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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: LAN on Mars
From: Cliff Sojourner
Date: 2004 Jan 8, 16:34 -0800
From: Cliff Sojourner
Date: 2004 Jan 8, 16:34 -0800
Frank Reed wrote: > There's a simple "sundial" on the Spirit rover on Mars. There's > something pleasing about seeing evidence of the changing altitude of > the Sun on another planet... > > Photos at > http://jpl.nasa.gov > > And as Deimos zips by across the sky (not in the photos), imagine how > much easier navigation would have been. "Lunars" there would be the > obvious solution for finding longitude from the earliest times for a > civilization there. lunars would have developed quite early in Martian navigation because with a very small magnetic field you can't use a compass on Mars. think about it, no HF radio either. there is a neat Mars sunclock at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/applet.html - it's a java app. if you poke around the website there is also a nice discussion about Martian universal time. interesting to compare it to what we "know" here on Earth!