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

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P

Pimpwerx

Member
Ether_Snake said:
Did you know the Russians landed on Venus and took pictures?

Venera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera



It's funny how people have no idea how much was done in a few years in the 60s/70s and so little since.

ESA landed on Saturn's moon, Titan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)
Click to expand...

When I was a kid, I was always fascinated with the other planets. Mars didn't interest me, although I did read as much as I could on the Viking missions. I was always fascinated with Venus since it's atmosphere was more active than Mars. We never learned a single thing in any of my science classes about the Venus missions, so I had to read up on it myself. It's a shame, because the high temps and crushing pressures were really fascinating. I wish we'd send a lander there ourselves. I never understood why they couldn't make one able to withstand the surface conditions since we've got deep sea vehicles that can withstand the Marianas Trench's 110MPa, whereas Venus' surface is some 9MPa.

I was also most-amazed by the Voyager missions, as they represent man's furthest reaches into the universe.

Cassinia-Huygens was also something I waited a long time to see. It's a shame they couldn't sent a rover that could last as long as Pathfinder, but I assume that might have something to do with battery power due to cloud cover. I hope it returned enough information about the atmosphere and surface conditions that maybe we can send a rover there someday that operates on the methane in the air and can last a few months or years and do some good research.

Mars is our most-sterile neighbor, and we've been able to observe its surface for a long time. I've just never been that interested in it. Manned Mars missions aren't likely to happen in my lifetime, so I selfishly want to gather as much information as we can about the rest of the solar system and galaxy before my time is up. PEACE.
 
B

Bowdz

Member
Volimar said:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b...-of-a-fully-armed-and-operational-mars-rover/

This article is best read while reading the rock's twitter feed. @N165Mars
Click to expand...

Best Curiosity article name ever?

ALIENS2.gif
 
Pollux

Pollux

Member
DrForester said:
Behind the scenes, both NASA and FKA were pretty respectful of the other. One of the lesser known stories of Apollo 11 (and it was kept secret for a few years) was that a few medals of Cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov (both of whom had died) were brought and left on the moon. Another thing NASA kept quiet was that Buzz Aldrin was given permission to take a communion kit and perform communion on the Moon. They kept that quiet a few years becasue NASA had been sued by an atheist after Apollo 8 Astronauts read from Genesis on their Christmas Eve broadcast while orbiting the Moon (Supreme Court pretty much told her to piss off, and ruled that the Astronauts were out of their jurisdiction at the time).
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Haha that's awesome.
 
S

sneakypete

Member
This whole thing got me watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos, really awesome program.

He brought to my attention the golden record aboard Voyager:

250px-The_Sounds_of_Earth_-_GPN-2000-001976.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record said:
The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Sagan and his associates assembled 116 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals (including the songs of birds and whales). To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken greetings in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.

The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction. Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, insects, plants and landscapes. Images of humanity depict a broad range of cultures. These images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day to day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of chemical composition. All measures used on the pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the universe.

The musical selection is also varied, featuring artists such as Beethoven, Guan Pinghu, Mozart, Stravinsky, Blind Willie Johnson, Chuck Berry and Kesarbai Kerkar.

After NASA had received criticism over the nudity on the Pioneer plaque (line drawings of a naked man and woman), the agency chose not to allow Sagan and his colleagues to include a photograph of a nude man and woman on the record. Instead, only a silhouette of the couple was included.

The pulsar map and hydrogen molecule diagram are shared in common with the Pioneer plaque.

The 116 images are encoded in analogue form and composed of 512 vertical lines. The remainder of the record is audio, designed to be played at 16⅔ revolutions per minute.
Click to expand...

So fucking neat!
 
S

SniperHunter

Banned
robertsan21 said:
this dude is just a troll. Look at his Eyes, moving towards the upper left corner of his as he says, Yes it is.

Lying bastard!

He just sits there on Discovery, trolling everyone that watch his crap show.
Click to expand...

Bro his show only runs on the "history channel" the channel is for lunatics anyway, so he fits in there perfectly.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
There's also the Fallen Astronaut memorial on the moon, placed in 1971



Wasn't revealed until after they had landed, and has both American and Soviet astronauts on it.

Spirit has one for Columbia on it:

640px-MER_STS-107_Memorial.JPG
 
O

Ovid

Member
FyreWulff said:
There's also the Fallen Astronaut memorial on the moon, placed in 1971

Click to expand...
Oh wow...I never heard of this. Even though we (the U.S.) and Russia were in the midst of a cold war we still honored their cosmonauts. I wonder what the Russians thought of this.
 
G

Grym

Member
In case others are still following these and don't know yet....NASA has scheduled media teleconferences this week - one today and one on Thursday, both at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT).

