Canon EOS 5D Mark II
ƒ/6.3
16 mm
1/40
3200

Seen at SpaceX headquarters this afternoon: a huge image of Mars adorns the wall to Elon and Gwynne’s offices. Keeping an eye on the prize.

A special delivery arrived in the back room – the Dragon spacecraft sits in a glass box clean room with scientists all around performing post-flight analysis. It looks like an alien craft in the secret lair of Area 51, evoking gasps from even the SpaceX executives when they first set eyes upon it. (I had a similar reaction)

Update: a short SpaceX video on the path to Mars

17 responses to “Take me to Mars”

  1. SpaceX just posted photos of this Dragon flight and a mission summary. Post-flight:


    Orbital Path:

    Flight highlights video

  2. A thing of beauty — the photo and spacecraft alike.

    BTW, if you haven’t seen this 4-min no-budget video, you might enjoy:
    http://www.petapixel.com/2010/12/15/modern-times-points-to-futur...

  3. Steve –

    You need to experience Mars in 3-D. I have several shots outside my office at NASA. Next time you have time for lunch, I can let you experience it with the 3-D glasses. I often spend my lunch with them on literally standing on the planet’s surface, or so it looks to me….

    Funny thing is it looks a lot like where we spend our summers flying rockets.

    Let me know. It is an amazing experience.

  4. A beautiful thing! Just read their email. Great summary.

  5. Imaginative video Jim….what would they have created had they had a budget? I think I was born 20 years too early. Had I been born later creating CGI would have been a wonderful career.

  6. She is. I call her g-shot. That’s her holding court in the back left of my photo.

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/14579294@N08] – yes! Sounds like a lovely stroll

    [http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124272887@N01] kids these days…. wow.

  7. yep, cool, love walking on Mars in 3-D idea also…

  8. Oh that’s nothing! We’ve got a big pic of Uranus in our guest bathroom.

  9. a thematic placement… =)

    Eppie: ground station transponders for points of contact (for data exchange, video feed, etc.)

  10. Simply amazing what Space X is accomplishing.

  11. P.S. Some passionate political rhetoric from Washington D.C.

    "The influence of the moon, of the planets – our next-door neighbors of the solar system – of the fixed stars scattered over the blue expanse in multitudes exceeding the power of human computation, and at distances of which imagination herself can form no distinct conception… but to the vigilance of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the meditations of a thinking, combining, and analyzing mind secrets are successively revealed, not only of the deepest import to the welfare of man in his earthly career, but which seem to lift him from the earth to the threshold of his eternal abode; to lead him blindfold up to the Council Chamber of Omnipotence, and there stripping the bandage from his eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of God." John Quincy Adams, 1840

  12. and from Nature today "Dragon offers ticket to Mars"

  13. right you are…. and there would be takers of a one-way ticket

  14. I’d rather do a lunar orbital fly by. Good views and a nice gravitational hook to get back home.

  15. i would go to Mars (kidding) but first we need to terra-form Mars with nanobots… free ourselves from biological prison and leave happily ever after as elves:D it means free from illness of ignorance, old age and all sorts of other sickness-corruption of seven deadly sins (greed, pride etc.)
    Create elfy society of beauty and harmony in Solar system and beyond. Is it too much to ask?? Kidding… not sure that back to Earth is in fact going home.

  16. And now we have a new addition on that wall…

    We bring you Mars

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