NASA Releases HiRISE Images of Curiosity's Descent

gcnaddict writes "NASA released content from the MRO HiRISE imager taken during the descent of the Curiosity Rover. Among the most notable artifacts are the images themselves as well as a diagram showing the exact location of the rover relative to NASA's target." Update: 08/07 00:15 GMT by U L : And now for a picture from the rover itself.

Too cool

[Niris]

Watched the stream last night of Mission Control, and coupled with this and the other images it has just been too cool.

Freaking incredible.

[Bitsy Boffin]

Just think about this a moment. NASA took a photo from a satellite, of a probe landing on another planet. And they got telemetry relayed about the landing from ANOTHER satellite.

And it's not just a bright pixel, you can clearly see what it is.

Stunning.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[gcnaddict]

You're not the first to think that, either. The same message was conveyed by the BadAstronomy blog [badastronomy.com] when the same such shot was released from Phoenix.

Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.

Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Firehed]

I mean that's cool and all, but I think the more significant piece is that the landing was accurate to within 2km with a journey covering nine months and somewhere roughly around 200m km. Scale that down to something we can actually comprehend, and it's using autopilot for 100km and being accurate to within 1mm. Where talking to your co-pilot takes as much as 14 minutes, with another 14 minutes to hear their response.

We've got some damn fine people working on this.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Spy Handler]

Reminds me of the story where humans send a robotic probe to another star, and after decades of traveling it finally gets there and beams back the first images. The people at mission control yawn and are hardly excited because they've all seen the images already; during the time the probe was in transit, the aliens from that star already came to earth via warp drive. And the only person in the room who was excited about the whole thing was an alien in attendance, because the aliens have warp technology but they don't have good robotics.

Well if we ever get humans orbiting and living on Mars, these images will seem about as exciting as Columbus's sketches of Bahama island. Just a thought.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Swampash]

I noticed that the White House called this "a great day for America", "a great day for this nation", etc. Repeat ad nauseam.

Would it really have killed them to say "a great day for humanity"? I don't think Americans would have minded.

As a non-American that's the sort of thing that normally makes me cringe. But you know what? Today I don't give a fuck. NASA has to beg for every cent it gets from the Federal govt and anything NASA does to justify the money it gets is fine by me today.

As a space geek I totally understand why this sort of language is getting used. It's marketing. NASA has to sell this sort of stuff to Bubba the Taxpayer. Bubba don't care about searching for life on other planets. All that science shit is for the nerds Bubba used to bully in highschool. But label it AMERICA KICKING ASS and all of a sudden Bubba does care, and you better believe he's in favor of it.

Turn the whole fucking event into an ad for NASA with a tagline of "AMERICA FUCK YEAH" and then see if either of the Presidential candidates dares go into an election promising to cut space funding. I'll grin and bear it.