We might not be able to get there yet, but as NASA says, ‘this is the next best thing’.

From fresh rover tracks to an impact crater blasted billions of years ago, a newly completed view from the panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the ruddy terrain where the voyaging robot spent the Martian winter.

This scene, recorded from the mast-mounted color camera includes the rover’s own solar arrays and deck in the foreground, provides a sense of sitting on top of the rover and taking in the view.

Its release this week coincides with two milestones: Opportunity completing its 3,000th Martian day on July 2, and NASA continuing past 15 years of robotic presence at Mars on July 4.

The new panorama is presented in false color to emphasize differences between materials in the scene.

It was assembled from 817 component images taken between Dec. 21, 2011, and May 8, 2012, while Opportunity was stationed on an outcrop informally named ‘Greeley Haven’. on a segment of the rim of ancient Endeavour Crater.

Pancam lead scientist Jim Bell said: ‘The view provides rich geologic context for the detailed chemical and mineral work that the team did at Greeley Haven over the rover’s fifth Martian winter, as well as a spectacularly detailed view of the largest impact crater that we’ve driven to yet with either rover over the course of the mission.’

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004 for missions originally planned to last for three months.  NASA’s next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, is on course for landing on Mars next month.

Opportunity’s science team chose to call the winter campaign site Greeley Haven in tribute to Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), a team member who taught generations of planetary science students at Arizona State University.

‘Ron Greeley was a valued colleague and friend, and this scene, with its beautiful wind-blown drifts and dunes, captures much of what Ron loved about Mars,’ said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity and Spirit.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Later this year, the car-sized Curiosity Rover will land on Mars.

Unlike earlier rovers, Curiosity carries equipment to gather samples of rocks and soil, process them and distribute them to onboard test chambers inside analytical instruments.

It has a robotic arm which deploys two instruments, scoops soil, prepares and delivers samples for analytic instruments and brushes surfaces.

Its assignment is to investigate whether conditions have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life.

The goal of the mission is to assess whether the landing area has ever had or still has environmental conditions favorable to microbial life.

Curiosity will land near the foot of a layered mountain inside Gale crater, layers of this mountain contain minerals that form in water.

The portion of the crater floor where Curiosity will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments.

Curiosity will also carry the most advanced load of scientific gear ever used on Mars’ surface, a more than 10 times as massive as those of earlier Mars rovers.

Curiosity is about twice as long and five times as heavy as NASA’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003.

On July 8 this year we started the three weeks of mourning that lead up to Tisha Be’av (Ninth of Av) which commemorates the destruction of the Solomonic Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. They not only destroyed the Temple but also razed the city of Jerusalem and took thousands of its inhabitants into exile to Babylon.

This was the second time the Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem. They had already attacked it in 597 BCE but had not wreaked havoc or destruction.

They took our king Jehoyachin and the upper classes into exile and installed his uncle, Zedekiah, in the role of puppet king, and left it at that. But when, eleven years later, Zedekiah attempted to throw off the Babylonian yoke with the help of Egypt, the Babylonians got wind of the conspiracy and came back in force to inflict utter destruction, kill thousands, and take further thousands into captivity.

It looked like the end of the road for us and Jerusalem.

But who were the Babylonians? Their empire was cruel, but their people at home were civilized.

Their capital, Babylon, was one of the most beautiful in the East and their rituals were interesting. The center of the city was the multi-towered processional way that led up to the Ishtar Gate, the finely tiled and highly colored monumental arch, now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

At the annual New Year ceremony, the local gods were paraded along the processional way and the festival of 10 days commenced with a private ritual near the gate.

Here the statue of Marduk, god of the city, confronted the Emperor, and the High Priest slapped the Emperor’s face and pulled his ears until he cried, confessed his sins and pleaded for mercy. It was only then that the High Priest, representing Marduk, gave the Emperor the right to carry on his rule for another year.

SO MUCH is clear from the early Akitu (New Year ceremony) cuneiform tablets and shows that each year the all-powerful Emperor was subjected to ritual humiliation, and made to show repentance, before he was allowed to continue his rule, and before the agricultural year could safely begin.

The ceremony took place also near to the famous ziggurat, called Etemenanki, meaning “foundation of heaven and earth,” a pretty exact specification of the Tower of Babel described in Genesis 11:4.

