Curiosity Lands On Mars 411
The Mars Science Laboratory, a.k.a. Curiosity, is now less than an hour from touchdown on Mars. It's scheduled to land at 1:31 AM EDT (0531 UTC). The landing will be monitored by the Odyssey orbiter, which will be the data relay between Curiosity and Earth. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be listening to Curiosity as well (yes — two of our probes orbiting another world will be watching a third). While Odyssey will be giving us close to real-time updates (as close as possible, given the 14-minute time delay), MRO's data will take a bit longer to be processed and evaluated. NASA is broadcasting from the JPL mission room right now. If you'd like to watch a pretty awesome graphical visualization of the mission, check out eyes.nasa.gov. If you'd like to play around with a Java app showing Mars-local times and seasons, check out Mars24. If you'd like to watch unofficial coverage, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait and a bunch of other astronomers are hosting a public Google Hangout. If you'd like to read a detailed explanation of the landing, checkout NASA's press kit (PDF), and there's also a post about what to expect when the rover starts sending pictures back to Earth, which will be about two hours after the rover lands. Good luck to everyone involved! We'll update this post when we get word on the landing.
Update: 08/06 05:33 GMT by S : Curiosity is on the ground! Everything looks nominal, and everybody at JPL is cheering. Congratulations, folks. They're continuing to receive telemetry from Odyssey, and the connection is strong. They've now received the first images back from Mars of Curiosity on the ground. A press briefing is scheduled in a little bit (2:15AM EDT, 0615 UTC), and several more throughout the day as more data comes back.
Update: 08/06 05:33 GMT by S : Curiosity is on the ground! Everything looks nominal, and everybody at JPL is cheering. Congratulations, folks. They're continuing to receive telemetry from Odyssey, and the connection is strong. They've now received the first images back from Mars of Curiosity on the ground. A press briefing is scheduled in a little bit (2:15AM EDT, 0615 UTC), and several more throughout the day as more data comes back.
Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Funny)
Richard C. Hoagland will be on describing the Martian civilization that NASA is hiding from us.
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Funny)
ARNOLD: Get your ass to Maars!
CURIOSITY: Okay Done.
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Insightful)
What ? No IBM ?? No Cray ?? o0 (Score:3)
Watching the NASA feed I was so glad to get a virtual boner from the fact there wasnt a single toy system in the room. I was so glad to see Sun, MACs and Linux systems fully represented.
No IBM ??
No Cray?
o0
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Funny)
Watching the NASA feed I was so glad to get a virtual boner from the fact there wasnt a single toy system in the room. I was so glad to see Sun, MACs and Linux systems fully represented.
Boy, I miss the old /., where you'd already have had a couple big-iron snobs with 3- or 4-digit IDs explaining that those are toy computers.
Re:Tune in to Coast to Coast AM (Score:5, Funny)
NASA saves the big iron for the important job: Payroll.
Re: (Score:3)
"Right tool for the job." NASA can't afford to let PHBs, politics, or personal preferences and bias get in the way of doing their job. Bias can't be tolerated.
Since no one platform is best suited for everything and they need to do everything in their power to tilt the odds as far as possible in their favor, you're always going to see a good mashup at NASA.
If a manger prefers X but engineering finds a 3% improvement going with Y, they go w
Streaming video (Score:5, Informative)
The best-quality streaming video of the event from JPL that I've found is over at Ustream [ustream.tv].
FYI, FWIW, HTH.
Re: (Score:2)
FYI - The NASA stream and the Ustream are from two different cameras with two different commentators
I also think the NASA stream had a slight time delay
Re:Streaming video (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of commentators, is anyone else annoyed at the NASA commentator?
They were giving the location of the landing and she cut in blabbing about something in the middle of them saying how far off their initial expected landing point was. I think they were saying it was just a couple meters which is outstanding considering the distance involved and the ability or chances to stray slightly in the process.
I mean I'm watching the NASA feed in order to hear all the details. If I cared about someone's comments, I would wait until some news agency did a write up on it. They should have shut the hell up while they were reading the results of the different stages off.
Same feeling (Score:5, Insightful)
I was just thinking how awesome it was watching NASA TV compared to NBC Olympic footage, and then she goes and pulls a Costas, pulling away just as they were reading out some cool technical details.
REALLY annoying. If I'm watching NASA TV let me in on all the technical details possible please!
Re:Streaming video (Score:4, Insightful)
A video stream of just showing the main room and the audio from it would have been great. Having her cut in during the interesting parts was seriously annoying. They should have had two streams.
