There are more than a dozen active robotic space missions from several countries—each with its own web site. Use Riding with Robots to easily get the latest and most interesting pictures and news from all of them.

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What are the space robots, anyway?

The golden age of space exploration has not ended. It’s happening right now. At any given moment, there are more than a dozen robotic spacecraft undertaking missions to Venus, Mars, Saturn and the uncharted worlds beyond.

Space probes have been exploring ever since the 1960s. Then, Soviet and American machines were sent on suicide missions to the moon in order to scout the way for astronaut footsteps.

Now, the space robots fly under many flags, to destinations throughout the solar system, and even beyond its borders. They are powered by nuclear reactors or arrays of solar cells, driven by ion engines or flung by gravity to speeds of fifty times the speed of sound, and to distances beyond understanding.

While their task is to cross far horizons, their ultimate purpose is to help us better understand life on Earth. For example, there is much to be learned about weather and climate by comparing Earth’s systems with those of other worlds.

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What is this site for?

One of the most amazing parts of this story is the fact that anyone with an Internet connection can see the same bizarre sights the probes see—often within a day or two—because the governments and universities that fly these ships usually make the data they collect available online. If you want to ride along, there are many active missions, each with its own web site, but you can use this site as a single portal to the very latest and most interesting images and news. Riding with Robots is updated three times a week.

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Are the pictures real?

They are as real as a picture you take with your digital camera. In other words, most of the pictures begin as signals from light sensors on board the spacecraft, translated into numbers that the ship’s computer beams back to Earth, where the numbers are reconstituted back into images (much like your own camera and computer do it). However, some of the images are not photographs, but are visual representations of radar or other kinds of data. Those kinds of images are always labeled as such.

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Why are so many of the pictures in black-and-white, or in false color?

Most of the spacecraft cameras take grayscale pictures through different kinds of filters. Scientists can build accurate color images by combining pictures taken through red, blue and green filters. Many of the images you see here are in grayscale because they come from raw image feeds that have not been processed yet. Scientists often prefer to study the black-and-white versions anyway because they clearly reveal details of shape and texture. The same goes for the false color pictures—sometimes the scientific needs of studying a certain wavelength or highlighting a certain shade trump the desire to see a natural color scene. Besides, the false-color shots often display their own beauty that borders on art.

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Why are there no stars in the pictures of outer space?

For the same reason you won’t see any stars if you go into your back yard and take a picture of the full moon. It’s nearly impossible to get the exposure levels correct for both the bright body being photographed and the relatively dim stars in the background. That said, stars do sometimes appear in photos taken by the probes when the light is right.

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How is this site constructed?

It relies on a mixture of open source and proprietary tools, running primarily on the Mac OS X and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop platforms. The toolset includes the iLife suite, Bluefish, The GIMP, Cyberduck and Novell information management products.

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What about copyright and other legal issues?

The text on this site is © 2005-2008 by Bill Dunford. It is available under a Creative Commons License, which in this case means that you are free to use and copy the text, except for commercial purposes, as long as you provide attribution. The images are taxpayer-funded public property, unless otherwise noted. Nearly all pictures are linked to their original, full-size source. “Riding with Robots” and the robot-in-cowboy-boots logo are trademarks of Bill Dunford.

The opinions expressed on these pages are the sole responsibility of its author. This site is not officially endorsed by any space agency. While every effort is made to verify information against original sources, the author provides no warranties regarding the accuracy or usefulness of this material. Downloads are provided “as-is” with no guarantees.

No personal information that is collected on this site will be sold or intentionally redistributed.

This site is dedicated to the people at NASA, ESA, JAXA and their colleagues around the world. They are modern-day Magellans who work for civil servant wages instead of plundered gold.

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Is the content from previous versions of the site still available?

Gigabytes of good stuff can be found on:

version “3.5″ (temporary site - 2008)
version 3 (2008)
version 2 (2007)
version 1 (2005-2006)

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Where can I learn more?

Visit these official sites:
JPL, ESA, JAXA
and these unofficial sites:
Unmanned Spaceflight, the Planetary Society, Universe Today, wanderingspace.

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Who makes this site?

I’m Bill Dunford. I run Riding with Robots as a hobby. It’s just fun to share these amazing sights with the thousands of people who visit the site every week from every continent on Earth.

I’m not a rocket scientist (clearly), just a veteran desktop astronaut. I’m a writer and photographer. I lead the internal communications team at software maker Novell.

I love to backpack and explore Jeep trails in the mountains and red rock deserts of Utah. I run several web sites using both Mac OS X and Linux. I support Barack Obama for president of the United States. I’m a Mormon.