The tower was built with a casing of valuable burnt brick, which has subsequently been robbed over the centuries, and the resulting mass of the internal unburnt brick now remains on site as a heap of mud set in a pool of stagnant water.

Much of the rest of the city lies hidden south of the suburbs of Baghdad, in spite of Saddam Hussein having taken pains to have important sections rebuilt in the old style, to try and impress on visitors that the modern state formed a continuity with the splendors of the ancient empire.

The New Year renewal ceremonial was conducted over the first 10 days of the year, that started in Nisannu, equivalent to our first month of spring, Nisan. All the names of our other months follow the Babylonian titles, and our square Hebrew script was altered during the Exile from the previous ancient ideographic Paleo-Hebrew to the modern square script, under the influence of the shapes of the Babylonian and Akkadian cuneiform.

Similarly our yearly calculations, incorporating a leap month three times in 19 years, are derived from a form of the Babylonian Metonic cycle which corrects the lunar calendar to bring it into line with the reality of the solar system.. Even the 10 days of the Babylonian New Year ceremony are reflected in our 10 days of repentance that fall at the beginning of the year from Rosh Hashana (New Year) to the Atonement Fast of Yom Kippur.

In this connection we see that our four traditional fasts, besides the Day of Atonement and the Fast of Esther, are all connected with the Babylonians, three relating to their destruction of Jerusalem and the fourth, the Fast of Gedaliah, commemorating the day that our royalists murdered the Babylonian- appointed governor Gedaliah, when the people were expecting such terrible retaliation from the Babylonians that many fled to Egypt carrying the prophet Jeremiah with them.

When Zedekiah rebelled, Jeremiah had foreseen the terrible destruction that was to come and he had warned our people that the only way to avoid it was to submit to the foreign yoke, but he was ignored and vilified for his unpatriotic prophecies. When he saw that Exile was inevitable, he advised the people to settle in the foreign land, build houses and take wives, and live in peace with their surroundings (Jer. 29:5-7) and in a way that is what happened. The people carried on their lives, and it looks as if the Priests and Levites even continued with their religious duties.

Traditional commentators claim that the synagogue was founded during the Exile, but there is no evidence for that (in fact synagogues first appear in Egypt in the third century BCE). However there is some evidence to show that there may have been a Jewish temple in Babylon. When Ezra returns to Israel, he is short of Levites for the renewed temple and he calls for them to be sent from Casiphia (Ezra 8:17), where we can presume they were officiating throughout the Exile. Casiphia today is located near to Baghdad.

If this is correct, it would explain why Joshua the High Priest was still officiating and why he is described in Zechariah 3:4 as appearing in filthy garments. It was not, as some commentators explain, because his children had married out, but because he had acted as Cohen Gadol (High Priest) at a local Jewish temple in Babylon, away from the prescribed one in Jerusalem.

ALTHOUGH BY the waters of Babylon we sat and wept, many significant things happened there.

The calendar year and months were regulated, the Hebrew script was modernized, the priestly ritual continued and many of our traditions were collected and compiled.

It was after all Ezra who, on the Return, read the Torah to the people for the first time (Neh. 8:3), and they fell down when they heard it.

It must have been Ezra who had collected the many traditions and put them in order so the people could hear them, comprehend them, and live by their rules. They had to put away their foreign ways and partners, it was hard and even life-threatening, but it welded everyone into a nation of Godfearers that had its own religious philosophy and regulations.

It was the hardship and pressure of the Exile that had achieved this, and when Zerubbabel and the High Priest Joshua led the people back in the first and second waves of the Return to Zion, it meant that we were now a unified nation, different from the Babylonians and the early Bnei Yisrael, and welded into a people that could survive for thousands of years. We were now an entity that could weather the take-over of Jerusalem by the Seleucids and survive another massive destruction of the city by the Romans, 600 years after that of the Babylonians.

We rightly mourn the terrible destructions of Jerusalem perpetrated by the Babylonians and the Romans, but the Babylonian Exile was the crucible in which our future was forged.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu urged Europe to adopt a more balanced approach to Israel during a conversation held on Monday in Jerusalem with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, according to an official who was in the meeting.

Netanyahu spoke warmly about the close ties between Israel and Europe and the need to strengthen bilateral cooperation.

But he also questioned Europe’s political positions when it comes to Israel.

