1000 Words

Newsweek, January, 2004

The Mars rover Spirit has eight plutonium-powered heaters, three spectrometers and a robotic arm that flexes like a human muscle as it scrapes away the planet's rocky surface. In short, it's so advanced that there's no way NASA's founders could have ever even dreamed of it. But there's a good chance they would have recognized a slightly less complex piece of technology used in the latest Mars mission--3-D glasses, the mainstays of bad 1950s monster movies. Spirit has been at work for a week, sending back some of the most detailed images of the Red Planet ever seen, including the first 3-D pictures, like the one at right. To view it properly, you'll have to head to the comic-book store for paper shades like those sported by NASA staffers (left). But you can enjoy the rest of the...

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