# Mars: Curiosity



## Jcgrey

Found this link earlier, and thought it was pretty neat. takes a few minutes to figure out the controls, but still is awesome that it shows in real time where everything is









http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html


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## Classified

I was watching that on my computer and NASA TV on my iPhone and it worked out pretty good. That is a neat program, I just wish you could download it to your computer.


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## OrbitalResonance

We did it


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## MaxPower

:yay:yay:yay


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## DeniseAfterAll

Haha, wow.. it has that Men in Black technology feel to it ^^


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## DeniseAfterAll

HOLY ****! and yet it moves... :um

+ i can't believe i was expecting Voyager 2 to be shown somewhere and there it is!! wow.. more fun than Google Earth?


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## SuperSky

Sadly Java causes extreme lag for me, so I'll have to content myself with a game of LunarLander.


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## Jcgrey




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## millenniumman75

Jcgrey said:


>


1:32am EDT (8/6/12)/10:32pm PDT (8/5/12): first confirmation of landing.

Two minutes later, the first grainy image of the wheel.
Five minutes later, the first high definition monochrome picture of the same wheel.

I like reading the weather reports about Mars. Hazy with a high of 5F was interesting :lol.

I got to see it live - John Zarella from CNN was a little too excited. I actually felt bad for Joy Crisp, the NASA scientist sitting with him. She could not get a word in edgewise and she was the expert!


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## OrbitalResonance




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## millenniumman75

OrbitalResonance said:


>


Was that taken from one of the satellites?


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## Aphexfan

Watched it live last night!! :yay


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## 0lly

millenniumman75 said:


> Was that taken from one of the satellites?


Yeah taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which I think has been in orbit there for about 5 years. Check out http://www.uahirise.org/ for all the photos it's taken over the years. (The MRO is equipped with the HiRISE camera)


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## OrbitalResonance




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## 0lly

Damn. That 'Eyes on the Solar System' thingy isn't supported on Linux


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## millenniumman75

OrbitalResonance said:


>


Now, let this be a lesson to all the "athletic people" out there.

THIS is a celebration - us NERDS know how to throw down! :wink

Copied to the Random Thought thread!!! :lol


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## DeniseAfterAll

millenniumman75 said:


> Now, let this be a lesson to all the "athletic people" out there.
> 
> THIS is a celebration - us NERDS know how to throw down! :wink
> 
> Copied to the Random Thought thread!!! :lol


Revenge of the nerds!!


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## OneIsALonelyNumber

I watched the coverage for about an hour, then quit and went to bed. I wanted to watch more but I had to work in the morning  Also, I was pretty sure Curiosity would crash.


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## kc1895

Is there a webcam where you can see Mars live from the robot?


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## Haunty

>ping Mars

Pinging Mars with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from Mars: bytes=32 time=841375ms TTL=850000
Reply from Mars: bytes=32 time=840249ms TTL=850000
Reply from Mars: bytes=32 time=839571ms TTL=850000
Reply from Mars: bytes=32 time=840127ms TTL=850000

Ping statistics for Mars:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 839571ms, Maximum = 841375ms, Average = 840331ms


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## Classified

We need to invent faster than light communications.


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## Jcgrey

*Curiosity heat shield spotted!*


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## 0lly




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## 0lly




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## 0lly

I find it hard to imagine Mt. Sharp, shown below, is 3 miles high; it looks like a small hill.


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## Jcgrey




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## OrbitalResonance




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## Jcgrey

Curiosity posted a photo of Mount Sharp, the far-off Martian peak it will soon explore.

Officially, it's Aeolis Mons, and it stands 18,000 feet above the crater floor. Here's how that compares to Mount McKinley, America's tallest peak at 20,320 feet. (McKinley photo via Jitsen Chang.)

http://pbump.net/kr1


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## 0lly

^Nice comparison. Its hard to judge scale on photos from Mars or the Moon; I think the lack of atmosphere is one of the problems, we're so used to seeing distant things on Earth looking slightly washed out by blueness. And obviously that isn't helped the photos being greyscale lol. 

