Opportunity roving on Mars, sends home photos
PASADENA, CALIF.
Feb 1 (Reuters) The NASA Rover Opportunity made tracks across the vast gray plain where it landed on Mars, driving down the front ramp of its landing pad until its three pairs of wheels touched the planet's surface.
The Rover then aimed its onboard cameras for a last look back at the spacecraft that cushioned its crash landing on the Meridiani Planum near the planet's equator seven days ago.
Opportunity's 3-Metrejaunt at 12:30 a.m.
local time (0900 hrs IST) marks the first time that two mobile robots have simultaneously explored another planet.
Opportunity's twin, spirit, landed on the other side of Mars on January 3 and began exploring the massive Gusev Crater for signs of ancient water 12 days later.
A crowd of engineers and scientists some fresh off 12-hour shifts piloting spirit whooped and clapped as the images confirming opportunity's successful egress reached them at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena at 3:01 a.m.
local time (1131 hrs IST) via the Mars orbiter odyssey.
"We're two for two one dozen wheels on the soil," flight director Chris Lewicki announced to the packed control room.
The photos taken by the Rover's hazard and navigation cameras showed two straight, rough tracks in the powdery surface leading away from the empty lander.
"That was probably the scariest part of the drive we're going to have on Mars," mission manager James Erickson said.
The next couple of martian days, or SOLs, will be devoted to calibrating the scientific instruments on opportunity's robotic arm, which the Rover will then use to test and photograph the soil in the small crater where it landed.
Pakistan probes seven as father of bomb sacked ISLAMABAD, Feb 1 (Reuters) Pakistan's investigation into the sale of nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Libya has narrowed down to seven suspects, including top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who has been sacked as government adviser, officials said today.
Revered as the father of the country's and the Islamic world's atomic bomb, Khan's removal as adviser to the prime minister is a sensitive issue.
Pakistan developed nuclear weapons from the 1970s in response to rival India's programme.
President Pervez Musharraf, who has promised to punish anyone who leaked nuclear weapons secrets abroad, has yet to decide whether Khan and others will be put on trial.
"That decision will be taken only when the investigation is complete," Major-general Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman, told Reuters.
"If during the the investigation anyone is found out, then that person will be looked into.
No one is above the law." He said the investigation would be wound up after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which ends in Pakistan on Wednesday.
Musharraf will then address the nation.
Musharraf, a key US ally in the 'war on terror', is under pressure from the West to pursue allegations of Pakistan's role in the murky black market of nuclear secrets, which point to links between its scientists and Libya, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Details of Khan's large personal fortune and extravagant lifestyle have been reported in the local press, but many refuse to blame the 69-year-old, saying he was acting at the behest of the military which was desperate to develop an atomic bomb.
Whether the net will widen to include senior military and intelligence officials, who western diplomats say must have known about Khan's dealings abroad, remains to be seen.
Sultan said there were two retired brigadiers among the seven suspects.
Khan's house in the capital Islamabad is under 24-hour watch, and security has been beefed up since he was sacked yesterday.
"I wouldn't call it house arrest," said Sultan.
"He is an important figure and there is a probe going on and he is now one of suspects." A report in the news daily that suggested Khan's business interests stretched to Africa also questioned the role of retired General Mirza Aslam Beg, head of the army from 1988 to 1991, who is not under investigation.
It said Beg had denied two successive prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif access to the Khan research laboratories uranium enrichment plant near Islamabad.
Beg has denied any wrongdoing.
The investigation was launched more than two months ago after the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, found evidence pointing to Pakistani involvement in Iran's nuclear programme.
Designs used in Libya's nuclear weapons programme are also suspected of having come from Pakistan, and US officials have been quoted as saying satellite images showed Pakistani military aircraft in North Korea.
The Pakistani military said yesterday that no illegal proliferation had occurred since the establishment of the national command authority, which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, in February, 2000.
"The government condemns and distances itself in categorical terms from individual acts of indiscretion in the past," a statement said.
It added that Pakistan would not curtail its nuclear weapons programme as a result of the investigation.
Dead, wounded may be 200 in Arbil blast: official BAGHDAD, Feb 1 (Reuters) As many as 200 people may have been killed or wounded in twin suicide attacks today in the headquarters of Kurdish political parties in Northern Iraq, a senior official of one of the parties said.
"According to what I have been told the number of wounded and martyrs at the two headquarters may approach 200," an official of the patriotic union of Kurdistan told Reuters.
About us | Advertise | Other Publications | Subscriptions | Weather | Letters | Send Mail Disclaimer: Information is being made available at this site purely as a measure of public facilitation.
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information hosted on this website is accurate CHAIRMAN: VED BHASIN Kashmir Times Group of Publications Edited, printed and published by Prabodh Jamwal Editor-in-Chief, The Kashmir Times, Residency Road, Jammu, J&K, INDIA.
Executive Editor: Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal E-Mail: vbhasin@sancharnet.in, jmt_prabodh@sancharnet.in