Anyone watching the Mars rover entry stream?Edit: Its landed! First picture on mars uploaded

Hotttshot34 said:
Honestly, I don't know why we care about mars? It's just going to be another humungus sphere of rock. And we will all be disappointed, again. I don't doubt theirs life, but just not in our solar system...
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There is belief that Mars was once habitable. So a lot of the research on Mars will be to see if that is true or if it is possible still. Mars is our closest "second home". It is worth researching that if something tragic were to happen to earth where else would we go? Mars was believed to have water (glaciers at least) at one point in its history.

I know a lot of people are short sited and don't care about what happens in 1,000 years but this is a big step in possibly living on mars one day. Word to Arnold and Total Recall
 
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TeamJordan79 said:
can we get some HD pics for once? like photos that can prove/disprove the anomalies that are always found in mars pics. Damn near everyone got 8mp cameras in the US, NASA should be filming mars in 1080p and 3D and make like a BBC planet mars special
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This thread answers a bunch of questions: 

A. Calm your damn nerves. 
laugh.gif


B. Those pics ARE HD.

C. It could take another few days to get the legit cameras out AND pictures transmitted. There is a 14 minute delay. AKA It takes light 14 minutes just to travel from here to Mars. Its not efficient to have more advanced equipment that is susceptible to failure and fall into disrepair over long distances. 
 
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championboyz7 said:
So how long would it take us to get to Mars since it takes light 14 mins?
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We launched on November 26, 2011 and landed this morning. The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 54.6 million kilometers. The farthest apart they can be is about 401 million km. The average distance is about 225 million km.
 
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championboyz7 said:
So how long would it take us to get to Mars since it takes light 14 mins?
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I think (feel free to correct me if i am wrong) it would take 9 months. Something about you can't just launch and head straight there. You need to take a minimal cost trajectory? Or something like that.

The rover that just landed yesterday was launch in November 26, 2011.

Edit: futureMD beat me to it :smokin
 
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I missed it :smh: Love the thread keep us updated. We are only 10 years from the deadline, 2023 .... the first human on mars.

GotHolesInMySocks said:
E.Ts over there must be laughing at our "technology".
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wrong. have you even seen the videos. but if there are E.Ts I expect them to ...

2510553156_9de45fd721.jpg
 
How great would it be if all of a sudden the machine breaks down... but it sends back one final picture.... A picture of an Alien's hand lifting off the camera!
 
solidsnake said:
How great would it be if all of a sudden the machine breaks down... but it sends back one final picture.... A picture of an Alien's hand lifting off the camera!
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The public would never get that picture. It'd be too "real" to handle. 
 
Jking0821 said:
I think (feel free to correct me if i am wrong) it would take 9 months. Something about you can't just launch and head straight there. You need to take a minimal cost trajectory? Or something like that.
The rover that just landed yesterday was launch in November 26, 2011.
Edit: futureMD beat me to it :smokin
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Being that you work at NASA....why ain't we send ppl up there yet homie ?:nerd: don't be lying neither :lol: .
9 months doesn't seem that bad. But then again how long did it take us to get to the moon? And isn't there like a time limit on how long a person can be in the space station or something because of the gravity and its effect on the human body once back in earth ?
 
championboyz7 said:
Jking0821 said:
I think (feel free to correct me if i am wrong) it would take 9 months. Something about you can't just launch and head straight there. You need to take a minimal cost trajectory? Or something like that.
The rover that just landed yesterday was launch in November 26, 2011.
Edit: futureMD beat me to it :smokin
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Being that you work at NASA....why ain't we send ppl up there yet homie ?:nerd: don't be lying neither :lol: .
9 months doesn't seem that bad. But then again how long did it take us to get to the moon? And isn't there like a time limit on how long a person can be in the space station or something because of the gravity and its effect on the human body once back in earth ?
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All my info is from mission directors here. I am a lowly financial analyst. But for what it's worth

The space ship (which we just retired anyway) was not built for long distance travel like that. The radiation it undertakes on a trip that far will kill the astronauts. It also couldn't hold enough food, water and oxygen for a trip that long. So we need a vessel that is build for long distance space travel and we are working on better propulsion systems to shrink the time it takes to get there but none of this is easy to do obviously. Especially with our lack of funding....(had to throw that in there)
 
