Curiosity Rover on Mars

[Nola_Lifer]

360 view.

http://panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

[KoolBak]

Very cool....some day, that's an entire new planet we can colonize.....it would be very helpful.

Baron, I was referring to this article:

http://www.newsmax.com/SciTech/rocket-russia-telecom-failure/2012/08/07/id/447764

[AndyDufresne]

Some new images. All images of course are NASA/JPL.

Check 'em out!

Also, News update:

show: New update

show: Color Enhanced, from Above

show: Color, Mastcam Mega Horizon

show: Color Modified, Mount Sharp

show: Color, Wall of Gale Crater

show: Color, Rock Uncovered by Rockets

show: BW, Mastcam Shadow

--Andy

[KoolBak]

Thanks!

[heavycola]

<3<3<3<3

[zimmah]

Andy (or anyone else),

Pardon my ignorance but why black and white? How much did they spend on those things? What about an auto-focus? Or is there some reason that makes that really hard to get on mars (like costing 3B instead of 1B or whatever they spent)?

The images you've been seeing initially aren't from the main color imaging camera and video. They are primarily from 'Hazard Cams' which are more geared for simply keeping the Rover safe and evaluating where it is in the environment. Think of them kind of like the rear view and side mirrors in a car, and not the windshield which gives you a bigger and more detailed view. The main camera I think is (or will be soon) up an running, and at the point color photos with high resolution will be made available by the Rover.

Additionally, the Rover first usually sends small thumbnails (since they are small in data size and can be sent more quickly), and then slightly better resolution, and then full resolution big photos.

I'll post some more photo and video updates perhaps later today after this afternoon's news conference!


--Andy

that, and they need to airbrush out all evidence of life

[AndyDufresne]

Shhh, it's our secret!


--Andy

[zimmah]

don't worry, FBI will kill anyone who read it before their hackers delete it and all trace of it.

[thegreekdog]

Are the NASA folks convinced that the smudge from the first picture was just a smudge?

thegreekdog crosses his fingers and hopes it's more than a smudge

[BigBallinStalin]

Water Has Been Discovered on Mars

[ender516]

I hope that Curiosity can extend itself beyond its planned two year (668 sols, to be exact, or essentially one Martian solar year) mission as successfully as Spirit did (21.6 times as long as its original 90-sol plan) and Opportunity is doing (over thirty times and counting). [A Sol is a Martian solar day, which is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds in length, on average.]

[AndyDufresne]

I hope that Curiosity can extend itself beyond its planned two year (668 sols, to be exact, or essentially one Martian solar year) mission as successfully as Spirit did (21.6 times as long as its original 90-sol plan) and Opportunity is doing (over thirty times and counting). [A Sol is a Martian solar day, which is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds in length, on average.]

I hope so too! The return on investment from Spirit and Opportunity has been pretty tremendous, and it would be great to see something similar with the MSL.

========

On August 19th, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."

The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.

The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.

show: BW photo showing the readying of the Chem cam

show: BW photo of ChemCam laser test

--Andy

[Nola_Lifer]

That is actually pretty bad ass.

[AndyDufresne]

That is actually pretty bad ass.

It is a pretty intense laser. Spirit and Opportunity had to touch rock specimens to determine their composition, and could take a couple of days doing all of this.

ChemCam's laser removes the need to actually touch the rock specimen. And it can shoot the laser from a distance of up to 7m (~25 ft)! The ChemCam team expects to take approximately one dozen compositional measurements of rocks per day on average I think.


--Andy

[BigBallinStalin]

Will the Martians be compensated for the damages to their rocks?

[ender516]

Only if they present themselves in person in court.

[BigBallinStalin]

Where's Martian Marx when you need him?

[AndyDufresne]

Where's Martian Marx when you need him?

He's rooming with Marvin the Martian I think, and probably hung over.


--Andy

[thegreekdog]

Ironically (because I didn't start reading it because of the Mars mission), I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land. I was skeptical (I liked Starship Troopers, but not that much), but the book is fantastic.

[heavycola]

Ironically (because I didn't start reading it because of the Mars mission), I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land. I was skeptical (I liked Starship Troopers, but not that much), but the book is fantastic.

grokked.

[BigBallinStalin]

Ironically (because I didn't start reading it because of the Mars mission), I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land. I was skeptical (I liked Starship Troopers, but not that much), but the book is fantastic.

That's good to hear. Three pages in, it seemed too prosaic, but maybe I'll give it whirl sometime.

[thegreekdog]

Ironically (because I didn't start reading it because of the Mars mission), I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land. I was skeptical (I liked Starship Troopers, but not that much), but the book is fantastic.

That's good to hear. Three pages in, it seemed too prosaic, but maybe I'll give it whirl sometime.

I was highly skeptical a few years ago (when I went on a science fiction binge) because of the cover (which is not science fictiony at all - more like romance novel). It's good. Lots of Libertarian stuff in there too for your reading pleasure.

[AndyDufresne]

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been investigating the Martian weather around it and the soil beneath it, as its controllers prepare for the car-size vehicle's first drive on Mars.

An instrument provided by Russia is checking for water bound into minerals in the top three feet (one meter) of soil beneath the rover. It employs a technology that is used in oil prospecting on Earth, but had never before been sent to another planet.

"Curiosity has begun shooting neutrons into the ground," said Igor Mitrofanov of Space Research Institute, Moscow, principal investigator for this instrument, called the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN. "We measure the amount of hydrogen in the soil by observing how the neutrons are scattered, and hydrogen on Mars is an indicator of water."

The most likely hydrogen to be found in shallow ground of Gale Crater, near the Martian equator, is in hydrated minerals. These are minerals with water molecules, or related ions, bound into the crystalline structure of rocks. They can tenaciously retain water from a wetter past after all free water has gone.

Curiosity will soon have a different patch of ground beneath it.

show: BW Composite Photo, Self Portrait of the Curiosity Rover

Today, the six-wheeled rover wiggled its four corner wheels side to side for the first time on Mars, as a test of the steering actuators on those wheels. This was critical preparation for Curiosity's first drive on Mars.

show: BW Photo-Video GIF, Wheel Test

The rover's weather station, provided by Spain, checks air temperature, ground temperature, air pressure, wind and other variables every hour at the landing site in Gale Crater.

One of the two sets of REMS wind sensors is not providing data. "One possibility is that pebbles lofted during the landing hit the delicate circuit boards on one of the two REMS booms," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will have to be more clever about using the remaining wind sensor to get wind speed and direction."

show: Temperature Data Chart

--Andy

[thegreekdog]

I can deal with 28 degrees Farenheit.

[IcePack]

Will the title remain "lands on mars" for the whole 2 year mission, or periodically updated as new things develop?

IcePack