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FOR SCIENCE! A Thread about Curiosity Rover and Nasa and only about the Curiosity Rover and Nasa

#1

Jay

Jay

So, Curiosity expedition lands tonight on Mars.

More details.



http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/nasatv/


Hoping it goes well.


#2

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe



#3

Gusto

Gusto

That shit is intense. Hoping it goes well too. :)


#4

Jay

Jay

Best part of the video when he goes....


... and rockets.

BAM


#5

Ross

Ross

Can't wait for this guy to land and get going... lots of discoveries are within reach if everything is successful with the landing.

A little more complicated than the 2008 landing:



#6

Jay

Jay

http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml


#7

Gusto

Gusto

This is cool. I'm finishing up season 4 of Castle waiting for my girl to come over and in the other window, Mars is gradually getting bigger and bigger on the "horizon".


#8

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

I'm tempted to stay up and watch this. If only to see if John Carter will try challenging Curiosity to a fight.

Wait, hang on...[DOUBLEPOST=1344224046][/DOUBLEPOST]http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv


#9

Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Jay said:
So, Curiosity expedition lands tonight on Mars.

More details.



http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/nasatv/


Hoping it goes well.
Click to expand...

This is the kind of crazy shit that makes me proud to be human.

Fuck yeah, science!


#10

Dave

Dave

I'm watching and waiting instead of sleeping and dreaming. Excited!


#11

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

There is a NASA TV app for OSX devices. Just grabbed it for iPad. :)


#12

Dave

Dave

TOUCHDOWN CONFIRMED!!![DOUBLEPOST=1344231537][/DOUBLEPOST]I just emailed my brother-in-law and his wife. They are both scientists at JPL. I gave them a well done and kudos.


#13

Jay

Jay

Dave said:
TOUCHDOWN CONFIRMED!!![DOUBLEPOST=1344231537][/DOUBLEPOST]I just emailed my brother-in-law and his wife. They are both scientists at JPL. I gave them a well done and kudos.
Click to expand...
What an awesome feat.

Awesome.

So proud.


#14

ZenMonkey

ZenMonkey

We watched the NASA live feed. Unbelievable. Human beings just parked a car on Mars. Faith in humanity +200.


#15

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Lartist said...


#16

Gusto

Gusto

Made my girl and I take a time out from watching Aliens to watch the landing. I was thoroughly excited, she was just happy that I was excited. :)


#17

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Um, guys...


#18

Charlie Don't Surf

Charlie Don't Surf

Yaaaay! :)


#19

Frank

Frank

ZenMonkey said:
We watched the NASA live feed. Unbelievable. Human beings just parked a car on Mars. Faith in humanity +200.
Click to expand...
Parked a car with a rocket crane. NASA is unbelievably awesome sometimes.


#20

Silent Bob

Silent Bob

Jay said:
What an awesome feat.

Awesome.

So proud.
Click to expand...

I'm really proud of this achievement too. The engineering that went into this project is just mind-boggling. THIS is what billions of dollars should be spent on; not stupid political wars.[DOUBLEPOST=1344252337][/DOUBLEPOST]
Frank said:
Parked a car with a rocket crane. NASA is unbelievably awesome sometimes.
Click to expand...

The rocket crane is just wow...

Really, it's a moment of collective genius to come up with something like that.



#21

Jay

Jay



#22

strawman

strawman

Jay said:
Click to expand...
I can land a one ton vehicle on mars using a rocket crane, but I can't land a high five.

I AM AN ENGINEER.


#23

Jay

Jay

stienman said:
I can land a one ton vehicle on mars using a rocket crane, but I can't land a high five.
Click to expand...
Bjh5A.gif


#24

Hylian

Hylian

Woo Hoo!

For the first time in what feels like ages I can actually feel some pride in being human and I have some hope for our future.


#25

GasBandit

GasBandit

Did they remember to put a spray bottle and wiper on a servo arm, so it can go clean off Spirit and Opportunity's solar cells?


#26

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Gold medal for NASA in the 563 billion meters!


#27

Jay

Jay

http://twitpic.com/ag8j1w

Eye in the Sky captures decent in parachute.


Cool beans.


#28

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

So whatever happened to the manned mission to Mars?


#29

GasBandit

GasBandit

ThatNickGuy said:
So whatever happened to the manned mission to Mars?
Click to expand...
Earthlings collectively stopped giving a shit. Especially Americans. Sad.


#30

evilmike

evilmike

ThatNickGuy said:
So whatever happened to the manned mission to Mars?
Click to expand...
It was replaced with the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter ride which was itself replaced by Stitch's Great Escape.


