EMAIL: chrisj@digiquill.com NAME: Chris Jeppesen TOPIC: Ruins COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Mars Polar Lander: What REALLY happened. COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: http://www.digiquill.com/kwansys/index.html RENDERER USED: POV-Ray for Windows v3.10g TOOLS USED: Paint Shop Pro 6.01 for JPEG conversion Kwan Systems RockGen to make height fields Spring.inc by Ronald L. Parker HARDWARE USED: AMD K6 266MHz w/ 128MB RAM RENDER TIME: 2 hours 13 minutes 57 seconds IMAGE DESCRIPTION: On December 3, 1999, the Mars Polar Lander entered the atmosphere of Mars, survived the intense heat of entry, opened its parachute, locked radar on target, released the parachute, and landed safely on the surface of Mars. It was on the doorstep of the greatest discovery in the history of space exploration, the Martian Stonehenge. This ancient ruin is over four million years old. On Earth, the monument would have been eroded away long ago, but due to the extremely dry and thin air, little damage has occurred. Although often compared to Stonehenge on Earth, this ancient instrument is the last still standing in an observatory complex comparable to that built in Jaipur, India, in 1720. Later expeditions would discover the foundations of many other instruments, either blown over or buried in dust. Martian Stonehenge is a multi-point sundial, used for extremely accurate measurement of the 2-dimensional position and angular size of the sun in the sky. Stones found near the site have engraved upon them an ellipse matching the shape of Mars' orbit. Presumably Martian Stonehenge was used to chart the course and size of the sun to determine this orbit. Unfortunately the lander decided to land on the wrong side of the monument. Direct-To-Earth contact is blocked 98% of the time by the sundial towers, and due to a bug in the software controlling the relay sattelite backup link, no contact was ever established. A faint signal was measured by radio astronomers in Stanford, California on January 4, 2000, but was finally dismissed as an earthbound source when it could not be detected again. The real story of the Mars Polar Lander was not learned until the first manned expedition, sent by Kwan Astronautics in 2047. Mars Polar Lander was ruined by a ruin. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: When I started this image, I was trying to think of a failure scenario which would simultaneously look good, be renderable, and be plausible. My worry was that some discovery between the start of the contest and now would invalidate my picture, but the discovery by Stanford has actually made this more plausible, in my opinion. This scenario is fiction. I believe what actually happened is that the lander made it safely, but was turned in the wrong direction for communications with Earth. The radio relay on the Mars Global Surveyor has never been tested end-to-end, and probably is faulty. The Lander model was designed using photographs and diagrams from the official web site. It is all hand-coded CSG. The engraved rock is the font Aurabesh.ttf from www.theforce.net. Note, in the included ZIP file, there is only one rock height field. The rest are very similair, but will need to be regenerated in order to render this image. Use any old heightfield where the edge is completely black. Also, the Kwan Systems Logo is not included. Congratulations go out to the Oregon Tech Basketball Team, which on February 29 won the Cascade Collegaite Conference Championship! In a hard-fought game, the Owls of OIT prevailed over the Western Baptist Warriors, 60-50. Good luck in the National Tournament! Go Owls!