Re:Streaming video (Score:5, Informative)
They did. This stream was pure comms [nasa.gov] and nothing else. I kept the annoying PR stream open in another tab but muted.
Re:Streaming video (Score:5, Interesting)
I also heard that, and it did sound like they were talking about a few meters offset but, note
- the landing was out of sight of Earth, so there was no direct Earth tracking of the landing.
- Mars Odyssey orbiter has at best a very bad Doppler tracking system, which I don't think they were even using, and
- the internal inertial guidance system is not going to be good at the meter level.
So, I would really doubt that they currently know the landing accuracy to anything like the meter level. It will take a few days to really determine where the rover is, and thus the true error. (The last I heard, they do not plan ANY range / doppler tracking from Earth, which I regard as a mistake, but it's best not to get me started on that.)
Re:Streaming video (Score:5, Informative)
If you read your own link, you will see that nobody but the Russians even tried to land, and one of
their landers (Mars 3, 1971) lasted 20 seconds after touch down (or was it a crash, nobody is quite sure).
Mars 6 transmitted data on descent, but was never heard from again.
Russian Venus missions landed and transmitted images [bbc.co.uk]s.
So, no, the US is not the only country to put a lander on another planet.
However the US is the only country to put a lander on Mars that survived more than a few seconds.
And the only country with operational experience on another planet beyond simply receiving a few hurried photos prior to
vehicle failure. It should be pointed out that Germany, France, Russia, and a couple others collaborated on the Curiosity lander.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Streaming video (Score:4, Informative)
Russia put a number of successful landers on Venus.
Re: (Score:3)
They built the first rover, PERIOD. It looked surprisingly like our modern ones.
Best place to catch up on the arrival (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out http://eyes.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
From the page:
""Eyes on the Solar System" is a 3-D environment full of real NASA mission data. Explore the cosmos from your computer. Hop on an asteroid. Fly with NASA's Voyager spacecraft. See the entire solar system moving in real time. It's up to you. You control space and time."
and
"Eyes on the Solar System lets you ride with Curiosity all the way to the surface of Gale crater. Preview the events of Entry Descent and Landing, or watch live!"
Re: (Score:2)
Check out http://eyes.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
That tool is brilliant, already watching Live. Also following a live stream with commentary at twit.tv [twit.tv].
Re:Best place to catch up on the arrival (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best place to catch up on the arrival (Score:5, Funny)
When they first put together the Mars mission in 2004, the Library of Congress was smaller than it is today.
So instead of confusing people with 2004 LoCs vs 2012 LoCs, they just went with miles.
It's what helped them land the Curiosity rover only a few meters from the original target.
Re: (Score:3)
So instead of confusing people with 2004 LoCs vs 2012 LoCs, they just went with miles.
It's what helped them land the Curiosity rover only a few meters from the original target.
The US is getting as bad as Britain for being stuck between metric and Imperial measurements!
Re: (Score:3)
FFS... (Score:5, Informative)
It's scheduled to land at 1:31 AM EST
EDT!
Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:2)
It is - the question remains whether intact or not. We're just waiting for the radio signals to arrive.
Speed of light can be soo damn slow ...
Late-Breaking News from the Council: VICTORY! (Score:5, Funny)
"Relative to whose frame of reference, blueworlder [slashdot.org]?"
The Council of Elders has confirmed the interception and destruction of the latest mechanized terror from the blue world.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thus:
When a junior combat reporter pointed out that the link between the carrier vessel and the mechanized invader may have been designed to be broken at the moment of landing, that the actual threat was the so-called "power source" and not the flying invader, and suggested that if the Martian Defense Force had just waited just a few seconds longer, the squibs holding the skyhook to the skycrane might have failed, resulting in the carrier vessel crashing down upon the invader, thereby destroying both, K'Breel had the combat reporter's gelsacs placed directly in front of the dormant invader's photonic weapons.
"If the blue-shirted denizens of the blue world seek evidence of organic matter so strongly," mused K'Breel, "then let them have their fill of it!"
(Because the Council must to draft at least two of these press releases with every new phase of the battle, the Speaker would like to thank the infiltrators at the Martian Cyberdefense Detachment (unit 216.34.181.48) for remaining as glued to the screen over the past fifteen units of time as everybeing on the Council was.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Interesting)
Kudos to the folks at NASA and JPL for a job well done. Hopefully we'll get some great science out of it.
