Good morning, Whitewater.
We’ll have a rainy day in town with a high of sixty-six. Sunrise is 5:19 and sunset 8:25, for 15h 05m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
MIT has been designing robots, including a robot called the cheetah, for its running ability. (See, from 2014 @ FW, The Rise of the Robo-Cheetahs.) Those robots have been improved, and can now jump:
On this day in 1971, Mariner 9 leaves for Mars:
Mariner 9 (Mariner Mars ’71 / Mariner-I) was an unmanned NASA space probe that contributed greatly to the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program. Mariner 9 was launched toward Mars on May 30, 1971[1][2] from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and reached the planet on November 14 of the same year,[1][2] becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet[3] — only narrowly beating the Soviets’ Mars 2 and Mars 3, which both arrived within a month. After months of dust storms it managed to send back clear pictures of the surface.
Mariner 9 returned 7329 images over the course of its mission, which concluded in October 1972.
A schematic of Mariner 9, showing the major components and features. Via Wikipedia.
Mariner 9 view of the Noctis Labyrinthus “labyrinth” at the western end of Valles Marineris. Via Wikipedia.