#31

blotsfan

blotsfan

I mean, this mission was incredibly hard for them to do and they weren't sure if it was going to work. Wouldn't that mean we're still far from being able to risk peoples' lives? Especially since (if im not mistaken) we'ver never gotten anything back from mars before.


#32

Dave

Dave

Did any of you listen to the pre-landing talks? One of the speakers talked about a MANNED Mars mission as early as 2022, with the return vehicle already on Mars converting the atmosphere into oxygen/methane propellant for fuel. Interesting stuff!


#33

tegid

tegid

blotsfan said:
I mean, this mission was incredibly hard for them to do and they weren't sure if it was going to work. Wouldn't that mean we're still far from being able to risk peoples' lives? Especially since (if im not mistaken) we'ver never gotten anything back from mars before.
Click to expand...
I'd say half the difficulty of these things is that they are remote controlled...


#34

Frank

Frank

On a 14 minute delay.


#35

strawman

strawman

blotsfan said:
I mean, this mission was incredibly hard for them to do and they weren't sure if it was going to work. Wouldn't that mean we're still far from being able to risk peoples' lives? Especially since (if im not mistaken) we'ver never gotten anything back from mars before.
Click to expand...
We can now send random 1 ton objects to a specific spot on mars with enough assurance and accuracy/precision that we could essentially send another international space station in pieces and build a habitat on the surface.

The harder problem is no longer food and oxygen - getting those things (or the equipment to generate them, at least in the case of oxygen since there's already an atmosphere) over there in one ton modules is solved.

That's not to say we have one foot over there already - we have a long way to go, but already we can drop ship anything, communicate with the dark side of the planet via satellite, image the entire planet periodically, and we've discovered enough about the planet to know that the basic materials of life and fuel are present.

A manned mission to mars is no longer a dream - it's a decision.


#36

Frank

Frank

Doing it one ton at a time would be rough. Martian dust is unforgiving.


#37

Silent Bob

Silent Bob

ThatNickGuy said:
So whatever happened to the manned mission to Mars?
Click to expand...
Well, I think it's still in the works. With this mission, we'll be fulfilling ultimately what Carl Sagan suggested be done before any manned missions commence. That is, thoroughly examine Mars for contaminants that may or may not be harmful and contagious for humans. He likened the scenario to a reverse War of the Worlds.


#38

Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

Pretty sure lack of oxygen could be harmful to humans... :troll:

In all seriousness, I've not been following this nearly as closely as I should be... the sheer amount of awesomeness that is inherent in this is just too great...

Manned mission to Mars? Sign me up, son!


#39

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

'MERIKA!


#40

Jay

Jay



#41

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Even in a moment of triumph, some lawyer manages to fuck it up for the rest of us...

NASA's Own Video of Curiosity Landing Crashes Into a DMCA Takedown


#42

strawman

strawman

Psh. We spend 2.5 billion dollars and NASA can't get HD video for us? That more than NBC paid for the Olympics and I'm sick of looking at the pores on Michael Phelps nose.

Maybe we should have NBC bid on the next mars mission.


#43

Dave

Dave

I sent a message to my brother-in-law and his wife:

Matt & Brenda,

I don't know if you have or had anything to do with Curiosity, but I damned proud of JPL and NASA tonight. Just watched the touchdown and watched as the first thumbnail images came back from the surface of Mars. I stand in awe of this accomplishment.

Well done, all of you!
Click to expand...
His reply:

Thanks Dave!

Yes, we both worked on it. Brenda was a thermal systems engineer responsible for making sure the rover launched, traveled there, landed, operates within acceptable temperature zones, etc (an enormous undertaking). She had several subsystem thermal models as well as the overall model of the rover. She also did analysis for several landing zones to help determine where Curiosity should land (including Gale crater where it did land). She was extremely involved and I'm sure I'm not listing half of what she did.

I worked on one of the ten science instruments called tunable laser spectrometer (TLS) as a mechanical design engineer. The suite of instruments is called SAM which stands for Sample Analysis at Mars. TLS is used to detect methane, carbon dioxide, and water (i.e. evidence of life). I designed, analyzed, fabricated, and oversaw the assembly of several key components as well as the final alignment. As with many of the instruments on board Curiosity in SAM, TLS has the honor of being the highest precision instrument of its kind ever sent to another planet.

As you can tell, we're both excited that the landing went very well. All initial assessments of the rover and instrumentation indicate everything is alive and well. The landing was "soft" per specification relative to the rocket blast to get it into Earth's orbit and send it on its way to Mars. I can tell you that the last calibration and check out on late June showed a completely healthy set of instruments as well as the rover. So, that means everything survived being strapped to a rocket so theres no reason to believe that the landing on Mars would have caused any damage. We will know more over the next days and weeks as we begin to wake-up the rover and it's instrumentation.

