UPDATE: Touchdown confirmed! Congratulations NASA JPL! First image received. See below.
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I thought I”d take a minute to advise you that some real science and engineering that will be see from NASA tonight rather than the politically motivated science from scientist turned arrested activist Dr. James Hansen in the latest NASA GISS claim distributed via AP’s compliant repeater, Seth Borenstein. On the plus side, Seth at least gave a voice to the other side.
Readers may recall I photographed and wrote about the Curiosity exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum last year:
Experts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL ) share the challenges of Curiosity’s rover final 7 minutes to landing on the surface of Mars on the 5th of August,2012 ( 10:31 US Pacific time) . Watch the video below, well worth your time.
Curiosity is a Mars rover launched by NASA on November 26, 2011. Currently en route to the planet, it is scheduled to land in Gale Crater on August 5, 2012 ( US Pacific time) . The rover’s objectives include searching for past or present life, studying the Martian climate, studying Martian geology, and collecting data for a future manned mission to Mars. It will explore Mars for 2 years.
Curiosity’s landing Times in regarding time travel zones:
Aug 5, 2012 10:31 p.m. US Pacific
Aug 6, 2012 1:31 a.m. US Eastern
Aug 6, 2012 3:31 p.m. Hobart – Australia
Aug 6, 2012 5:31 a.m Universal (UTC)
Curiosity cost: A cool US$2.5 billion
Cool stuff Bonus (Mars Science Laboratory) such as interactive experiences can be found in:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/
NASA official site:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
NASA-TV coverage starts two hours before landing. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html (h/t to Ric Werme)
UPDATE: Touchdown confirmed! Congratulations NASA! First image received. Will post as soon as I have something to show you.
UPDATE2 self explanatory
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Any way to TiVo it??? 0130 is a bit too late (early?) for me on a work night!
Oh well! Good luck, Curiosity!
My only regret is it’s not manned and I’m not on board..
If we had funded NERVA http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html
We would’ve been looking at Alpha Centauri by now..
NASA-TV coverage starts two hours before landing. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
Why all the drama on this video. This is just more marketing to get people’s attention. There was no need to make this so risky. Why are they putting this project (our tax money) at such risk. If their marketing ploy fails, the project is dead.
Schrodinger’s space probe—alive and dead at the same time, but we won’t know until the radio signal gets here… or not. (In which case it becomes a scatter pattern without the double slits.)
Alvin, this is the least ‘risky’ way to land the thing. It’s too heavy for the airbag approach, and allowing the retrorockets near the ground would kick up dust… so a complex method is needed.
Actually, most of what we’ll watch are the good kind of computer simulations.
tgmccoy says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:15 pm
My only regret is it’s not manned and I’m not on board..
If we had funded NERVA http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html
We would’ve been looking at Alpha Centauri by now..
How would we have looking at Alpha Centauri by now? NERVA wouldn’t do the trick, unless you’re talking about some ungodly long flight time.
I don’t know where it is or how to find it (maybe someone else is familiar with it?) but there’s a video, perhaps an hour or so in length, out there on the net offering sort of a simulation of a similar “explore by remote without immediate human direction” program set perhaps 30 years into the future. Basically it’s an unmanned starship going to explore an “earth like planet” around a nearby star (within ten light years or so.) The ship is populated by three “Curiosity” type things with fairly sophisticated computer brains capable of addressing a number of different possible scenarios and with different directives in terms of what they’re looking for and how much “risk” they’re allowed to take in fulfilling facets of their mission. The onboard brains of the explorers are supplemented by a powerful supercomputer housed in the main orbiting craft but communication is not always possible for some reason.
In brief, the planet has an exorbitant number of interesting life forms, including one that seems to have something approaching (or perhaps surpassing — the “difference” makes it hard to tell) human intelligence. The video follows the successes and failures of these machines as they try to do their “jobs” and survive without human direction while at the same time beaming information back to Earth while waiting for possible future “suggestions” that won’t arrive for fifteen or twenty years.
While the computers and life forms etc are based upon reasonable extrapolated scientific modeling, it’s still very sci-fi and a bit flamboyant, but I found it pretty interesting. Anyone here familiar with it? Curiosity fans would probably enjoy watching it while waiting for the big news!
🙂
MJM
It’s cooler if you turn off the sound and play the theme music from the Opening sequence of “Serenity”
Love it … but still like the simpler bouncing ball approah. I think this lander is too big for that, though. I hope to see people there in my own lifetime
Drama, you have to love it. “So, when we get first get word, that we’ve touched the top of the atmosphere, the vehicle has been alive, or dead, on the surface, for at least seven minutes”, due to speed of light delays of 14 minutes. 14 – 7 = 7.
Alvin, yes much dramatic oversell, for obvious reasons. Unlike drama queen Hanson, though, the risks are real.
I’m giving it 3 in 10 odds of success.
complex systems can fail in so many different ways…
This is a cool mission attempt, well thought-out and definitely worth the effort. It is on its own. I don’t understand why some people always complain about the risk. Nothing ever happens if we demand risk-free endeavors. I am a 66 yr old Electrical Engineer, and have aggressively followed the space program since before Sputnik – I was hooked when I read about, and saw a film of the German V-2 rocket. It is the main reason I became an engineer to begin with, plus my dad was a Mechanical Engineer who worked for the Army Corps of Engineers on the Manhatten Project in WWII. I say roll the dice and go for it – you only live once.
What dramatic music. Is this PR or science?
michaeljmcfadden says (August 5, 2012 at 6:36 pm): “I don’t know where it is or how to find it (maybe someone else is familiar with it?) but there’s a video, perhaps an hour or so in length, out there on the net offering sort of a simulation of a similar “explore by remote without immediate human direction” program set perhaps 30 years into the future.”
Is this it?
We do these things, not because they are easy but because they are hard!
God speed, Curiosity…
MtK
This will be an amazing feat if they pull this off. I will be glued to the screen from 3.00 here in Australia. I remember downloading the “live” frames from Sojouner line by line over a 56k modem back in 1996. Curiosity should be even more spectacular with high resolution 8fps footage.
Does anyone know how long after landing the video will be transmitted?
Fingers crossed, I do wonder though if we might not have thought about trying this novel landing approach with a slightly expensive object.
Will be at NASA Ames tonight for the party. If you are in the bay area, this will be a great place to be. Less than three hours to go!
Just out of Curiosity, what does Hansen predict? 😎
Very exciting indeed – I have both fingers crossed.
there is no way in a million years this will land exactly like it shows in the video, or should I say the ” computer model” …this all looks pretty “cool” for the video generation, but wait until tomorrow…and you will all be wondering about that billion dollars . Absolutely impossible in my opinion. They may try and drag it on for a few days, like lost radar etc , or whatever , you know the usual excuses.
I will explain why I am so confidant in the eventual outcome tomorrow.
Konrad says:
Does anyone know how long after landing the video will be transmitted?
There is a tiny chance that a photo of the Rear Hazard Camera will be transmitted in 30 minutes (+14mins light time). The next opportunity will be 2 hours later when an image of the Front Hazard Camera will be transmitted. It is all about the Realtime Relay Satellites and when they have line of sight of MSL. There are other satellite part of the Deep Space Network, but they record and transmit once ever two hours or so.
For actual fun models, you can watch the “optimistic” simulation of the entry real time (or for the later time zones, speed it up and go to bed).
http://eyes.nasa.gov/
Cute little java app 😉