Opportunity on Mars

Metal on the Plains of Mars

scouting fallen parts

some are mine and some are not

Mars – my only home

garbage strewn throughout the land

metals of the gods and man

*******

This waka was posted for The Purple Treehouse  the “assignment” was to write a WAKA, which is a form of classical Japanese verse that ends up being 5-7-5-7-7. Go to the link to find out more about it, if so it should please you.

Also posted on:

Open Link Night ~ Week 38

The picture comes from:  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110731.html

The image credit is Mars Exploration Rover at JPL

This is a very interesting picture. I am copying the explnation from the Astronomy Picture of the Day page:

Explanation: What has the Opportunity rover found on Mars? While traversing a vast empty plain in 2005 in Meridiani Planum, one of Earth’s rolling robots on Mars found a surprise when visiting the location of its own metallic heat shield discarded last year during descent. The surprise is the rock visible on the lower left, found to be made mostly of dense metals iron and nickel. The large cone-shaped object behind it — and the flank piece on the right — are parts of Opportunity’s jettisoned heat shield. Smaller shield debris is also visible. Scientists do not think that the basketball-sized metal “Heat Shield Rock” originated on Mars, but rather is likely an ancient metallic meteorite. In hindsight, finding a meteorite in a vast empty dust plain on Mars might be considered similar to Earth meteorites found on the vast empty ice plains of Antarctica. The finding raises speculations about the general abundance of rocks on Mars that have fallen there from outer space.