Hey! Some of us don't have lives and just hang on every note about the rovers! Sheesh.

Who cares what this Braindead Beckerhead Maddog thinks, it's obvious that it doesn't have a clue about Mars or dust devils except the millions on the floor of his hovel.

Maddog I would be embarrassed to have posted the response that you did, so what is the problem? There isnt enough death, murder, crimes or disasters reported to satisfy your need for a dramatic story?

I'd be embarrassed to admit that I had nothing better to do than write comments about articles that I found boring.

Perhaps we could make the story more palatable for you maddog:

Mars rover photographs a Tasmanian dust devil on Mars. Marvin seen carrying sign: Return my illudium Q-36 space modulator or face certain death earth creature.

Too funny Darthfrodo. Yes this mission is soo amazing and to have someone think it's boring is well too caught up in themselfs to see the BIG picture of things. I always loved Marvin!

Too Funny Darthfrodo. This is an incredible find. Maddog apparently you and so many other people are to busy looking within that you can't see what is right in front of you. I always loved Marvin!

Thanks for the chuckle Darthfrodo. :)

This is as dumb as it gets folks. NASA spends billions only to report on dust blowing in the wind. What a waste of valuable time and the people's money. We need to shut down these bogus programs that don't do anyone or anything any good.

Put the money to better use and give it to the people that need money.

Chunky...give the money to people who need it? Like who? Perhaps the illegals coming in across our boarders like leeches with legs? Yeah, that would be a great idea. What, are you Nancy Pelosi's cousin???

People never cease cease to amaze me. No matter how you slice it this is a picture from another world taken a mere 15 days ago. Not some terrible 1970's grainy picture of a "face". This should be enough to amaze anyone. Doesn't anyone have a sense of amazement anymore? I applaud NASA for getting six years out of a mission that was slated to last... 6 months if I remember correctly. Great work and keep the photos coming.

Gee Darth, where did you get "Palatable"? oh, from me three hours before you! You could at least have reworded it better to get it past the teacher!

Sorry maddog this is the article for intelligent people. But if you look further I'm sure you can find an artile on what Paris Hilton did today.

Maddog, why don't you flip back to the entertainment pages, where I am confident you will be on surer footing. You don't have to read these mean old stories of scientific consequence, no-sir-ee! You might be missing some photos of some starlet showing some skin, or something equally important like that. That's a good boy, go on now...

I find the fact that we have two rovers on another planet moving around and taking pictures for us to see here on earth is incredibly fascinating. Maybe you think that a photo of a dust devil is a stupid waste, but it is none-the-less the only way we can see out into the universe to another place where we can't go. You are crazy not to wonder how it is on another planet and no matter how small the detail or activity, I just think these pictures are like our eyes being there, even if the rest of ourselves can't be there yet. It's really cool! As good as the Hubble. Frankly, I find it refreshing to see images of a place beyond our earth at a time when we are in such a sorry state here. It is uplifting and takes one's mind off the turmoil of the day. It is a feat of science to create these rovers, launch them, make them land in a way that did not destroy them, and then activate and control them remotely from our planet. How can you not be amazed by that?

People like Chunky-Monkey believe that the government should hand everyone a million dollars cash. I mean, that would solve everything, right?

Until you walked into the grocery store and find out that they raised the prices on eggs to $50,000 a carton because hey, they KNOW you can afford it now...

Chris from Yucaipa

People like Chunky-Monkey believe that the government should hand everyone a million dollars cash. I mean, that would solve everything, right?

Until you walked into the grocery store and find out that they raised the prices on eggs to $50,000 a carton because hey, they KNOW you can afford it now...

I'd rather have the government to put the money into the hands of the people than in these overpaid charlatans. None of us even know if this is even true. This could be a conjured up computerized photo to fool the people; just like they claimed to have walked on the moon.

Most people believe that was a hoax as well and done in a Hollywood studio.

Nasa is losing funding and need to stir up some more stuff to try and keep a paycheck coming in.

As I mentioned to a man from Nasa that attended a college class of mine, if you can use cameras and zoom into people's homes from space, then why can't you use the cameras for looking into space and search for life, new planets etc.

He ignored my comment/question and then kept trying to sell Nasa posters and books.

To bad for him, the class students were smart enough not to buy that foolishness he was trying to hock off on to others.

$75 for a poster, and books were $40 each and up. What a scam!

We have dust storms, sand storms and tumbleweeds on Earth.

I have pictures to prove that. I'm selling them for $75 each, and you can buy a tumbleweed for $40 each.

Chunky Monkey :

Monkey suits you well... Were you drunk when writing your comments ?

You believe everything is a conspiracy, Fake Moon landing, this story... I bet you also believe 9/11 was staged... It's really sad.

I can only imagine the NASA's man reaction when you told him to use spying telescopes about 100 miles above earth to look at light years away planets. THIS IS HILARIOUS!!! OBVIOUSLY HE IGNORED YOU IDIOT! Do you even realize how stupid you are ? They really let anyone enter college...

Maybe you should eat a bit less Chunky Monkey, Chunky Monkey, and you could save up enough money to have your navel cleared of tumbleweeds.

At least you see some movement on Mars. Especially when all they've seen so far is rocks just sitting there.

It's because some people have nothing else better to do with their miserable lives so they knock stories.

Well said Chris, I'd definitely be interested to find out what kind of wind speeds those things can get up to.

I am not sure I agree. The Galileo and Cassini research have been amazing. Voyager 1 and 2 were eye openers for the great pictures they took but you can't compare that to robots probes that stay on station for years on a planet on in orbit around Jupiter and Saturn.

Galileo and Cassini are amazing, no doubts there. And the Voyager (and earlier Pioneer) probes were a bit limited by the technology of their era (early-mid 1970s'). But in terms of mere longevity, the Voyagers have proven to be remarkably robust, and are the first human objects to reach interstellar space. The designers and builders of those probes have long since retired or died, but the data keeps coming. The Voyagers should have enough juice in their nuclear batteries for another 10 years or so of observations. If that isn't bang for the buck, I don't know what is.

The very interesting thing about Spirit and Opportunity is that their longevity is coming at a time when NASA is facing the bitter reality that we simply do not have the technology to send men to Mars without unacceptable levels of exposure to radiation and muscle and bone loss, let alone to land them on Mars, sustain them there, and take off again, and return safely to Earth.

In many ways, the Spirit and Opportunity will be the harbingers of the new NASA philosophy "Faster, Better, Cheaper - Pick Two" and will be the straw that breaks the camel's back of long-duration manned spaceflight. While ex-fighter jocks are still advocating for manned spaceflight as the "only" choice, Spirit and Opportunity are proving them wrong.

The future of spaceflight for the next 50-75+ years will be semi-autonomous robotic explorers. The risk is lower, the cost lower, and the potential payback at least as high, if not higher. The only real problem standing in the way is that AI systems are not quite up to the "semi-autonomous" part yet --- and that is quite solvable.

What I would like to see happen before we let ourselves dream of space travel, is to see humans learn to live on, and take care of, our own spaceship earth. If we don't do that, then space travel for sure will never happen. After plundering all our natural resources and polluting beyond the earth's ability to recover, we will all be extinct by our own greed and lack of care. Our best hope for space travel is to give careful attention to living lightly on the earth and making peace with eachother.

I'm old enough to know that one big reason there is as much interest in our planet's ecosystem is the pictures returned by space probes and missions. I'm also sure that the money spent on space programs remains here on earth so the scientists and engineers can support their families. Let's jeep our minds open and marvel in the wonders we find.

heh, that might be a lil dull. Maybe make it weekly updates? If I remember right these things move at maybe a couple feet per minute.... so you may not even noticed much of a difference in it's location day to day :-)

Excellent sarcasm phantom voter! Yep got to give the Braindead Beckerheads some kind of Obama conspiracy before they get interested in anything science.

phantom voter--such great sarcasm, you make me laugh. You should write for The Onion. The sad truth is that Beck would probably say something like that and the Beck worshipers would really believe him!

Gee Darth, where did you get "Palatable"? oh, from me three hours before you! You could at least have reworded it better to get it past the teacher!

Oh sorry phantom, I didn't know you had domain over the word. I hadn't read the comments beyond the first couple above me. But if it makes you feel better to take credit go ahead. I hereby admit that I unknowingly used a word that someone else used once. Hope that makes your day better.

The carbon units repress the Creator.

you will become one with the borg.

I think NASA needs to teach a couple car companies a few things about build vehicles.

actually, I believe NASA was called in to help investigate the Toyota acceleration issues, due to the complexity of modern cars...

More planets have atmospheres than not. They aren't what you would call Earth like, but they are there. Mars's happens to be really thin and mostly CO2 (CO2=carbon dioxide), in case you didn't know that either.

I am going to generalize a bit but most everything we have in the modern world today is a result of and can be traced to aerospace or space exploration research. In an attempt to push aerospace and space exploration we developed computer chips, microwaves, advanced composites, super alloys, etc. Those material were needed to push the boundaries and then ended up in personal computers, cell phones, joint replacements, laproscopic surgery, advanced cancer drugs, microwave stoves, efficient combustion for gas heaters, advanced materials for clothes, etc. If a few nerds want to develop the technique to watch dust devils on Mars I am pretty confident it will directly benefit me though technology trickle down in commercial products.

Given the fact that we have terrorists studying how to kill Americans, fraud artists studying how to implement the next great scam, Hollywood types studying how to create the next trashy entertainment trend, and drug dealers studying how to penetrate customs enforcement and deliver their loads, I sleep better at night knowing that we have a few unsung nerds in some windowless room somewhere studying Mars, in real time. The paltry sums we spend on aerospace research have been some of the best-invested dollars in human history.

Joe, I'd respectfully disagree. Most of the advances come from the quest for military superiority. From there it trickles down to aerospace, then the consumer..

virtual homer, while i agree that the highest number come from military, the great ones that we use in daily life come from the space race. besides, it's a moot point as during the high-times of innovation, the space program was a military undertaking, and the space-race was the quest for military superiority.

I think the space race invention which many people use and never realize that it was the result of space exploration is the lowly "magic marker". Something so simple, so often used, and so low tech as an everyday example of how the race to get to the moon influenced our everyday lives.

maybe they should have cap and trade on mars then the C02 would be down to a reasonable level

Mars has a thin atmosphere, mostly composed of C02 and some trace gases.

No you can't fly a kyte on mars but maybe a kite on Mars. Sheesh what a maroon....

Such a dumb comment

Whoa!!!

Hey i was just watching that movie!!!!

Mission To Mars lolololol.... it was good too...

Chat

Your galaxy just called---they're missing their moron.

Let's not forget advanced weather forecasting that we use every day, saves billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of lives every year. Thanks NASA!

re, chunky ........ The problem with idiots is ........... they are to stupid to understand how stupid they are............and in that same light.... Karl Rove said it best...... " The more educated you are, the LESS likely you are to vote for my party."..... look it up. Sorry for this addition, but thought it added some thought.