Mars Looks a Lot Like Las Vegas

Judging from this remarkable image of Mars via NASA's robotic explorer, named Spirit, one could be forgiven for wondering why in the world we would want to spend many billions of dollars sending astronauts there.

We could save a lot of money by sending them to the badlands outside Las Vegas. Isn't that a casino and a 7-11 in the background?

This image was taken on Spirit's "2,052nd Martian day," according to NASA, not that they're counting or anything.

"Spirit used its front hazard-avoidance camera to take this image," NASA said. "The turret of tools at the end of the rover's robotic arm is positioned with the Moessbauer spectrometer up and the rock abrasion tool extending toward the right. Spirit's right-front wheel, visible in this image, has not worked since 2006. It is the least-embedded of the rover's six wheels at the current location, called 'Troy.'"

The Spirit robot and its robot twin, "Opportunity, have been working on Mars for more than 58 months in what were originally planned as 3-month missions on Mars."

Technically, it's a stellar achievement for the robots to still be operating after all this time in Mars' punishing environment. And the data they're collected is adding immesuarbly to our understanding of the red planet. I'm just wondering what could be gained by sending people there?

Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech