Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Touches Down

The ~$2.5 Billion Science Laboratory has safely landed on mars.

The stream has been rumored to have been watched by 10 Million+ users around the world.


https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232348380431544320
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/aug/06/curiosity-rover-mars-landing-live-blog

 

Just think, with all the wars we've been fighting, we could have funded around 1,000 of these missions instead. 1,000!!

 

Or by just reducing military funding.

 

At least you're not one of those people saying "Just think, with all the useless exploration we've been doing, we could have cured world hunger instead" which is how I thought that sentence was going to go after the first two words

This makes the Aerospace Engineer in me very happy, it's a great achievement.

 

I'm not sure how this thread hasn't blown up yet. This is extremely important for the scientific community. I can't wait to find out all the things the rover sends back to Earth. It's definitely exciting. The prospect of life on another planet is astounding.

 

I've come across the discovery that the amount of intelligent discourse on the LPA is negligible. I go elsewhere to discuss serious endeavors. Like Columbia.

Puns. Joe

 

The biggest astro development in years and all people are talking about at work is reality TV nonsense.

 

Yeah, well, to Atlantis with your Saturn V... Apollo... Creed... Scott Stapp...

I started playing Word Association with myself.

 

A pretty good shot from one of the Laboratory's Hazard Cams.

 

They can find a whole ship of Transformers and a whole civilization of monkeys that we will never find out anything, so ...

 

About that picture I posted, it is not indicative of the best quality that Curiosity can produce. It can take much more high-def pictures but it should be a while before the are received here on earth. Also, the thing is the size of a small car, wow!

 

Here's another one. I also heard it can produce HD pics. I'm not sure when we will get those.

 

I think it takes a week for the HD pics to be transmitted from Mars to Earth. I forget where I read that though.

And a reddit user tried his hand at colouring the first photo I posted. Click here to see it.

Finally footage of its descent! http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ocialmedia&utm_campaign=wiredscienceclickthru

We'll probably have this same stop-motion in 1600x1200 at some point.

Also to think that in less than 30 years humans could land on Mars.

 

It does take a while to get HD pics due to Odyssey's fly over window.

 

It's on the right.

 

It could be worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Climate

 

Curiosity is moving! The risky "brain transplant" that had occurred in the past week has been successful and today (Sol 11), Curiosity starts it's 2 year primary mission. Also to add upon the HD picture subject, it takes exactly 112 hours for Odyssey to transmit 1024px HD pictures, 12 hours for nav-o snapshots, 9 hours for medium-sized images, and up to 2 minutes for thumbnail images. Mars Odyssey is now solely dedicated to MSL and will serve as the relay until the end of the MSL mission. This will be risky, knowing that it is a very old spacecraft, and anything could happen as we've seen with Mars Global Surveyor. If the time comes when Odyssey fails, MRO will step in to serve MSL. Other than that, it seems MRO will take no part in MSL as far as I know.

Every image transmitted by Odyssey can be viewed here.

Curiosity's journey so far can be followed with "Curiosity's Journey", a brand new feature in JPL's amazing Explore Mars interactive app. It premiered alongside "Spirit's Journey", which traces the steps of in my personal opinion, the greatest interplanetary mission so far, Spirit. Brang a tear to my eye to be honest. Also if you wanna fuck around with a multi-billion dollar piece of fragile government scientific equipment, you can do so here

 

It's so cool! That's all I can say xD I want to work for NASA... Maybe not in the science part, but I could really think myself working in the humanitarian department!

 

I think they have a modeling department