As always, audio will be here or here.
And visuals will be here.
 
P

Partial Gamification

Banned
SniperHunter said:
Stupid question:

can you even capture audio on mars? would it be louder than earth or quieter?
Click to expand...
I don't think that is a stupid question. Sound travels faster in water than it does in air. with less of an atmosphere, the pressure waves of the sound would travel slower (I think it is about 800 ft/sec at sea-level, on Earth). Not being a sound engineer, I'm thinking an average microphone wouldn't do a very good job but one designed for Mars would do the job. There might be electro-mechanical issues to resolve due to the extreme environment.

[edit:] Why don't I just google it?
If you could speak on Venus, you might sound like a deep-voiced Smurf — while on Mars, your voice could have the shallow ring of a higher-pitched Shrek. And if you enjoy the sound of a waterfall on Earth, wait until you hear what that tinkling would sound like on Titan. Researchers at the University of Southampton have simulated all these sounds, based on the physics of planetary atmospheres.

Sample recordings at bottom of page
 
S

SniperHunter

Banned
Partial Gamification said:
I don't think that is a stupid question. Sound travels faster in water than it does in air. with less of an atmosphere, the pressure waves of the sound would travel slower (I think it is about 800 ft/sec at sea-level, on Earth). Not being a sound engineer, I'm thinking an average microphone wouldn't do a very good job but one designed for Mars would do the job. There might be electro-mechanical issues to resolve due to the extreme environment.
Click to expand...

thanks for answering!
 
C

Chichikov

Member
SniperHunter said:
Stupid question:

can you even capture audio on mars? would it be louder than earth or quieter?
Click to expand...
Sound is change in air pressure, if there is air, there can be sound.
The question of how loud something will be on mars is more difficult to answer and really depends on how you generate that sound and how you measure it, because air pressure impact not only how sound move through the air, but how it gets into the air and how it interact with your ear/recording device as well.
 
S

ShinHayase

Member
I don't really understand.

Last week we got this awesome 360 picture we could move around and check out. On this picture you could clearly see tracks.

Now it is being testdriven for the first time?


Was the panorama a test on earth? What am I missing?
 
F

Fine Ham Abounds

Member
DrForester said:
Behind the scenes, both NASA and FKA were pretty respectful of the other. One of the lesser known stories of Apollo 11 (and it was kept secret for a few years) was that a few medals of Cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov (both of whom had died) were brought and left on the moon. Another thing NASA kept quiet was that Buzz Aldrin was given permission to take a communion kit and perform communion on the Moon. They kept that quiet a few years becasue NASA had been sued by an atheist after Apollo 8 Astronauts read from Genesis on their Christmas Eve broadcast while orbiting the Moon (Supreme Court pretty much told her to piss off, and ruled that the Astronauts were out of their jurisdiction at the time).
Click to expand...

Was funny the first time I heard about that. As an atheist, it never bothered me. To me, divorcing the astronauts from whatever their personal culture was would only divorce some portion of the fact that human beings were there.
 
K

Kyaw

Member
ShinHayase said:
I don't really understand.

Last week we got this awesome 360 picture we could move around and check out. On this picture you could clearly see tracks.

Now it is being testdriven for the first time?


Was the panorama a test on earth? What am I missing?
Click to expand...

Correct.

The panorama was before this.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
First piece of bad news?

The Verge said:
NASA has discovered that one of the rover's wind sensors was damaged during the descent. While the exact cause is unclear, the team believes that stones and other debris from the martian surface may have been tossed up during the landing, damaging the rover's wiring. The damage leaves Curiosity with just one working wind sensor. "It degrades our ability to detect wind speed and direction when the wind is blowing from a particular direction," explained NASA's Ashwin Vasavada, "but we think we can work around that."
Click to expand...

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/22/3260646/nasa-curiosity-wind-sensor-damage
 
B

Branduil

Member
Partial Gamification said:
I don't think that is a stupid question. Sound travels faster in water than it does in air. with less of an atmosphere, the pressure waves of the sound would travel slower (I think it is about 800 ft/sec at sea-level, on Earth). Not being a sound engineer, I'm thinking an average microphone wouldn't do a very good job but one designed for Mars would do the job. There might be electro-mechanical issues to resolve due to the extreme environment.

[edit:] Why don't I just google it?
If you could speak on Venus, you might sound like a deep-voiced Smurf — while on Mars, your voice could have the shallow ring of a higher-pitched Shrek. And if you enjoy the sound of a waterfall on Earth, wait until you hear what that tinkling would sound like on Titan. Researchers at the University of Southampton have simulated all these sounds, based on the physics of planetary atmospheres.

Sample recordings at bottom of page
Click to expand...

What's with this picture?

iHJjv6OQ7cj0H.jpg
 
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