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
down safe! amazing!
Touchdown! Congratulations!
OMG! Images are coming through Odyssey! Awsome!
Very cool stuff!!!
Touchdown!
Congrats NASA.
Pictures from Mars, one after another now!
Hot Damn!!!
Done, landed and images to boot!!! Congrats team
EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE! WAY TO GO NASA!
Watching that live from CalTech was phenomenal. Congratulations NASA.
Why do they even have a Department of Clownology ?
5 ice cubes; two fingers of Johnny Walker – Here’s to you NASA!
What a remarkable achievement!
Mark Wagner says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:47 pm
I’m giving it 3 in 10 odds of success. complex systems can fail in so many different ways…
Stay our of Vegas, horse tracks, and card games, Mark. And never bet against a dedicated group of talented engineers – The ‘odds’ are against you!
MtK
Pass the peanuts – we got people here who are breathing again!
Willis Eschenbach says:
August 5, 2012 at 10:30 pm
If I ran the zoo… but I could be wrong, maybe they have, and anyway, I’m just a reformed cowboy, I was born yesterday, what do I know?
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Models all the way down.
Just watched the landing coverage and it was incredible to see pictures so early. Then they trotted out Holdren for interview and I switched off.
Anyone else now waiting with baited breathe for Ian to explain why the landing is impossible? 🙂
OK it was a great moment, but I didn’t see any diversity in the control room. What a stupid gaff!!
The NASA Administrator was the only non-white person I saw in this entire presentation.
Is there any Q why NASA is treated so terribly in this administration’s budget?
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Ian says:
August 5, 2012 at 7:56 pm
[ …] 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. […] I will explain why I am so confidant in the eventual outcome tomorrow.
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Well, it worked…
“And suddenly, computer models of complex systems that were here described as irrelevant and/or false revealed to be accurate enough to land a spacecraft remotely, on another planet”.
I love technology and man’s use of it for good so, hats off to the team.
But….
I find Mars boring. Our earth and particularly earths ocean’s are far more interesting and full of life, and far more difficult to get to.
I do wish the NASA budget was used on earth-centric exploration since much of Mars-like endeavors are really astro-biology alien life hunting missions. Mars has 2 puny moonlets, no atmosphere to speak of, no magnetic field, no life, and no reason for humanity to go there.
Mars is just a bore. The technology however is very cool and the team deserve our commendations. I just wish it was used here.
space exploration is a human endeavor as the emotions at mission control demonstrated. Concrats NASA and JPL.
Congrats to NASA.
Sending a rover to another planet is truly an accomplishment. But the “orgy and the I can’t believe it happened” seemed a bit canned to me. This was a project built by engineers, not so-called climate scientists. The project was designed to succeed. It only used known and reliable technology. I’m sure there was a relief that nothing went wrong, but it was engineered to succeed and performed as expected.
Thinking like an engineer. It either works or it don’t. Qualifiers such as maybe, possibly, could, likely, etc are not allowed. My special congratulations to the engineering teams.
Jerry says:
August 5, 2012 at 8:59 pm
The parachute weighed some 50 kg and deployed while the lander was at supersonic speed. The amount of fuel required to do what the parachute did would have been much greater. The rover is about the size of a small car – your box could have weighed another 10-20 kg.
But yeah, it would have been a lot simpler.
Also, the air bag technique was ruled out because they didn’t have strong enough materials. It probably would have required a stronger and heavier rover too.
This, and the celebration, was better than any of the events at the Olympics. And some of those were pretty good.
Good night all. it’s past 0200 here.
Allan MacRae says: August 5, 2012 at 10:45 pm
5 ice cubes; two fingers of Johnny Walker – Here’s to you NASA!
What a remarkable achievement!
Cubes? Two fingers? You do them injustice! Seriously, did anyone else laugh when they were doing numbers back and forth, and you hear “it’s within spitting distance” laugh? Or the Asian guy doing most of the main speaking with hands on knees, arm bouncing up and down? Or when the polling was done, you could tell there were pools on what the numbers would be?
As cool as this is for a nerd like me, the last hour was all about the crew in that room. Extremely proud of you men and women, you did good!
You mean there’s no life on Mars, Paul?
Say it ain’t so!
Aw rats!
Well, at least the Rover won’t be running over anyone.
Congratulations!