All of this just shows what a huge mistake was made in cutting the budget for planetary science and future Mars missions. Tonight, NASA did everything that they are supposed to do. They pushed us further out into the solar system, giving us the most detailed view yet of another world. They pushed scientific boundaries, sending an entire laboratory to another planet to look for extraterrestrial life. They pushed the limits of engineering. And they showed the world what we look like at our best- an America that is innovative, pioneering, and willing to take risks.
Times are tough, but of all the things to cut from the budget, why cut planetary missions? The cuts mean that we don't have anything in the works; we've got Curiosity but we have no plans to follow up. I find myself deeply disappointed that the White House would do something so short-sighted. The thing is, what happened tonight was genuinely inspiring. I felt truly proud of what my country had done. And I tried to remember the last time I had felt like that, and then it hit me. It was when Obama was elected.
There's more than a little irony to that.
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, why not view it as stimulus money. After all, it all gets spent on Earth, and almost all in the USA.
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Funny)
Kudos to the people of the US for funding it!
While we're exchanging acknowledgements, my heartfelt gratitude goes to the EU for their efforts in compelling the world to standardize on micro-USB for cell phone power and data.
Offtopic, I know, but very much appreciated :-)
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Interesting)
Kudos to the people of US who have founded it one way or another. And certainly kudos to NASA folk who took that money and made it work.
Overall picture is not so nice, however. Here are some costs for comparison:
MSL Project (which yielded Curiosity): $2.5 billion
London Olympics 2012: $14.5 billion (public expenses for venues, security etc only, doesn't include the cost of the events themselves - that's paid by private sponsors)
A single month of war in Afghanistan (as of 2011): $6.7 billion
Total cost of the war to date: $470 billion !!!
Yup, the US alone could land two rovers per month if it stopped chasing mujis and camels in Afghanistan! But, hey, at least they land something? EU is, on the paper at least, a bigger economy. Think about what US and EU could accomplish together if they stopped squandering money on stupid things.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:4, Funny)
Since I'm from Europe I'd like to add: Kudos to the people of the US for funding it!
And a special thanks for sticking with the metric system this time.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the reasoning for that: From the point of view of the people controlling their budget, NASA's raison-d'etre is public relations for the United States. That science stuff is just a concession to all those eggheads who want to actually learn about stuff.
Re:Curiosity is on Mars! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope so too. But still, there is nothing more nauseating than American Nationalism oozing out of every statement on the mission success. It's worse than the Chinese - and that takes some doing.
Listen, America has done plenty of things that we should be ashamed of. When you're blindly supporting the country through things like unjust wars and human rights abuses, that's nationalism. But sometimes the country does something genuinely right, something true to the values of the nation. Like the guys at NASA did tonight. I think we've earned the right to take a brief break from worrying about how screwed up things are with the country economically, politically, and militarily, and feel a little pride about doing something something that's genuinely amazing. So please f*** off.
Re: (Score:3)
Here is my take on that -- for whatever reason, the Americans have put this device on Mars (and have a functioning orbiter around Saturn, and have a spacecraft headed toward Pluto, etc.). No other nation or group of nations has done it or done planetary exploration on the scale of the Americans -- specifically I am calling out the EU and Japan on this item, both of which have huge economies and the technological prowess to do it, but choose not to (though the EU might be coming around, a bit). Only the Am
Thumbs up, Soulskill & Slashdot (Score:2)
Great writeup with the links.
Let's go, Curiosity! You the Rover! :-)
TOUCHDOWN (Score:5, Informative)
Touchdown (Score:2)
Re:Futbol (Score:2)
GOOOOOALLL!
Images coming (Score:2)
Waiting...
and... (Score:2)
Orange dirt.
Close up.
Cool.
Re: (Score:2)
First image... Is that... The Death Star? (Score:4, Insightful)
Congradulation NASA! I hope they increase your funding and reduce funding for wars.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Congradulation NASA! I hope they increase your funding and reduce funding for wars.
Actually, I don't mind that we fund efforts - including military ones, if needed - to combat and push back against the most violent and dangerous aspects of a culture that would stone to death the women you saw working at JPL's flight control center tonight. You know, because Allah hates them for having learned how to read and show their hair, among other death-worthy sins.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But that isn't what has happened, is it? Iraq was a secular society under Saddam, and is now more Islamic than it was before 2003 and womens rights are under threat. Meanwhile Afghanistan is set to fall to the Taliban as soon as the US and allies leave.
If the US wants to improve the lot of women then it should fund women's education and birth control in these countries, not bomb them to shit.
Gold Medal (Score:5, Funny)
And the gold medal for the all-species 350M KM space landing goes to NASA, who scored a perfect 10 for landing on the surface of Mars!