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Jking0821 said:
All my info is from mission directors here. I am a lowly financial analyst. But for what it's worth
The space ship (which we just retired anyway) was not built for long distance travel like that. The radiation it undertakes on a trip that far will kill the astronauts. It also couldn't hold enough food, water and oxygen for a trip that long. So we need a vessel that is build for long distance space travel and we are working on better propulsion systems to shrink the time it takes to get there but none of this is easy to do obviously. Especially with our lack of funding....(had to throw that in there)
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Did not know that . About the space ship and radiation and such. That's crazy ,thank you.
 
championboyz7 said:
Jking0821 said:
I think (feel free to correct me if i am wrong) it would take 9 months. Something about you can't just launch and head straight there. You need to take a minimal cost trajectory? Or something like that.
The rover that just landed yesterday was launch in November 26, 2011.
Edit: futureMD beat me to it
smokin.gif
Click to expand...
Being that you work at NASA....why ain't we send ppl up there yet homie ?
nerd.gif
don't be lying neither
laugh.gif
.
9 months doesn't seem that bad. But then again how long did it take us to get to the moon? And isn't there like a time limit on how long a person can be in the space station or something because of the gravity and its effect on the human body once back in earth ?
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A. Have you noticed that all plant life relies on light in specific wavelengths unique to earth? Earth plants would have to adjust, if it was possible for them to do so at all. 

B. Changes in relative amounts of gravity has massive effects on the human body. For example, its theorized that sperm might even have trouble staying implanted in eggs and halt the reproduction of various animals at different stages. Not to mention the fact that you're optimized for life near sea-level and the related effects that has on your muscles, breathing, bone density, and other things like vision and hearing.

C. Radiation? Mars atmosphere is like 100x thinner than Earths. Nor is there any air so we'd have to attempt colonization with CO2 based life forms (one theory).

D. Its more possible that life elsewhere is dependent on a different set of rules. The recent finding of Arsenic based life forms could change the way we embrace our seemingly myopic view of life as only being carbon based. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/nasa-finds-arsenic-life-form/

E. In addition to gravity, you'd have to adjust for the air PRESSURE needed to maintain your gaseous equilibrium. Air pressure also affects things like fire. 

F. By the time you carried the food across that distance, it'd probably be completely spoiled. We have yet to develop tech that can withstand those conditions for that long and still be reliable. 

G. Wild temperature swings

H. Mars is 1/3 the mass of earth, with no moving techtonic plates and no magnetosphere, so any water vapor would just burn off if we heated it globally. Better to find some lava tubes, and go deep enough until the heat is tolerant.



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/can-we-make-it-to-mars.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...me-problems-colonizing-mars-and-sex-in-space/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon

http://quest.nasa.gov/mars/ask/colony/Colonization_of_Mars_by_humans.txt

http://www.space.com/10822-sex-mars-pregnancy-space-risks.html

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/03/should-we-send-humans-to-mars/
 
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This is also pretty dope.

It prints JPL in morse code to signify the distance its traveled and make error corrections to see if it is stuck or needs to keep moving. 

 
[h2]Inside NASA’s Curiosity: It’s an Apple Airport Extreme… with wheels[/h2]
mars-science-laboratory-msl-curiosity-640x353.jpg

[h3]Share This Article[/h3]










Late last night, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity successfully navigated its way through Seven Minutes of Terror  and touched down on the surface of the Red Planet, heralding a new age of extraterrestrial exploration that will eventually result in the human colonization of Mars.

The first photos from Curiosity are starting to trickle in (right), and very soon we’ll start to see scientific data gathered by Curiosity’s on-board science lab, so I thought it would be a good time to discuss the hardware and software that actually makes MSL Curiosity possible.
[h3]Hardware[/h3]
At the heart of Curiosity  there is, of course, a computer. In this case the Mars rover is powered by a RAD750, a single-board computer (motherboard, RAM, ROM, and CPU) produced by BAE. The RAD750 has been on the market for more than 10 years, and it’s currently one of the most popular on-board computers for spacecraft. In Curiosity’s case, the CPU is a PowerPC 750 (PowerPC G3 in Mac nomenclature) clocked at around 200MHz — which might seem slow, but it’s still hundreds of times faster than, say, the Apollo Guidance Computer used in the first Moon landings. Also on the motherboard are 256MB of DRAM, and 2GB of flash storage — which will be used to store video and scientific data before transmission to Earth.

