Success! Curiosity Mars lander arrives precisely on schedule NASA's Curiosity Mars lander settled down on the Red Planet as scheduled, no problems, thank you ma'am, nothing to worry about ... oh, what is it? a quarter of a billion miles from here or so? Nice job, mates. A news conference is being held as we post this note, but we thought you might enjoy a few images from the live feed …
It was quite interesting to watch the people from various teams taking turns being excited with anticipation, then highly stressed and joyously relaxed again as their part of the entry/landing came and went.
The 'hippy guy' and the 'mohawk guy' two seats up from him were noted by several people, but as I said, 'if you are smart enough to work at JPL, you can do your hair any way you damn well like!"
My manager was surprised that the movie representations of the 'NASA' room were more accurate than she had ever expected.
...The 'hippy guy' and the 'mohawk guy' two seats up from him were noted by several people, but as I said, 'if you are smart enough to work at JPL, you can do your hair any way you damn well like!"
I always liked watching JPL Mission Control during the Pathfinder, MER and now the Curiosity landings, for the huge differences in appearance and "culture" between JPL Mission Control and the MSFC Mission Control in Houston. The guys in the "big room" in Houston are all clean-cut, straight-arrow-looking engineering types, and the JPL guys look like a bunch of old hippies.
#1 Before my local (Holland) news media picks up online.
#2 Really putting your alias into glory: cynical and critical where it counts.
No; even if all of that turns out to be untrue ('a billion miles after the intended place'?) (as I read it) it still doesn't matter to me because in all honesty your site description leaves little to guess. I /know/ before even reading the article you'll question whatever comes before you. Most often you're right, sometimes you're not, and sometimes you're tricked.
No one can accuse you guys for never trying. Lets not forget: "Sometimes you're not" can also easily occur due to the source changing its story (seriously meant, it honestly it happens sometimes BUT.. in "El Reg style": How is THAT for a fanboy comment?!).
I'm glad to see the skycrane idea worked - and am clearly not the only one!
I saw the BBC Horizon program last week about the mission and the sky-crane landing system. Flipping amazing stuff.
If only we could have had a video feed of that decent and landing. That would have been one awesome sight.
...If only we could have had a video feed of that decent and landing. That would have been one awesome sight.
When the Curiosity next-gen rover project was announced, my first thought was that maybe this would be the rover with the ability to capture and transmit full-motion video, even if it was only 320x240 grayscale clips. Oh, well, too bad, would've been cool. Still, this little hot rod's made of awesome, anyway.
I was never sure what kind of camera system -- if any -- the sky crane had. Pathfinder and MER, iirc, had low-res downward-pointed cameras that worked as part of the ground acquisition system for descent and landing. Some of the first images to come back from Pathfinder (and MER, if I remember) were ground-acquisition camera images looking straight down at the surface transmitted some seconds before touchdown.
I guess if Curiosity's sky crane had a system like that, we'd have gotten some really dramatic images back by now, of the newly-landed rover viewed from above as the sky crane flew off to auger itself in a safe distance away.
Speaking of which... shame, really, that the presence of spilled excess fuel at the sky crane's crash site preclude a visit by the Rover. Those would've been some really interesting images, especially for the engineers. Some of my favorite fotos from Spirit and Opportunity were the close-up shots of their crashed heatshields and backshells taken for the benefit of the engineers.
And now, I'll just finish with a song...
NASA realise the public is interested in this stuff and give what the people want. The people in the control room want to see the facts and figures, not pretty pictures, but they have a CGI parachuting probe on a big screen so the less technical public can get some visualisation of what's happening up there. The first picture was almost instantly downloaded, more for the press than the scientists I'm sure. And a substantial portion of the earth's population getting interested in science.
Contrast this with the startup of the LHC a few years ago. A room full of people staring blankly at screen full of figures. Cameramen desperately looking for something interesting to film. And now a public who can't be bothered to understand what the LHC is all about.
well, in all fairness, the LHC presents something that is a whole lot more abstract then Curiosity.
Curiosity is something the average person sitting in front of the TV can picture in their mind whereas when you tell them that at the LHC 2 beams are colliding at godknowshowmany TeV they will just stare at you blankly not knowing what the hell you're talking about.
also, what would you imagine an animation of what goes on at the LHC is going to look like ? 2 beams hitting each other and then suddenly a burst of pixels ... not very interesting to watch.
I thought they said the Rover itself used VxWorks?
OSX no doubt useful as it is a proper Unix.
(Plus it makes them look like Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. Maybe if the Rover comes across some malevolent alien tech, they can use their Macbooks to upload a virus and save the day?)
Given that this was an automated landing, those Macs wouldn't have been doing anything more than consuming a datafeed and displaying it. Something which could be done of pretty much any hardware.
It's not like they're actually going to trust the piloting job to a commercial laptop, although I wouldn't have minded having a go, I used to be good at Lander back in the 80s... Although the latency might make this version a bit more challenging.
If you have a look at one of the other Reg curiosity articles you'll notice that JPL does not appear to be partisan about their choice of software.
Quite right. On the video feed, there were quite a few recognizable Thinkpads and other laptops than just Apple kit, even at that table. So which OS is preferred by The Best and the Brightest? Whichever one is the right tool for the job at hand, no more, no less.
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