Somebody is wrong on the internet!
http://xkcd.com/386/

You know, the willingness of people to deride NASA-taking-the-advice-of-people-on-internet is ironically one of the main reasons that they are extremely reluctant to do so. (well, amongst other reasons) Just imagine, "$300m Rover Stuck because of Dude in England" No one's blamed it on you yet, so they must be doing a good job.

Hmmmm....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechn...b-the-moon.html

What's wrong with that article? I've seen far, far more inaccurate articles than this one. In layman's terms NASA really is going to bomb the moon. What else do you call dropping a high energy object on a target? And what is a "missile" other than a guided projectile? Seing how the Centaur stage is both a rocket stage and will be guided into a crater of interest fits that definition.

The only thing possibly incorrect is the claimed detection of oxygen at the poles. I may be wrong, but I thought only hydrogen was detected and only by inferrence that it's in water ice form do you get oxygen.

"missile that will fire a hole deep in the surface of the moon"

What kind of English is that ? Surely, even if it were a missile, it will impact the moon after being fired.
Also should it not be "into" rather than "in".

Guff

Well, it could've used some proofreading, anyhow:

"The vessel swill be the first American spacecrafts to make a lunar trip since 1999."


Oy...

Yarrrrrrrrr. Avast, moon.

*awaits a photoshop of an eyepatch on the man in the moon*

You reminded me of "Scott McCloud, Space Angel" for the first time in 44 years!! Check out the new avatar...

"Aye," says Taurus.....

-the other Doug

The next time nasa has a vehicle naming contest, let' all vote STARDUSTER!

Brian

This pales in comparison to some of the things posted here, but the press keeps repeating that the Jupiter impact observations were Hubble's first post-repair science. A brief search reveals that quite a few scientific programs have already been carried out. This is the first solar system project - http://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.p...st&id=12004

Looks quite interesting. The reason this bothers me is that this type of reporting creates legends like that of Mars-3. In popular literature, it is almost always said that Mars-2 and 3 were pre-programed and thus couldn't wait out the dust storm (while Mariner-9 could), thus running out of film. The reality is that Mars 2 had transmitter problems and sent back no images, and Mars-3 had to use 250 line mode (plus was in an awful orbit due to lack of fuel), thus limiting the usefulness of its imagery. My point is that the pre-programmed bit has been repeated so many times that many new works simply reference older works that contain the legend, despite it being totally baseless. I can see the story of Hubble's "first" post-repair science going the same way.

Here's an entertaining story by Dr. Neil Tyson on the stars as they appeared in the film the Titanic.

http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?...089&count=0

And here was me thinking Phoenix was a lander...

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/...ck_to_life.html

...and it's not just the headline, the error permeates the entire damn article!

Quite a find, Stu. The guy that wrote this is gonna get a few nastygrams for sure; the very epitome of the phrase "egregious error"!!!

My favorite:
"After landing May 25, 2008, the rover tooled around a portion of the Martian arctic for five months..."

Tooled around?!

Still not as bad as the Mars Renaissance Orbiter landing on Mars. Yeah you read that right.

I emailed the reporter and politely pointed out his mistake. The story has now been corrected.

(Still got the screengrab tho! )

He was rather testy by the time he got back to me. Said it was an innocent mistake. Yeah sure, like calling a garden shed a pickup truck.

That is absolutely appalling journalism of the lowest standard. Shocking really.

That's an excellent & most polite way of putting it, Sunspot.

What I find most astonishing is that this was essentially a local piece touting an internationally recognized gigantic technical achievement by a local manufacturer in a business journal.

No doubt at all in my mind that the reporter drew TREMENDOUS heat from a lot of big wheels pretty near & dear to his publisher...which is poetic justice, really.

Well - the Daily Mail, not my favorite newspaper - picked up on the Norway Spiral - they emailed to ask questions, get more info about it - and I don't think they did too bad a job of it really.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/...ssile-test.html

The Daily Mail actually does a pretty good job of science reporting, usually. They've covered Mars stories very well in the past.

Gonna have to take your word for it on that one, Stu

Seriously, the Mail's science writer, (Michael Hanlon, I think his name is) is always very accurate and reliable when he writres up astronomy stories, I've never had any issues with anything he's written. And his book "The Real Mars" is a great read, one of my fave Mars books actually.

Okay... so... the Phoenix Mars "rover" was bad... I will just present this for you all without any comment, apart from "Cracking headline, Gromit..."

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_ind...on-moon_1322785

Organic chemistry means life. Irrefutable.

