Octopus Overlords

Kraken wrote:

msduncan wrote:Kraken:

Any idea when they will receive and release the video of the landing? I've read that the craft was equipped with a video camera to capture the landing and give mankind the first video imagery of a craft landing on another planet.

I had not heard of that.

CNN.com wrote:This jaw-dropping landing process, involving a sky crane and the world's largest supersonic parachute, allowed the spacecraft carrying Curiosity to target the landing area that scientists had meticulously chosen.

wonderpug wrote:How close did they land to where they wanted?

Smoove_B wrote:

wonderpug wrote:How close did they land to where they wanted?

Close enough?

The name of the guy who won is Dan Vartolomei, an Structures and Configuration Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Smoove_B wrote:

wonderpug wrote:How close did they land to where they wanted?

Close enough?

YellowKing wrote:[cynic]Whee can't wait to see more barren, lifeless landscapes filled with red dirt and rocks![/cynic]

Just kidding. I am looking forward to the pics, but the way some of my co-workers are acting you'd think we'd be getting our first look at the Martian capital city.

msduncan wrote:They need to raise the damn mast and start taking real pictures. The public interest is critical to NASA right now, and they need to produce some stunning photos to draw out that continued interest.

Exodor wrote:How about 817 pictures from Opportunity stitched together to make the first an HD Panorama?

Neat

Exodor wrote:How about 817 pictures from Opportunity stitched together to make the first an HD Panorama?

Neat

A number of factors led to the use of 2MP sensors in the main imaging cameras used on NASA's Mars rover, Curiosity, says the project manager responsible for their development. The slow data rates available for broadcasting images back to Earth and the team's familiarity with that family of sensors played a part, says Malin Space Science Systems' Mike Ravine, but the biggest factor was the specifications being fixed as far back as 2004. Multi-shot panoramas will see the cameras deliver high-res images, he explains, but not the 3D movies Hollywood director James Cameron had wanted.

'There's a popular belief that projects like this are going to be very advanced but there are things that mitigate against that. These designs were proposed in 2004, and you don't get to propose one specification and then go off and develop something else. 2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn't sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn't compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.'

'The UHF antenna transmits to two spacecraft orbiting Mars, which relay the results back to Earth. That's where most of the data is coming from. It gives us on the order of 250 megabits per day, and that's got to be shared between a bunch of instruments, so there's not much bandwidth for the cameras.' Ravine explains.

Toe wrote:With the complexity of the landing, I expected the rover to construct a camera-making micro-factory to craft the best possible camera.

Freezer-TPF- wrote:

Toe wrote:With the complexity of the landing, I expected the rover to construct a camera-making micro-factory to craft the best possible camera.

First things first. It needs to find the nearest tree and start gathering wood before nightfall.

2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn't sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn't compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.'