(I know there is some atmosphere on Mars, but its like 0.00something atmospheres; enough to make your eyeballs a bit dry!)


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## 0lly

I like this picture, a single frame from the descent video, showing the heat shield dropping away:


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## meepie

I was viewing that earlier this week with someone from SAS. I found some of the graphics to blurry but overall I enjoyed looking at the models of space. I wish they had a live webcam from the rover. That would be neat. Of course, only NASA scientists can access any type of video footage live, most likely.


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## DeniseAfterAll

They should make a java app that lets us remote control the vehicle for 50 bucks a minute. They'd get rich


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## ben88

OrbitalResonance said:


>


So. American.


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## Jcgrey




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## Jcgrey




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## Witan

Jcgrey said:


>


What happened to Neptune? :no


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## OrbitalResonance

Witan said:


> What happened to Neptune? :no


Looks like the thing that got Pluto is back! o.o


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## DeniseAfterAll

I dig curiosity's Facebook wall posts ^^


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## Jcgrey

By Scott Gold and Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

August 10, 2012, 7:55 p.m.

Engineers said Friday that the Curiosity rover happened to catch a picture of its own ride crash-landing on Mars - a wink-of-an-eye serendipity that some dismissed as a statistical impossibility, but appears to have been confirmed by a thorough review of landing data.

The final seconds of Curiosity's eight-month-plus journey to Mars called for a spacecraft to lower the rover to the surface using a "sky crane" - three ropes. The ropes were then cut, and the last of the spacecraft, known as the "descent stage," cast itself toward the horizon. It crash-landed, on purpose, about 2,000 feet away.

A low-resolution photograph Curiosity took seconds after landing Sunday night arrived promptly at La Cañada Flintridge's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the $2.5-billion mission for NASA.

The photograph captured a pyramid-shaped blotch on the horizon. The same photo taken 45 minutes later with the same cameras showed the same view of the Martian landscape, but no blotch.

snip

http://www.latimes.com/news/science...sity-photo-confirmed-20120811,0,5983256.story


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## Jcgrey




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## Jcgrey




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## Jcgrey

*The First Color Panorama from Mars by Curiosity

*


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## Aphexfan

Go curiosity!! :boogie


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## MsDaisy

Looks like the Mojave Desert 

So this is where all our tax money goes?


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## 0lly

MsDaisy said:


> Looks like the Mojave Desert
> 
> So this is where all our tax money goes?


Well it only cost about two billion dollars, spread out over several years. By contrast, the US defence budget for 2012 was over one trillion dollars. Plus, that two billion dollars on Curiosity is mostly still within the US economy; it paid people's wages and went to many US based contractors. The money itself hasn't gone into space


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## MsDaisy

I admit... its cool...


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## millenniumman75

Seeing the sun cast a shadow on it is neat, too!


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## OutOfControlPanel

n/a


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## RelinquishedHell

*My dad's joke about curiosity:*
Dad: Did you hear the rover curiosity found life on mars?
Me: Are you being serious?
Dad: Yes didn't you hear, it's all over the news!
Me: Where did they find it?
Dad: Under the rover's tires.
Me: What kind of life?
Dad: A cat.
Me: What are you talking about?
Dad: Curiosity Killed the cat. :lol
Me: :bah


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## OrbitalResonance

ThatOneQuietGuy said:


> *My dad's joke about curiosity:*
> Dad: Did you hear the rover curiosity found life on mars?
> Me: Are you being serious?
> Dad: Yes didn't you hear, it's all over the news!
> Me: Where did they find it?
> Dad: Under the rover's tires.
> Me: What kind of life?
> Dad: A cat.
> Me: What are you talking about?
> Dad: Curiosity Killed the cat. :lol
> Me: :bah


waka waka :teeth


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## DeniseAfterAll

I still can't get over how they were already capable of landing on Mars and sending coloured pictures back to Earth in the 1970s....