And having an amino acid fall together or PAH's glom up after some simple precursors bump into each other is barely even organic chemistry (in my opinion).

That a "senior space scientist" would declare "the presence of large sheets of ice" on the Moon and then go on to emphasize (in addition!) the "discovery of water molecules there" is amusing.

Well these are O.K. ...
The top 10 space & astronomy related discoveries of the past decade:
http://news.discovery.com/space/top-10-spa...ies-decade.html

Then why the hell would you post this in a thread on inaccuracy in reporting?

NASA Reveals FIRST EVER Photo of LIquid On Another World

Do they mean first in the same way we discover keep discovering evidence for the presence of water on Mars in the past?

I was just searching through You Tube videos for the Rover lansings and I couldn't help but notice quite a few references to the "Mars Rover Phoenix." So I went back to Google and did a broad search for "Mars Rover Phoenix" in quotes. Over 27,000 mentions came up.

Sigh. I think I understand why this is happening, though it's no excuse. The longevity of Spirit & Oppy as well as their status as cultural icons makes the general public assume that anything we put on Mars is a rover.

That explanation definitely does not let would-be science journalists off the hook, though, esp. in the era of Google.

I watched the launch of SDO on a cable news channel this morning. The anchors seemed completely unclear on what it was they were witnessing. Here are some of the gems that I remember:

"Do you know where this rocket is going? - It's going to the Sun!"

"So, it's basically a giant rocket-camera."

"The Atlas 5 is going to take pictures of the Sun."

in response to bart

yes it is very sad .
just as sad as the "new" users over on LinuxQuestions forum
why can not even do a Google search
or try to install 10 year old software on a NEW laptop

unfortunately i do not think there is a fix for ether the journalists or MS win "clickers"

A friend of mine who should know better said it was a military payload on a Saturn V.....I think he might have been on the "red juice" the night before......He saw it launch as he lives only 12 miles away.

Take a look at the title of this page - http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Admin/reso...tml#vgrISSEDR-J
Quite interesting

Oy.

This one I can at least understand a tiny bit. The original concept mission that became Viking was called "Voyager". Of course, it's more likely a silly mistake by a tired or disinterested web developer.

It's funny that the "lander" error is being pointed out, because I think a fair amount of the SDO press called it a "probe." Reading that term might have led the talking heads mentioned earlier to think it was actually going to the Sun.

Machi,
I contacted the PDS node feedback link, and the page has been corrected. Another win for UMSF!

I wish I had a better place to post this, since it's not really 'inaccuracy' at all, but the moment I saw this I thought "what will UMSF think?", and I doubt it's worth starting a new topic just for this, so here goes, a Rube Goldberg machine made for a music video, with a sneaky MER appearance at 2:09!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Rather nice to see the rovers get a cameo in pop culture, eh?

I had just watched that video before I read your post and not noticed!

Here's the rover at 1:58 awaiting it's cameo.
Click to view attachment

Awesome :
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/...-from-Mars.html

(brought to my attention by a former colleague - I sure as hell wouldn't read The Sun's website)

Looks to me like MERA - just after Bonneville. Going to start looking with MMB

(a few short moments later )
RIGHT - It was Sol Sol 87 12:17:49

(I have been tweeting my analysis...how very 21st century)

Analysis of the Sun-Gorilla. Sol 87 was a 36m drive. Gorilla is 24m from end-location thus 11-ish- metres from Sol 76-87 site

AHh - Sol 87A drive was 36 metres, but distance covered as crow flies... only 20.5 metres (plus a 1 metre drop from rim of Bonneville)

And the Sun's Gorilla looks to me... to be this rock - http://bit.ly/dcUknh - now to check size with AlgorimancerPG tool from both sites

Geez!
Not only there is a "big foot" (and all the other animals e.g. the "speed turtle") near Home Plate but a Gorilla around Bonneville.

My appalling typography skills come together with a couple of debunking images

It's totally drinking from that aslant puddle.

Would it be remiss of me to suggest to those non-English readers that it's only about one hundred miles (as the gorilla runs) from Hartlepool, home of the Napoleonic monkey scare of the early 19th century to Grimsby?

Andy

I was thinking of coining a phrase, "drinking slanted water" to refer to those who believe such nonsense as the Sun writes. Then I Googled it and sure enough....
"DON’T DRINK SLANTED WATER".

I wonder if 'Nigel Cooper' is even real! Someone should tell him that UMSF exists.
Or maybe he already has a pseudonym here....

Heather Couper (a woman who has asteroid 3922 named after her) lives with a Nigel. Is it, perhaps, just a very slow news day at Murdoch's Sun?

Andy