Mars is hard

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DragonKP
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by DragonKP »

Had to share. Hilarious!


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Holman
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Holman »

No, but my kickass taxpayer-funded robot did!
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Kraken
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Kraken »

Very cool images, thanks for posting. Really looking forward to the hi-rez goodies.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Cortilian »

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.
It's not a movie but a sequence of stills. Very cool!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogal ... =149974611" target="_blank

edited for a better link
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Fretmute
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Fretmute »

[quibble]
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.
Of course it's the world's largest supersonic parachute. There aren't a whole lot of parachutes on Mars.

[/quibble]
Last edited by Fretmute on Tue Aug 07, 2012 4:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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wonderpug
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by wonderpug »

Awesome.

I'd love if they made an article retraction that instead read "the solar system's largest..."
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Stefan Stirzaker »

Cool, we can see our litter! But seriously, that's pretty good imaging there, seeing all the bits and pieces from it. Poor skycrane.

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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Brian »

Family portrait.

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Re: Mars is hard

Post by wonderpug »

How close did they land to where they wanted?
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Biyobi »

My money's on the big one.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Smoove_B »

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

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Re: Mars is hard

Post by WYBaugh »

Smoove_B wrote:
wonderpug wrote:How close did they land to where they wanted?
Close enough? :D

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NASA landing pool? How much did DV win?
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Smoove_B »

According to Gizmodo:
The name of the guy who won is Dan Vartolomei, an Structures and Configuration Engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
They all put in a $1, so Dan won himself $15 for his troubles.
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wonderpug
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by wonderpug »

Smoove_B wrote:
wonderpug wrote:How close did they land to where they wanted?
Close enough? :D
Amazing.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Kraken »

It's probably good that I'm not the guy driving the rover, because the first thing I'd do is go get pictures of the sky crane crash site. Not for any scientific value, but purely for coolness.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Stefan Stirzaker »

Ditto :) I think from memory, I thought it still had 140kg of fuel left when touchdown occurred, I wonder how much was left when it crashed.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by msduncan »

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.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Kraken »

Patience, young padawan. Their checklist has served them well so far. Best to stick with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing the hi-rez version of the landing video, but it seems that data transmission is a bottleneck. Not much point in rushing that big gorgeous panorama if they already have a data backlog.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Isgrimnur »

They shouldn't have picked Comcast as their interplanetary ISP.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by msduncan »

Ask and I shall receive. Curiosity's mast is up and he's looking around.

Click to enlarge

Enlarge Image
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by YellowKing »

[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. :D
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msduncan
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by msduncan »

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. :D
How do you know we aren't?

;)
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by SpaceLord »

Sojourner is so cute!!! :wub:
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by raydude »

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.
I saw a NASA news conference on CNN today where Jennifer Trosper, a mission manager at JPL, was using a small model of Curiosity as she talked. And I thought, somebody has to get on the line with LEGO or other toy makers and get Curiosity models out by Christmas. Because honestly, as soon as I saw that little 6 inch model, I wanted it.
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Exodor
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Exodor »

How about 817 pictures from Opportunity stitched together to make an HD Panorama?

Neat
Last edited by Exodor on Wed Aug 08, 2012 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by stessier »

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

Neat
Very cool. I'm amused that the first thing we do is make some donuts. :lol:
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Holman »

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

Neat
That's awesome, but it makes me want to write "WASH ME" on those dirty solar panels.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Freezer-TPF- »

I can't drive it with my mouse? WASD also doesn't work. Lame demo.
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msduncan
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by msduncan »

They are making it really tough to find the latest damn images. I searched all over the NASA and JPL sites and only came up with the ground shot above. I then stumbled across a posting from 8 HOURS ago from a unofficial website that gives us THIS view:

Enlarge Image

Click to Enlarge.


Can NASA please put images in one place as they get them so we can find them more easily??
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msduncan
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by msduncan »

This one is good too. Hi res shot of the heat shield dropping away.

click to enlarge again

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It's 34 bowl victories.
It's 24 Southeastern Conference Championships.
It's 15 National Championships.

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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Stefan Stirzaker »

I'm using
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/" target="_blank
and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/" target="_blank

for most of my images, some good before and afters and a self portrait there.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Stefan Stirzaker »

Oh this should be good tomorrow. Plans for Sol 3 include assessing the performance of the high-gain antenna; uplinking files for the upcoming transition of Curiosity's flight software to the surface-optimized version R10 on Sol 5; Radiation Assessment Detector instrument observations; and Mastcam calibration target and 360-degree color panorama images. In addition, the rover's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS), Chemistry & Mineralogy Analyzer (CheMin), Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), and Dynamic Albedo Neutrons (DAN) instruments will be checked out.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Peoux »

Someone thought exploring Mars was expensive?
Just a rough comparison: :wink:

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Unagi
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Unagi »

So there is much speculation regarding what the blurry image is on the horizon.
Enlarge Image

Some are thinking it's the dust plume from the skycrane's crashed landing....


If you look at the shape, I think it's pretty clear what it was:
Enlarge Image
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Enough
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Enough »

Here's an interesting article on Curiosity's cameras and why they went with 2mp and the challenges they face. It's really too bad the zoom lens were not able to get included.
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.'
Bottom line is thanks to image stitching we should get some really nice high-res panos but will miss out on some truly cinematic stuff that could have happened had zoom lens development gone better.
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raydude
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by raydude »

From the article:
'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.
After working with the different instrument teams on projects I can say that trade-offs in bandwidth usage and command and data volumes happen all the time. And its always the imagers that hog all the space. They know it, and they know that they need to sometimes share and play nice with the other instruments.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Toe »

With the complexity of the landing, I expected the rover to construct a camera-making micro-factory to craft the best possible camera. :wink:
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Freezer-TPF- »

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. :wink:
First things first. It needs to find the nearest tree and start gathering wood before nightfall.
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by Holman »

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. :wink:
First things first. It needs to find the nearest tree and start gathering wood before nightfall.
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YellowKing
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Re: Mars is hard

Post by YellowKing »

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.'
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