That's it for now...


Matt
Click to expand...

Awesome sauce!


#44

Jay

Jay

Dave said:
I sent
Click to expand...
black on black.JPG


#45

Gusto

Gusto

wat


#46

ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Jay, that joke was like sex on my prom night.

I don't get it.


#47

GasBandit

GasBandit

stienman said:
Psh. We spend 2.5 billion dollars and NASA can't get HD video for us? That more than NBC paid for the Olympics and I'm sick of looking at the pores on Michael Phelps nose.

Maybe we should have NBC bid on the next mars mission.
Click to expand...
Reference the funny pictures thread. NASA = 14 minute delay from mars. NBC = 8 hour delay from London. You'd never SEE the pictures from mars till we were already living there.


#48

Dave

Dave

I cut & pasted from my email, which comes in as unreadable on a dark style.[DOUBLEPOST=1344348655][/DOUBLEPOST]But I fixed it just now.


#49

Jay

Jay



#50

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Damn, we are some littering bastards...


#51

Gusto

Gusto

There Goes The Neighbourhood.


#52

Jay

Jay



#53

strawman

strawman

When I get my 3d printer assembled I'm building my own mars rover:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27908



#54

Jay

Jay



Close Up High Res of Heat Shield After Separation– Aug. 8–2:25PM CST


#55

Cheesy1

Cheesy1



#56

MindDetective

MindDetective

Had to look that guy up. Kinda cool but also a little...I don't know...


#57

Cheesy1

Cheesy1

I just know him as that Mars guy with the freaky hair.


#58

Frank

Frank

sixpackshaker said:
To the people that came up with the original slogan/bumper-sticker. "JESUS IS MY CO-PILOT"

That is quite some company to put that guy with.
Click to expand...
Unlike Jesus, Bobak actually is a copilot?

Eh, said better above.


#59

Jay

Jay

Amazing site for the curious : http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/interactives/edlcuriosity/index-2.html

Panoramic View :

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16029.jpg

Click Informative if you want me to keep updating this thread with daily updates!


#60

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Cool, but maybe not daily updates.

Also when the animation is over, you can use the scroll wheel to reverse. Just in case you miss something.


#65

Dave

Dave

Removed the minor squabble over Bobak. Not that it was bad or anything, but it had the chance of going off topic in a huge flaming way. If you guys disagree with my assessment, the posts were only soft-deleted and can be put back.[DOUBLEPOST=1344637649][/DOUBLEPOST]And I think daily updates would be smashing, baby!


#66

PatrThom

PatrThom

stienman said:
A manned mission to mars is no longer a dream - it's a decision.
Click to expand...
A decision to be made by our children, not us.

Unfortunately, our children will be more concerned with paying off the national debt, student loans, getting jobs, etc...and that will delay the manned mission another twenty years or so... :(

--Patrick


#67

Jay

Jay



Obviously, the first week or two will mostly consist of test after tests and once they are comfortable they will send their explorer along to visit the planet.


#68

Jay

Jay

http://www.360pano.eu/show/?id=731

A must see for Space enthusiasts... gorgeous.


#69

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

11.jpg

Thought about posting this in the "not funny" picture thread....


#70

Necronic

Necronic

Olympics also brings in money though so its not really a fair graph.


#71

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Necronic said:
Olympics also brings in money though so its not really a fair graph.
Click to expand...
It's a simple point of money spent, not the rest of the situation.
Can you place a value on what scientific discoveries will be made through the NASA landing?


#72

Jay

Jay

Explore Mars : http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/explore/curiosity/


#73

Necronic

Necronic

Gilgamesh said:
It's a simple point of money spent, not the rest of the situation.
Can you place a value on what scientific discoveries will be made through the NASA landing?
Click to expand...
The problem is that the olympics bring in money incredibly fast. Like, within the same time frame that the money is being spent. Also the value of it is very direct and measurable. Ticket sales, licensing deals, etc. Even indirect value, like how much money a foreigner spends in country overall while going to the olympics, is pretty measurable. It's not unrealistic for the Olympic games to actually bring a monetary profit to the country hosting it. That could never be said about the Nasa mission.

The value of the NASA mission is far more ephemeral. Not that it isn't a priceless project. Just saying that the chart linked is very misleading.


#74

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

No, you read more into the chart than there was to be stated. It simply said:

We spent more on the Olympics this year than we did on the entire program to get Curiosity to Mars.

Anything more, you put into it.


