I watched today's press conference and I thought that was quite a bombshell the female engineer droped on us towards the end: To paraphrase, she said that due to the ideal conditions at the landing site they would be able to travel much farther with the rover than they had planned. To me that's great news. One of the minor disappointments I had about this mission going in was their stated plan to only travel a little more than half a mile during the entire mission - or nominal portion anyway. Now, she seems to imply they may go much farther than that. Obviously the farther they go the more new things to see and discover. I'd especially like to get closer to some of those hills or mountains.

Speaking of hills or mountains, that brings up another interesting comment made today by Steve Squires (sp?) He indicated that some of the hills on the horizion might be much taller than they seem because they think there may be a gradual upward slope in that direction that may be obscuring part of the hill or mountain. So who knows, maybe there will be some exotic features on this landscape after all.

I also thought the story about the dirt with the unusual qualities was very interesting. Looks like mud or clay but it can't be.

Finally, maybe it was just me, but I noticed something unusual about this new color image unveiled today: For some reason it looked drastically better and more impressive on my computer than it did on Nasa TV. Maybe it's just my television but the color looked a little unnatural on tv, a little too much red. I had to fight some disappointment at first. Then, when I looked at it about an hour later on my nice new monitor, it looked sensational, the surface was more of a brownish looking red and the sky had more pink to it than the tv version. The 8mb image is especially impressive because the hill on the horizion out beyond sleepy hollow is much more visible and it makes for a truly inspiring image.

I think this mission is shaping up as one with the potential to be the biggest space story since the first moon landing.