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 …
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What are they all doing?
Surely they are not all looking at the same monitoring feeds.
Is this why NASA projects are so expensive?
Or is it all part of the public relations exercise, look at the team that made it happen, and the cool apple products they use....
Re: What are they all doing?
You have to be trolling, right?
They still got it.
Congrats to all a NASA and JPL. Fantastic work!
I sat here riveted to my monitor, amazing leap in technology.
Need manned missions, we need to expand our human footprint that way if we are going to have any assurance of our continued existence in the long term sense of things.
Amazing!
So many things that might go right in that complicated landing procedure...and they did.
To place that behemoth of a rover precisely into a crater on Mars is a stunning achievement but one tinged with sadness after the team's pet cat was run over by the robot during its testing phase.
Re: Amazing!
Because you wouldn't let a cat pilot that thing without a bit of practice!
Congrats to NASA
But a question :
Why land in a crater, ie a bit of Mars that has had its geological (?) history blasted to shit by the impact of a fast-moving lump of rock?
Or is that the point?
Re: Congrats to NASA
I love the fact that I live in the world where there is a NASA..
Re: Congrats to NASA
Because what they really want to see is lots of different levels of the crust. For that you either need to take a drill big enough to make a very big hole in the surface, or find a hole someone/something else has already made for you.
Re: Congrats to NASA
I think the crater is pretty old and that it's provided enough shade for long enough that there could be some ice lying around.
Re: Congrats to NASA
I believe it's to save them the trouble of digging a big hole to get at the lower strata. That's just my guess though, maybe someone else knows better.
Re: Congrats to NASA
Read the bbc page - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19144464
they start in the crater among old rocks, then climb the mountain to see the younger/est ones
Re: Congrats to NASA
Thanks, all, for the above answers.
Consider me enlightened.
Re: Congrats to NASA
A ton of reasons! First off, the bottom of craters is where residual water would have collected before it all evaporated, so it's a good place to look for traces. And then you have your reason - an impact crater has a good chance to expose rock strata. Also, there's going to be lots of loose rock around from many different eras to zap with the frickin laser.
I believe they intend to drive out of the crater during the primary mission, and this thing will be able to cover a lot of ground.
'grats NASA!
Re: Congrats to NASA
Yes, landing in the crater was the point. If there's anything interesting left on Mars (water, evidence of prior, maybe life, whatever), it's going to be in deep holes, shadowed places, protected areas.That's where the cool stuff is going to be
Landing site
The final destination is Aeolis Mons, a five-kilometre high mountain in the middle of Gale Crater. Gale is an impact crater, but is thought to have been full of water for hundreds of millions of years. As Curiosity climbs Aeolis Mons, it should encounter layers of sediments revealing what mission leader John Grotzinger calls "the dimension of deep time" (New Scientist web site)
There's talking about something, and then there's actually doing something.
USA wins the gold. Until any other country can park a car on Mars, just shut your pieholes.
... Parking a car on Mars
Fair enough, but I note they had to lower it into the parking space. I'd like to see them park it properly with three screaming kids in the back and a control-freak spouse nagging in the passenger seat.
Re: ... Parking a car on Mars
So you haven't been following NASA's relationship with Congress then?
Pure win, anyway. Well done chaps and chapesses!
Re: ... Parking a car on Mars
>control-freak spouse
aka the 'Nagivator' :-)
Re: ... control-freak spouse
IF that control-freak spouse happens to be of the female variety, then the best thing to do is to stuff her in the trunk first, then park the fucking car.
Wonderful stuff.
Wonderful stuff. For me, it's been the most interesting landing since we took the arvo off uni to watch Armstrong take his 'one small step'. (Oh how time flies.)
Congratulations!
Congratulations to all involved! Would like to see so much more exploration like this!
Red Rover, Red Rover
Will this rover be able to dust off and repair the other two rovers?
Bahhhh
It was faked - obviously :P
More seriously, what an achievement - here's welcoming our Martian overlords!
Re: Bahhhh
The martian overlords are actually cats...which is why this baby is equipped with a nuclear powered laser death ray and suitably named.
Re: Bahhhh
"The martian overlords are actually cats."
