got on MER twice, with the dates I did. The earlier date, July 1999, was after the MPL crashed, but would have been right in line for the then-planned 2001 Lander.

Just for completeness, here's the memorial MPL names page. No searchable database:
http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/mars/

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I don't know of any missions currently collecting names. The most recent one was for Deep Impact, launching December 2004, but the window for that one closed a couple of months ago.

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Woo hoo! I'm part of the wreckage! \/ \/
(I think....)

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GhiaPet Home Page

Yes, and the pattern around the perimeter is a coded message.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.