Congratulations to NASA and the JPL. Dare Mighty Things indeed.
Fucking amazing (Score:4, Insightful)
Discovery Canada (Score:2)
suck had to watch CNN to get the landing. How sad no other station on regular cable carried the landing.
Re: (Score:3)
Kudos to Xbox live. They had a special event app to stream the event live. All the drama. Computer sims based on live telemetry. All in HD on the big screen. Pretty sweet.
Landing pic? (Score:2)
This claims to be a landing pic, but it hasn't landed yet. WTF?
https://twitter.com/NASA/status/232350219700932608/photo/1 [twitter.com]
Re: (Score:3)
That was the first low res thumbnail through the yet to be jettisoned lens caps. Have to wait for the dust to settle.
Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Huge thanks to NASA/JPL for pulling this thing off, and letting everyone be a part of it.
I was watching a live simulation of the thing full-screen on one monitor (eyes.nasa.gov), and watching/hearing commentary on Nasa TV on another. It was very thrilling.
As a geek, foremost I find myself going WOW> HOLY !!! WE JUST LANDED A WINNEBEGO [ok, it's a bit smaller than the average Winny] ON MARS!!!
But I also find myself impressed that the Ustream link I posted (above) had something like 230k viewers at peak, and despite the load it never missed a beat for me. The simulation appeared to be happening in with very low-latency, and provided spectacular imagery.
Politically, if these methods of passive involvement were more widely publicized, funding the space program would be a no-brainer for any American -- just for the excitement involved, if nothing else, of accomplishing such a difficult task.
Wish I could link to the first photos (there seem to be two of them), but they don't seem to be officially posted just yet....
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true.
In fact NASA was amazed just how much continued interest there was in the Spirit and Opportunity rovers over the years.
The hits on the web site [nasa.gov] show a huge spike every time one of these
rovers bump into an interesting rock, even if the mainstream media can't be bothered to mention it.
Nobody expects constant 24 7 news coverage of the slow journey of a rover across a barren plane. Nor do we watch
sports super stars driving to the stadium.
This idea that there has to be 24/7 engagement of drop-jawed rapture to indicate
a high level of public interest seems to be trotted out ONLY for Space explorations.
Virtually no other endeavor on earth is judged by this standard.
Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, I feel like I haven't felt in a long time. I feel proud to be an American.
Kudos to NASA, and a big "fuck you" to Congress for cutting their funding.
Finally some newsworthy news (Score:3)
With any luck, these excellent news from the science world will push back the barrage of useless "events" from the olympics marketing machine.
Steering (Score:3)
Re:Steering (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I think JPL is up to speed on that.
Mars species (Score:5, Funny)
The first encounter with alien life has not gone well. A catlike alien has been squashed and killed by Curiosity.
Woot (Score:5, Funny)
Sky crane for the win. I had images in my head of hovering Eagles from Space 1999. :-)
We are not alone (Score:5, Funny)
Primary directive (Score:5, Funny)
Message from Curiosity: Landed safely. Initiating primary directive - kill cats.
Carl Sagan would be proud! (Score:5, Insightful)
“We tend to hear much more about the splendors returned than the ships that brought them or the shipwrights. It has always been that way. Even those history books enamored of the voyages of Christopher Columbus do not tell much about the builders of the Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria or about the principle of the caravel. These spacecraft their designers builders navigators and controllers are examples of what science and engineering set free for well-defined peaceful purposes can accomplish. Those scientists and engineers should be role models for an America seeking excellence and international competitiveness. They should be on our stamps.”
Carl Sagan,
Congratulations NASA and JPL! I hope you continue to inspire us all to dare mighty things!
Re:Slashdot - Multi-Posted Articles for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
As many as it takes until we know what happens to this awesome nuclear powered rover with frikin lasers on another frikin planet!
Re:MOAR Mars Rovers FTW!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because we're still busy spending seven trillion dollars to bailout financial institutions while simultaneously pissing ourselves over the "massive" NASA budget for trivial shit like furthering the reach of all fucking human-kind.
Re:MOAR Mars Rovers FTW!!1 (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Obama said we were supposed to be working towards putting people on Mars. I get confused... I think Bush v2 said the moon.
But give it 5 years, the plan will change. We spend so much time dicking around with the $33 per person, per year, we spend on NASA... it seems crazy. I mean, we each spend thousands of dollars per year on our military. Like, work for a month or so only to donate it all to the DoD. And they spend it on a handful of multi-billion-dollar models of planes that still don't work, while sending kids out to get blown up with no armor, short-changing veterans on medical services and such... always complaining about budget constraints while nobody important ever seems to question how they spent their money. By comparison, NASA is a fantastic bargain.
