How TV works

"But first of all, do you know how ordinary television works? It is very simple. At one end, where the picture is being taken, you have a large movie camera and you start photographing something. The photographs are then split up into millions of tiny pieces which are so small that you can't see them, and these little pieces are shot out into the sky by electricity. In the sky, they go whizzing around all over the place until they hit the antenna on the roof of somebody's house. Then they go flashing down the wire that leads right into the back of the television set, and in there they get jiggled and joggled around until at last every single one of those millions of tiny pieces is fitted back into its right place (just like a jigsaw puzzle), and presto!—the photograph appears on the screen..."

"That isn't exactly how it works," Mike Teavee said.

"I am a little deaf in my left ear," Mr. Wonka said. "You must forgive me if I don't hear everything that you say."

"I said, that isn't exactly how it works!" shouted Mike Teavee.

"You're a nice boy," Mr. Wonka said, "but you talk too much. Now then..."

The Busy Frontier

A good article at the Guardian on upcoming space missions.

A good blog on the Mars Rovers.

An interesting meeting at NASA Ames in early 2001, "First Landing Site Workshop for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers," (PDF), with embedded links to technical papers.