The RAD750 can withstand temperatures of between -55 and 70C, and radiation levels up to 1000 gray. Safely ensconced within Curiosity, the temperature and radiation should remain below these levels — but for the sake of redundancy, there’s a second RAD750 that automatically takes over if the first one fails.
[h3]Software[/h3]
On the software side of things, NASA again stuck to tried-and-tested solutions, opting for the 27-year-old VxWorks operating system. VxWorks, developed by Wind River Systems (which was acquired by Intel), is a real-time operating system used in a huge number of embedded systems. The previous Mars rovers (Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft all use VxWorks. VxWorks also powers BMW iDrive, the Apache Longbow helicopter, and the Apple Airport Extreme and Linksys WRT54G routers (really).

I said that VxWorks is 27 years old, but that’s a bit unfair: The initial release was in 1985 (around the same time as MS-DOS 3.0), but it has been in constant development since then, reaching v6.9 last year. Why does Curiosity use VxWorks? It’s reliable, has a mature development toolchain, and presumably its low-level scheduling and interrupt systems are ideal for handling real-time tasks like EDL (entry, descent, and landing; aka, seven minutes of terror).


[h3]Instrumentation[/h3]
MSL Curiosity is quite literally a science lab on wheels, and as such its instrumentation armament is rather insane. There are 17 cameras in total, all equipped with 1600×1200 (2-megapixel) CCD sensors. The camera that we’re most interested in is MastCam, which will take high-res true-color images of the Martian landscape, and 720p video at 10 fps. Looking down rather than out, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which is attached to the robotic arm, will take microscopic images of the soil and rock beneath Curiosity.

Science-wise, the most important camera is probably ChemCam, which will vaporize rocks and soil with an infrared laser, and then use spectroscopy to analyze the sample. There are lots of other spectrometers on-board, too, a radiation monitor, a water/hydrogen detector, and an instrument suite (chemistry set?) that will analyze samples that are scooped up from the ground.

Until MastCam is raised — which should happen in the next day or two — most of the imagery we will receive from Curiosity comes from the hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. These are grayscale cameras attached to the four corners of Curiosity, which build up a 3D map of the rover’s surroundings. This map is then used to autonomously navigate around hazards (rocks larger than 30cm or so, chasms, little green men, etc.)


[h3]Communication[/h3]
Beyond the landing procedure — which we’ve discussed in the past  — by far the coolest aspect of Curiosity is that we’re controlling a human-made robot that’s up to 250 million miles away, and in turn it will send back terabytes of data over the next few years.

As you can imagine, transmitting data over 250 million miles requires a lot of power. Curiosity generates 125 watts of electricity from a 2000-watt plutonium-based radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Waste heat is used to keep the MSL’s systems at optimum temperature.



Curiosity can either communicate directly with Earth’s Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna via an X band (8GHz) link, or it can use a UHF (300MHz-3GHz) transmitter to relay signals through Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which orbit a few hundred miles above Curiosity. Because it’s a lot cheaper for Curiosity to use UHF, and because the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has a very-high-speed 6Mbps X band antenna, relaying will be Curiosity’s main way of sending data back to Earth.
[h3]The next few days[/h3]
While we’re fairly certain that Curiosity made a perfect landing on Mars, NASA will now spend the next few days confirming it. Once mission control is convinced that Curiosity hasn’t landed on the edge of a crevasse or a pit of quicksand, the mast, robotic arm, and high-gain antenna will be deployed. In a week or so, we should be looking at the first high-res panoramas created by MastCam. In the next few days we’re also expecting a photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of Curiosity’s descent and landing. If you didn’t know, MRO is equipped with HiRISE, an 800-megapixel camera that shoots 2-gigabyte photos.

Eventually, we’ll even get some movies of Curiosity roving across the surface of the Red Planet at a heady 90 meters per hour. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years, you can seeCuriosity: The Movie  at your local IMAX theater.


MSL Curiosity with its parachute out, captured by MRO


Curiosity, checking out its shadow in one of the Hazcams


Another Hazcam shot


NASA's JPL celebrating a successful Curiosity touchdown

For up-to-date imagery and news, be sure to hit up the NASA Mars Science Laboratory website.
 
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