Ah, that explains Yoko Kanno's "Cats On Mars" composition for "Cowboy Bebop," ah reckon.
This was *never* a done deal.
Biggest US Mars probe *ever* x new wheel system x new landing mode x Martian probe failure rate (not to mention the odd Nautical Miles vs metres FUBAR) = cheeks squeezed so tight only a dog will hear your bottom burps.
A hell of a lot of people worked very hard to ensure there was *no* drama today. This could have gone pear shaped right till the end. Strictly the crane *could* have turned round and dropped right on the rover, a real BOFH way to end the mission.
But it didn't.
Congratulation to everyone involved. I hope the data it collects will be every bit as spectacular as its landing.
Another indication of which hardware suppplier...
...donated a load of laptops to NASA...for product placement purposes.
Didn't just work . . .
. . . it worked really well.
The stats from the landing shows a really good soft landing - and there we were waiting for 'Oh well, that's another idea down the drain"
A landing softer than a cat arriving on the dinner table.
Re: Didn't just work . . .
And future missions should work even better.
One of the issues with Martian lander design is the *exact* atmospheric profile you design them for. On Earth the top of the atmosphere can vary 10x and I'd guess Mars is somewhat similar.
So taking atmospheric density data on the way down may help them design the *next* generation of heat shields to need somewhat less ablative thickness, depending on when they arrive at Mars.
Every Kg of ablative you don't carry to Mars -> 1Kg more of instruments (or a smaller rocket) which at these kinds of prices is pretty important.
Bloody fantastic. I doth my cap to NASA chaps and chapettes.
Drinks all round!
Doff! DOFF! Doth be that which thee doest, he doth, they do, and not an action be. Thee doff thy cap to thy lord and he doth greet thee.
Always remember, thee is the formal, thou is the familiar, and be well.
I stand corrected good sir... I doff my cap to you for pointing out the error of my dothing.... ;-)
> thee is the formal, thou is the familiar,
Errr - no. "Thee" is the accusative, "thou" is the nominative.
Vic.
Well... in most usage it amounts to basically the same thing.
> Well... in most usage it amounts to basically the same thing.
No. No, it doesn't.
The difference between "thou" and "thee" is exactly the same as the difference between "I" and "me".
It has nothing whatsoever to do with being formal...
Vic.
Yay, just heard Ian from The Reg's question
How bizarre, dropped onto the live stream of the press conference just in time.
Monday Morning
Oh how im going to suffer later today, despite setting the alarm my body woke me up to check the clock every hour since midnight, but at 6, my lads and I were up and watching the stream. We all watched as it was being built, taken off and now landing (to some degree)
We live in such a great time for technology.
Best Monday morning in years
What If
If curiosity's mission is a success and it actually finds life, what will happen if that lifeform happens to be a cat??
Re: What If
The cat will probably chase it around a bit then get bored and go to sleep.
Nice if it could get to photograph the crashed sky crane. I've no idea how far away it is though.
As I understand things, taking a look for the skycrane is one of the mission objectives.
Its a shame they had to crash the crane. I understand why it was the plan, but given they had more fuel left in it than expected it a pity they couldn't at least attempt to soft land it.
Acksherly no
The skycrane crash site will be leaking fuel and oxidiser from the rocket motor tanks and that could contaminate the instruments on Curiosity. They will be keeping the rover well away from it for that reason -- it's why they didn't simply land the rover on retro-rockets in the first place as that would have covered the payload in dust and chemical residues. There's no point other than, obviously, curiosity to go and look at some wreckage, no Science! in it, instead they're looking for pristine bits of Mars to crush and blast into teeny tiny fragments under the wheels of their fully operational nuclear-powered laser-armed supertank.
The only rational thing I can say is ...
... bravo, NASA chaps. Shame you aren't getting the coverage you deserve (at least on UK news), but it's not your fault some shitwit thought it would be a good idea to massacre those poor folks in the Sikh temple. The rest of the headlines could be pushed down the importance list though.
Re: The only rational thing I can say is ...
There ya go - the Olympics, Syrian civil war, a Mars Lander, and a random massacre. Covers quite a range of human behaviour. :-/
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