#75

Necronic

Necronic

So there was no implied conclusion to that graph? It was just a set of data with no meaning?


#76

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Yep, the meaning was.

I repeat:

We spent more on this year's Olympics than we did on the entire space program to send Curiosity to Mars.


#77

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

I've heard that 1984 Los Angeles was the last Olympics to turn a profit. My guess on that, is most of the venues from 1932 survived. Also being a town the size of LA they had enough sports complexes to host the games with out all the construction.


#78

blotsfan

blotsfan

Not to mention they didn't have to take care of as many people thanks to the Soviet Boycott.


#79

Necronic

Necronic

Gilgamesh said:
Yep, the meaning was.

I repeat:

We spent more on this year's Olympics than we did on the entire space program to send Curiosity to Mars.
Click to expand...
We also spent more on the federal highway system.

sixpackshaker said:
I've heard that 1984 Los Angeles was the last Olympics to turn a profit. My guess on that, is most of the venues from 1932 survived. Also being a town the size of LA they had enough sports complexes to host the games with out all the construction.
Click to expand...
I actually just read an article on that. Apparently the Olympics were so expensive that there was only one city willing to do it: LA. And they had really major stipulations like refusing to build stadiums and severely limiting public funding.

Beijing also turned a profit on the games, if you're willing to believe them.


#80

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

The only reason I believe the LA games made money, is because a friend received a check for the volunteer work he did.


#81

Necronic

Necronic

Here's the article. Interesting read.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/are-the-olympics-profitable.html


#82

Dave

Dave

By the way, I've had a couple of reports that this was more suited to the Olympics thread than the science thread. But at the same time it is a comparison of science vs. sport so it does kinda fit. So for now I'm allowing it to stay as it shows the priorities our government has. Note I didn't say the American public, because I think we've seen that there is still great interest in the space program.


#83

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Oh no, we've gone off topic, this has never happened before!


#84

Jay

Jay

Ultra-high Res pictures are now coming in. Panoramic view being contructed : http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia16051_figure_1_raw_smaller-full.jpg

For those interested, Obama called up JPL this morning : http://www.space.com/17071-obama-calls-nasa-mars-rover-landing-team.html

Close up view of the ground... doesn't look like Mars a whole lot does it? http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00003/mcam/0003ML0000082000E1_DXXX.jpg

Every Mars Mission we've launched... or attempted to : http://nationalpostnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mars_15001.gif


#85

GasBandit

GasBandit

Dave said:
By the way, I've had a couple of reports that this was more suited to the Olympics thread than the science thread. But at the same time it is a comparison of science vs. sport so it does kinda fit. So for now I'm allowing it to stay as it shows the priorities our government has. Note I didn't say the American public, because I think we've seen that there is still great interest in the space program.
Click to expand...
People need to unclench.


#86

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

-reads title, posts different type of science news anyway-

Old news at that, but the more I read about the Kepler system the more amazed I am we think we're the only life in the Universe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/8937466/Nasa-discovers-new-Earth-Kepler-22b.html


#87

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Sometimes when I read about some of these planetary discoveries, I feel that the scientists are talking out their collective asses. Because we see a slight twinkle and wobble in a pinhole of a star, we extrapolate that the planet has water, mild temperatures and the actual size of the planet.


#88

tegid

tegid

Well, it's more like from the size of the star, the distance of the planet from the star and I guess some more things (which can be known from the twinklebobble) we extrapolate all that.


#89

Dave

Dave

tegid said:
Well, it's more like from the size of the star, the distance of the planet from the star and I guess some more things (which can be known from the twinklebobble) we extrapolate all that.
Click to expand...
I wonder if someone from the Canis Major galaxy is checking out Earth's twinklebobble. Aw yeah!


#90

Bubble181

Bubble181

sixpackshaker said:
Sometimes when I read about some of these planetary discoveries, I feel that the scientists are talking out their collective asses. Because we see a slight twinkle and wobble in a pinhole of a star, we extrapolate that the planet has water, mild temperatures and the actual size of the planet.
Click to expand...
The twinklebobble allows us to estimate/calculate what kind of mass, size and orbit a planet would need to have to cause it.
Changes in the spectrum of radiation of the star at the same time as the twinklebobble give some indication as to what elements are possibly on the planet (hence "it has water"). We can't/don't know if it's actually habitable (hence "if it has land"). "Mild temperatures" is a bit of an asspull; the average temperature is supposedly 22°C (which is about 7°C warmer than Earth, so even if it was pretty much a mirror image otherwise it'd be mostly covered in zones too hot for comfortable human life), but that doesn't say much about conditions there. It's perfectly possible that it's an ocean-covered planet, wrecked with 150+ kph winds all year long, and far too warm for us to survive.