Re:MOAR Mars Rovers FTW!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MOAR Mars Rovers FTW!!1 (Score:4, Insightful)
All these worlds are yours except Europa.
Attempt no landing there.
Re:Slashdot - Multi-Posted Articles for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
"News for Nerds, stuff that matters" - This qualifies as both. And we'll probably have a nonstop stream of Curiosity FPs over the next few days. Suck it up or find another site, because as much as I hate to sound exclusionary, it sounds like you jus' don't belong here.
Re:Slashdot - Multi-Posted Articles for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how many "Curiosity is About To Land" articles do we need today?
You might want to turn in your nerd badge and remove slashdot from your bookmarks. Try www.disney.com instead.
Re:Slashdot - Multi-Posted Articles for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical one sided journalism (Score:3)
What about the poor Martian this US colonizing robot landed on eh? And the sky crane carelessly thrown away? Flattened a Martian orphanage but I bet the US press won't be reporting on THAT!
Why doesn't NASA release a statement they are going to stop killing Martians in their stellar conquest?
Re: (Score:3)
ALL the articles!
Re:Slashdot - Multi-Posted Articles for Nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, yeah. That's what unix nerds tend to use for their mobile devices. Apple laptops are easily the most popular laptops I've ever seen among us engineering types at Sun and Oracle in the last decade.
Re: (Score:2)
Rock on!
We have a touch-down.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
That sounds great! But where is her boyfriend?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Landing will never work (Score:5, Informative)
AFRAID NOT! Touchdown Confirmed!!
Re: (Score:2)
These guys started posting doom and gloom post before liftoff.
They've been at it 8 months, and even when its wheels down they still continue to nay-say.
Re:Landing will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Suck it, jackass.
Re:Landing will never work (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprise, surprise, actual scientists and engineers are better than you at this stuff.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Apparently it worked this one time...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Landing will never work (Score:4, Funny)
It's obvious that god put it on Mars, then.
Re:Fails Compared to the Moon Landing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Your entire post is so ignorant as to how high bandwidth broadcasting works that one would have to start from the basics.
Um, the moon is close, really close as in compared to mars. It takes a whole lot less power to send a signal back to earth.
The moon is close, you don't have to aim your signal so well to hit earth. Your antenna size is smaller.
No direct line of sight to earth. It's on the far side of the planet to us. Any live signal would have to be transmitted via the MRO, if it's in line of sight at t
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It's a Wil Wheaton-ism.
Re: (Score:3)
But is Pu-238 the only nuclear fuel source we could use?
Wiki says there are about 30 radioisotopes that could be used for this purpose, and both the US and Russians have used very small scale reactors [wikipedia.org] (not just thermo-electric) on space vehicles in the past. The russians have 30 fission reactors in space on RORSATs.
Re: (Score:3)
US and Russians have used very small scale reactors (not just thermo-electric) on space vehicles in the past.
True, though the thermoelectric reactors are very simple by comparison. Naturally, they have no moving parts and are completely stable. Of course, they're rather less efficient, but the rover needs a lot of heat to stay warm anyway, so that doesn't matter too much.
Given the rigours of take-off and landing, and the penalty for anything going wrong (LEO satellites can be replaced much more easily), the
Re: (Score:3)
idiot.
Go educate [wikipedia.org] yourself. It has 17 cameras.
Re: (Score:3)
The big question on everybody's mind, though... did they finally send a lander equipped with at least one camera designed to capture images in true human color? Previous landers had cameras equipped with RGB filters, but the filters were optimized for scientific analysis instead of accurate color rendition, and deviated significantly from the filters you'd use to capture monochrome images through red, green, and blue filters for producing accurate color photos as a human would see them.
Put another way, the
Re: (Score:3)
White balance is done in post-processing anyway, there's nothing physically in a camera (apart from bits of the firmware in some FLASH cells somewhere) that has anything to do with it. Exposure control is done in firmware as well, by taking short, high-noise samples from the image sensor to figure out how much light is coming in. On Mars that's not a big deal as you don't really have any fast changes -- there are no clouds. When a dust storm comes in, it's a gradual change and can be accommodated just by ta
Re:Any recommendation for Chinese audiences? (Score:5, Funny)
If the translation is of the same quality Google Translate usually produces, your girlfriend is wondering why the US is invading the Red Sea with an autonomous sorcery platform.