National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror, who was also at the meeting, said he was concerned by the lack of balance when it came to Europe’s stance on Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza compared to its statements about vandalism against West Bank mosques, said the official.

Amidror recalled an incident in which he received a phone call from a senior European official who said that the mosque incidents were of grave concern to the EU, the same day that Palestinians fired scores of rockets at the South. But the pressing issue for Europe that day was not the rocket fire, but the mosques, he said, according to the official in the meeting. On that same day, EU ambassadors also called the Foreign Ministry about mosque vandalism.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) also spoke with Barroso about the disproportionate manner in which Israel is treated at the United Nations Human Rights Council. He took issue with Friday’s UNHRC appointment of a three-member panel to probe Israeli settlement activity, particularly in light of the violence by the Syrian government against its citizens.

He noted that Syria wants to seek UNHRC membership. He called on Europe and the United States to cut its ties with the council, as Israel did this spring.

Rivlin warned Barroso that those who believe that the settlements are a cancer have fallen prey to anti-Israel demagoguery.

“The truth is simple: When the Palestinians want peace there will be peace. Neither the settlements, nor their evacuation, constitute an obstacle to peace,” Rivlin told him.

Barroso told Rivlin that settlement activity makes life difficult for the Palestinians and does not advance peace.

During Barroso’s meeting with Netanyahu he called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume direct negotiations, which have been frozen since September 2010.

“I really think it is a good moment to restart some hope regarding the so-called Middle East peace process,” Barroso said.

His meeting with Netanyahu followed those he held Sunday in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and in Jericho with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

News that a liberal coalition headed by Mahmoud Jibril, a Western-educated politician, was reportedly in the lead in the Libyan election surprised many observers on Monday.

The expectation was that Libya would follow in the footsteps of other Arab Spring countries – like Egypt and Tunisia – and elect an Islamist government.

One person, however, who was not surprised by the turn of events, was Prof. Maurice Roumani, an expert on Libya at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

“There will be Islamists and Salafis in Libya but they will not dictate the national agenda,” Roumani told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“The country’s problems are more geographic,” referring to the strong rivalry between its two main regions Cyrenaica and Tripolitinia and the many fiercely independent tribes in between.

Roumani, who was born in Benghazi and left the country in 1960 at age 21, said the country’s “fragmentation is its source of strength against the Islamists. There, there is tribal power. A society of tribes.”

“First of all Islam in Libya in general is not a homogeneous group,” he said. “The idea that Islamists are going to take over in Libya is not correct.”

Having said that, the political scientist said religion will continue to have an important place in Libya’s Muslimmajority society. To expect anything else, he said, would be folly.

“Islam is the backbone of Arab civilization and we must accept it whether it’s in Libya, Tunisia or Egypt, otherwise we are knocking our heads against the wall,” he said. “In Israel is Judaism not part of its politics?” He said the Mediterranean country is now entering a crucial time. How it deals with some key issues will help shape its future.

“First we have to look whether we will have a federal state or united Libya,” he said. “Second, we would like to see what kind of constitution emerges. Third, we need to see if the militias will surrender their weapons and a strong army will provide security. This country had no political institutions for 40 years or more, even under King Idris,” the monarch deposed by Muammar Gaddafi when he came to power.

Those expecting Libyan Jews to be able to return to the country they were forcibly kicked out of during the late 1960s by the slain despot Gaddafi are likely to be disappointed, he said.

“I am a believer that history moves on, it does not have a reverse gear,” he said.

“You cannot reestablish a Jewish community there after migration and the conflict.”

Even compensation of some Libyan Jews, who were forced to leave vast material assets behind when they were sent into exile, may remain stalled in the foreseeable future, despite intensive lobbying by Jewish groups and the State Department.

“Libya is not going to take a step much different than Middle-Eastern Arab governments, especially when the Israeli-Arab conflict was not resolved,” he said. “If I were a Libyan Muslim I would expect it to be the part of the final settlement, otherwise it might turn into a pariah state.”

On a personal note, Roumani said he would like to visit the country he left 52 years ago and has never been back to – but only as a tourist, not a returning resident.

“Do I feel like going to see where I was born and did my bar mitzva? Yes,” he said. “I would be interested to see if some of my former friends, who were Greeks, Maltese, Italians and Muslims, are still there.”