That aside, there's some serious bad-science-I-think-it-works-that-way-cause-I-read-Wikipedia going on in the comments there. Size =/= mass =/= gravity on surface =/= gravitic force.


#91

drifter

drifter



Also, there's a lot of wicked footage from the Kaguya lunar orbiter from a couple years back. It might've been posted before, but it's new to me.



#92

Dave

Dave

Update!!!

Mars rover finds something "Earthshaking".

They won't say what it is because they want to double & triple check their measurements before announcing. Could it be...evidence of microscopic life?


#93

blotsfan

blotsfan

More like "Marsshaking"!

Seriously though, what a lame thing to do. If theres something big, report it. If not, just keep quiet until you've finished testing it.


#94

Dave

Dave

The press leaked it more than anything. JPL didn't make an announcement that they found something. The press found out & said, "So....what'd ya find?" & NASA was all like, "I ain't telling!" But in the past they have so it's probably pretty major.


#95

strawman

strawman

They'll release the findings around Christmas.

"Santa lives on Mars, Rudolph's nose was radioactive martian dust!"


#96

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

They found John Carter.


#97

Silent Bob

Silent Bob

They did this with the Mar meteorite sample too. It's bloody annoying.


#98

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

It is like the local news, "There is something that's killing you, IN YOUR KITCHEN RIGHT NOW, tune in at eleven to find out what."


#99

fade

fade

sixpackshaker said:
Sometimes when I read about some of these planetary discoveries, I feel that the scientists are talking out their collective asses. Because we see a slight twinkle and wobble in a pinhole of a star, we extrapolate that the planet has water, mild temperatures and the actual size of the planet.
Click to expand...
I see what you're saying, but you fill up your tank everyday with gas from crude oil that was discovered with nothing more than a slight variation in a sound wave. From that, I can tell you how deep, how big, how wide, (sometimes) how profitable an oil reservoir is.


#99

strawman

strawman

Curiosity celebrates it's first year on Martian soil! And it sung "Happy Birthday" to itself on mars. No word as to whether anyone was listening, or whether the RIAA has jurisdiction over Mars and if NASA paid royalties for the use of the copyrighted tune.



Curiosity, NASA's most sophisticated and complex Mars rover, touched down on the Red Planet on the morning of August 6, 2012 (August 5 if you're in Pacific Daylight Time). The $2.5 billion mission set out to explore Gale Crater, which was thought to have once hosted flowing water, and find out if that environment was once habitable.
Spoiler alert: It was.

But that's not all the rover found while traveling 1.6 kilometers across Mars' barren surface during its 12 months on the planet. Curiosity has collected 190 gigabits of data and sent back more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, NASA said. The rover has also fired more than 75,000 laser shots to help scientists analyze the composition of material, and collected samples from two rocks.

NASA scientists joke that the "warranty" on Curiosity is two years, since that was the rover's design specification, said Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. But other robotic vehicles have far outlasted their projected lifetimes. NASA landed twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004, and Opportunity is still chugging along. (Spirit stopped communicating in 2010).

Now, Curiosity is on its way to Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high structure made of layers that, scientists believe, recorded Mars' geological history.
Click to expand...
Five things we learned since this time last year:
1. We can land a 2 ton (1,814kg) car sized object on mars gently as you please. Engineers who monitored the landing were alarmed that the spacecraft landed slightly more gently than expected, and after a year of study concluded that there is a gravity anomoly in the area, and next time they will have to taken into account gravitational maps of Mars.
2. Evidence of the building blocks necessary for life as we know it exists, suggesting that Mars could have supported life at one point in its past.
3. The carpet doesn't match the drapes. While Mars is a redhead, one need only drill a little into the surface to expose its gray interior.
4. The atmosphere, currently thin and inhospitable, was about 100 times more dense than Earth's several billion years ago.
5. Instruments collected radiation info during the trip to Mars, and found even in a shielded spacecraft astronauts would be exposed to too much radiation during the trip. They are going to have to shorten the trip, or increase the shielding, probably both, before we can consider manned missions to Mars

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/tech/innovation/mars-curiosity-anniversary/index.html?hpt=hp_c4


#100

Cheesy1

Cheesy1

It's a nice, clear Martian day!


#101

evilmike

evilmike

Dave said:
The press leaked it more than anything. JPL didn't make an announcement that they found something. The press found out & said, "So....what'd ya find?" & NASA was all like, "I ain't telling!" But in the past they have so it's probably pretty major.
Click to expand...


#102

MindDetective

MindDetective



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