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NASA's Mars Science Laboratory |OT| 2,000 Pounds of Science!

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C

Charoncaori

Member
My inner kid just danced while watching the touchdown. Seeing all those engineers jumping around made me happy. Glad I was around to witness it.

I watched it all on kurtjmac's twitch.tv account, is anyone else here a fan of his?
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
DeathNote said:
What private company has advanced a frontier in history? It's too expensive, dangerous, and risky. The government(s) have to do it.
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Private tech companies like IBM and Intel advance frontiers in AI and microprocessing all the time.

DeathNote said:
By the way, the link you posted, isn't advancing a new frontier. They are taking knowledge from NASA. They can only do it because NASA has done it. And other countries.
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That wasn't the point of my link. It's to show how not everything has to be done by NASA. The private companies are refining and making more efficient the older technologies while NASA does it's thing on new goals. That's not to say that they can't also make their own long term goals in the future. The private space age is still in its infancy.
 
C

Clevinger

Member
Rentahamster said:
Private tech companies like IBM and Intel advance frontiers in AI and microprocessing all the time.
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Uh... Computing is a huge, huge, huge market. Space exploration couldn't be smaller, plus it has a ginormous risk factor.

There are a lot of places where the private market works better than government. Space exploration isn't one of them. And I'm not talking about going to frontiers we've already been to like LEO and making it cheaper eventually - private companies can improve on that. They're just not going to advance the frontier like NASA and other national capital entities can.
 
F

Falifax

Member
.
673495main_msl_reax_4x3_946-710.jpg
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A

Aselith

Member
Clevinger said:
Uh... Computing is a huge, huge, huge market. Space exploration couldn't be smaller, plus it has a ginormous risk factor.
Click to expand...

There are huge potential rewards in space exploration. Some enterprising individuals are already involved in it and the more we are actually able to establish a presence there, the more people will want to fund it.

The problem is largely that we don't have the tech to do anything up there that's going to really reward the high risk. NASA can get all hands on deck to start working on that with the privatized space initiative hopefully.

If we get the tech to easily move resources and people from space to Earth and vice versa, you can bet your ass that funding will pick up very quickly.
 
Rentahamster

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Clevinger said:
Uh... Computing is a huge, huge, huge market. Space exploration couldn't be smaller, plus it has a ginormous risk factor.

There are a lot of places where the private market works better than government. Space exploration isn't one of them. And I'm not talking about going to frontiers we've already been to like LEO and making it cheaper eventually - private companies can improve on that. They're just not going to advance the frontier NASA and other national capital can.
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I'd say it's still premature to be so certain about that, given the youth of the private space industry, and the propensity for technology to gradually (and sometimes rapidly) advance to bring down the costs and the risks.
 
G

GroundCombo

Member
I'm the first to accept a scientist's or an engineer's word on his area of expertise, but I admit I was skeptical as hell about this crazy landing. Congratulations to NASA and everyone involved for an awesome job and the most exciting live stream in a long time.
 
S

Sirius

Member
Cannot express how nerve-racking it was sitting there with a room full of delegates, watching Mission Control live when the first signal of EDL sequence initiation arrived, 14min prior to scheduled landing - knowing that by that time Curiosity had already landed safely or crashed on Mars (14min for signal to arrive to Earth)

I recall one of the landing site specialists announce that For 7 min it was pretty much a Schrödinger's Rover situation, both dead and alive on the Surface of Mars until further confirmation.

Wow. What a historic milestone.. I still have goosebumps.

EDIT:
PjotrStroganov said:
Can anyone provide the link to the raw photo gallery?
Click to expand...

Raw goodness: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/
 
R

Rokam

Member
Charoncaori said:
My inner kid just danced while watching the touchdown. Seeing all those engineers jumping around made me happy. Glad I was around to witness it.

I watched it all on kurtjmac's twitch.tv account, is anyone else here a fan of his?
Click to expand...

Yup watched his stream tonight. His hilarious conjoined rocket twins that he built before the landing was awesome.
 
S

Sirius

Member
tLJNR.jpg


Jet Propulsion Laboratory said:
PASADENA, Calif. - About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA's Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home, Gale Crater. Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., received the image, taken by one of the vehicle's lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras - or Hazcams.

The black-and-white, 512 by 512 pixel image, taken by Curiosity's rear-left Hazcam, can be found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/msl5.html .

"Curiosity's landing site is beginning to come into focus," said John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In the image, we are looking to the northwest. What you see on the horizon is the rim of Gale Crater. In the foreground, you can see a gravel field. The question is, where does this gravel come from? It is the first of what will be many scientific questions to come from our new home on Mars."

While the image is twice as big in pixel size as the first images beamed down from the rover, they are only half the size of full-resolution Hazcam images. During future mission operations, these images will be used by the mission's navigators and rover drivers to help plan the vehicle's next drive. Other cameras aboard Curiosity, with color capability and much higher resolution, are expected to be sent back to Earth over the next several days.
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Beautiful.
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
Amir0x said:
so much relief...
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Yeah it kinda like when you desperately need to both shit and pee, like its turtling out and your bladder has stabbing pains and little drops are starting to come out and you jump on the toilet and start shitting and farting and pissing all at once in some glorious moment of rapture.

What?
 
S

Seep

Member
Awesome I got up at 6am to watch this, well done to everyone involved.

I have a question, can the two mast cams record in 3-D?.
 
H

Horse Detective

Why the long case?
Log4Girlz said:
Yeah it kinda like when you desperately need to both shit and pee, like its turtling out and your bladder has stabbing pains and little drops are starting to come out and you jump on the toilet and start shitting and farting and pissing all at once in some glorious moment of rapture.

What?
Click to expand...

You already have a god damn tag.
 
M

maquiladora

Member
Seep said:
Awesome I got up at 6am to watch this, well done to everyone involved.

I have a question, can the two mast cams record in 3-D?.
Click to expand...

Curiosity landed successfully on Mars today (Aug 6, 2012) so its two FFL Mastcams cameras will be able to shot Mars pictures in stereoscopic 3D. The two cameras have different characteristics, a not-so-ideal configuration, but NASA software will compensate in postproduction
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http://www.stereoscopynews.com/hotn...-big-day-for-the-farthest-away-3d-camera.html
 
M

MNC

Member
Smiles and Cries said:
It was taken by a color camera but everything on mars is black and white /Calvin's Dad
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Good 'un :)


Man, I wasn't really following it. But then it hit me. We fucking put something on Mars and have direct contact with it. Think about it. It's somewhere in space, on a different planet than ours. The thought gave me goosebumps. So awesome. So mysterious.
 
D

derFeef

Member
MNC said:
Good 'un :)


Man, I wasn't really following it. But then it hit me. We fucking put something on Mars and have direct contact with it. Think about it. It's somewhere in space, on a different planet than ours. The thought gave me goosebumps. So awesome. So mysterious.
Click to expand...

Aaand that also happened like 10 years ago.
 
R

Razek

Banned
So it landed and everything was okay? Sounds great.

Images sure are something.

Probably the best news to wake up too.
 
T

Tea and Toast

Member
This was the first rover to make me realise how big the rovers are. From being a child, I always imagined them the size of a remote controlled car for some reason. Idiot.
 
D

derFeef

Member
Tea and Toast said:
This was the first rover to make me realise how big the rovers are. From being a child, I always imagined them the size of a remote controlled car for some reason. Idiot.
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That's because they were/are really small :)
First rover is still trucking and sending pics, so good.
 
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