1909 VDB LINCOLN CENT STILL GATHERING DUST ON MARS
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[From 2014 E-Sylum]
1909 VDB LINCOLN CENT STILL GATHERING DUST ON MARS
Kavan Ratnatunga submitted this update on the 1909 VDB Lincoln cent gathering dust on the planet Mars
This image of a U.S. penny on a calibration target was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars. At 14 micrometers per pixel, this is the highest-resolution image that MAHLI can acquire.
This image was obtained as part of a test on the 411th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Oct. 2, 2013), the first time the rover's robotic arm placed MAHLI close enough to a target to obtain the camera's highest-possible resolution. It shows that, during the penny's 14 months (so far) on Mars, it has accumulated Martian dust and clumps of dust, despite its vertical mounting position on the calibration target for MAHLI.
This United States penny from 1909 is part of a series of markings and objects meant to help calibrate the cameras that Curiosity is equipped with.
Before and After
For more Before/After images of the rover, see: Look at what two years on Mars did to the Curiosity Rover (www.theverge.com/2014/8/20/6046609/its-hard-out-there-for-an-interplanetary-robot)
To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
IS A 1909 VDB LINCOLN CENT GOING TO MARS? (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n07a25.html)
THE CURIOSITY'S 1909 CENT PICKS UP LAYER OF MARTIAN DUST (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n39a28.html)
from
Author: The E-Sylum
Published: 8/24/2014
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Comments
House keepers day off?
Very cool stuff. Thanks.
Interesting. I also find it interesting that we send unmanned, intelligent machines to Mars in order to study the planet... Yet few consider that some of the UFO's that have been documented, may not be similar devices sent by other life in the universe. I wonder what that cent would sell for, if brought back to Earth. No doubt it would go in a museum, but the thought is interesting. Cheers, RickO
It needs to be PCGS/CAC to maximize sales price
Pretty neat if you ask me.
Wouldn't that 'target' with the Lincoln Cent be a one of a kind collectors item !
From 2018
1909 Lincoln cent passes 2,000 days on Mars
A particular 1909 Lincoln, V.D.B. cent set a record recently, though not in terms of price or grade. The coin, in fact, is a bit dusty and shows some toning.
The coin is not rare or in perfect shape. Its achievement is that it has now spent more than 2,000 days on the planet Mars.
The 1909 Lincoln cent with designer Victor D. Brenner’s V.D.B. initials on the reverse is carried aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity as part of a scientific calibration target used for testing the rover’s high-tech hand lens.
When Curiosity was launched onto its nine-month-long journey to the planet Mars on Nov. 26, 2011, the rover carried as one of its many scientific packages a calibration target. The cent is mounted near the bottom of the target, with its obverse facing outward.
The rover landed on the surface of Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and not long after, NASA scientists and engineers began using the rover’s main camera to take a series of photographs of its surrounding and itself, including the calibration target, of which the cent is an important part.
In 1968, everything changed”Longtime authenticator explains how counterfeiters up their game in their efforts to rip off the marketplace. Also inside this issue, we provide a solution to examining those tiny dimes in your collection.
The Lincoln cent is no mere souvenir along for the ride of a lifetime. It plays a significant scientific role. The calibration target, the size of a smart phone, is used to test the performance of the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager.
According to NASA, “MAHLI’s close-up inspections of Martian rocks and soil will show details so tiny, the calibration target includes reference lines finer than a human hair.”
The target “looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny.” A calibration target is a standard tool used by geologists on Earth.
“The ‘hand lens’ in MAHLI’s name refers to field geologists’ practice of carrying a hand lens for close inspection of rocks they find. When shooting photos in the field, geologists use various calibration methods,” according to NASA.
“When a geologist takes pictures of rock outcrops she is studying, she wants an object of known scale in the photographs,” MAHLI principal investigator Kenneth Edgett, of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, told Coin World in 2012. “If it is a whole cliff face, she’ll ask a person to stand in the shot. If it is a view from a meter or so away, she might use a rock hammer. If it is a close-up, as the MAHLI can take, she might pull something small out of her pocket. Like a penny.”
Edgett added: “The penny is on the MAHLI calibration target as a tip of the hat to geologists’ informal practice of placing a coin or other object of known scale in their photographs. A more formal practice is to use an object with scale marked in millimeters, centimeters or meters. Of course, this penny can’t be moved around and placed in MAHLI images; it stays affixed to the rover.”
The coin carried aboard Curiosity is no mere pocket change, however. As coin collectors well know, the 1909 Lincoln, V.D.B. cent is one of the more popular dates in the series, issued during the first weeks of production.
Edgett purchased the cent out of his own personal funds.
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Out of this world Lincoln Cent.
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Bet Lincoln never thought he’d be on Mars.
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
That dust will cause spotting if left long enough, so maybe we need a mission to conserve and slab this example. Lack of oxygen should slow corrosion down but other factors might speed it up. Better yet would have been to include a certified one, too, to see how well slabs protect coins on Mars. We're going to need to know that before we bring our coins along.
PCGS will need a new damage code for extraterrestrial environmental damage
Despite the lack of further wear, that cent will go down in the record books as one of the most traveled coins in history.
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So if I’m an alien finding that cent, and if I can figure out that “1909” is a number. I’m wondering what the heck it means.
Maybe this is the 1909th machine that the pictured being has put on a planet?
At least Curiosity isn’t cleaning it!
The coin was purchased on ebay and had been improperly cleaned. I wonder if Martian dust will hide the hairlines.
Lance.
Looks like it hid the hairlines very well. Here is the original photo by NASA before launch to Mars along with the story of it.
We now have an additional way to retone coins.
https://jpl.nasa.gov/images/lincoln-cent-on-mars-rover
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"To Be Esteemed Be Useful" - 1792 Birch Cent --- "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." - Lily Tomlin
any predictions on how soon it will make it back to earth and how much it will sell for?
Would it be considered a parking lot find if a Martian were to pick it up?
Kennedys are my quest...
so cool!!
If it's brought back to earth, we'll need emeraldATV to make a photographic record of it for posterity.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Is it in a Martian Wawa parking lot? Peace Roy
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Curiosity's Hand Camera Images Penny on Mars | Video
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Martian toning. AT or MA?
MA
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that 09 vdb is OUT OF THIS WORLD!
Given that the Marsan atmosphere is 1/100th the density of our own, it’s surprising the dust moves around as well as it does. If you could survive in the Marsan atmosphere, you would not be able to feel a 100 mile per hour wind.
This month’s National Geographic magazine has a photo of a Marsan river bed formed when there was lot more water on the planet. It is very well preserved, and I was surprised that it is said to be over a billion years old. But then again with almost no air, it’s hard to generate a wind that would erode the surface.
so to @Ricko
Would you consider this a "Coin Star" Find?
Kennedys are my quest...
It's neat alright. There's no doubt that one day in the future it will make its' way back to Earth. By then, though. it will have lost some of its' luster, as it will be common to travel to Mars and back.
Pete
it'll be able to fend off any future commenness by always being the first extraterrestrial coin 🌌🪙🪐☄
...until maybe it's grandeur is overtaken by the first coin * minted * on another planet 🙃