That's nearly half a century ago


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## Jcgrey

*Curiosity sees Mount Sharp Up Close and gets 'Brain Transplant'*

by KEN KREMER on AUGUST 12, 2012










mage Caption: Mosaic of Mount Sharp inside Curiosity's Gale Carter landing site. Gravelly rocks are strewn in the foreground, dark dune field lies beyond and then the first detailed view of the layered buttes and mesas of the sedimentary rock of Mount Sharp. This mosaic was assembled from three full resolution Navcam images returned by Curiosity on Sol 2 (Aug 8) and colorized based on Mastcam images from the 34 millimeter camera. Processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Topsoil at right was excavated by the 'sky crane' landing thrusters. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

The Curiosity rover has beamed back the first detailed images of Mount Sharp, offering a stupendous initial view of her ultimate driving goal, and is now in the midst of a crucial "brain transplant" this weekend that will transform her into a fully operational rover.

The science team will direct the six-wheeled Curiosity to begin climbing Mount Sharp at some later date during the rovers' two year primary mission after traversing and extensively investigating the floor of her landing site inside Gale Crater.

This weekend Curiosity has also begun transmitting spectacular hi res Mastcam images that will far exceed anything else thus far. Here is the Mastcam 360 pano as assembled by NASA so far:

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96740/...lose-and-gets-brain-transplant/#ixzz23LdxWA1s 









Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96740/curiosity-sees-mount-sharp-up-close-and-gets-brain-transplant/


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## Jcgrey

DeniseAfterAll said:


> I still can't get over how they were already capable of landing on Mars and sending coloured pictures back to Earth in the 1970s....
> 
> That's nearly half a century ago


Or how about actually landing on the moon in 69? Still amazing to me.


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## DeniseAfterAll

Jcgrey said:


> Or how about actually landing on the moon in 69? Still amazing to me.


That sounds .. slightly easier.

Oh wait, that one was manned


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## Witan

Jcgrey said:


> Or how about actually landing on the moon in 69? Still amazing to me.


Oh, that was all done in a Hollywood studio anyway 

(just kidding):b


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## DeniseAfterAll

Witan said:


> Oh, that was all done in a Hollywood studio anyway
> 
> (just kidding):b


phew!.. I can put my slingshot away now


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## Jcgrey

Umm okie dokie


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## Jcgrey

*
*

*Curiosity in Exaggerated Color*

This color-enhanced view of NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the satellite flew overhead. Colors have been enhanced to show the subtle color variations near the rover, which result from different types of materials.

The descent stage blast pattern around the rover is clearly seen as relatively blue colors (true colors would be more gray).

Curiosity landed within Gale Crater, a portion of which is pictured here. The mountain at the center of the crater, called Mount Sharp, is located out of frame to the southeast. North is up.

This image was acquired at an angle of 30 degrees from straight down, looking west. Another image looking more directly down will be acquired in five days, completing a stereo pair along with this image.

The scale of this image cutout is about 12 inches (31 centimeters) per pixel.

HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the orbiter's HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft.

Image credit: NASNASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona


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## Jcgrey

NASA to Host Curiosity Rover Teleconference today.
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 10:30 a.m. PDT (1:30 p.m. EDT), Friday, Aug. 17, to provide a status update on the Curiosity rover's mission to Mars' Gale Crater. 
Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are checking out Curiosity's subsystems and 10 instruments. Curiosity is in the opening days of a two-year mission to investigate whether conditions have been favorable for microbial life and preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life. 
Mission team members are "living" on Mars time. A Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, meaning team members start their shift 40 minutes later each day. The scheduling of this teleconference and other Curiosity media events is determined by their availability. 
Audio of the event will be streamed live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio . 
Visuals will be available at the start of the teleconference at: http://go.nasa.gov/curiositytelecon . 
For more information about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .


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## Jcgrey

*Rover's Laser Instrument Zaps First Martian Rock*

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819165256.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2012) - Today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."

The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.

The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.

"We got a great spectrum of Coronation -- lots of signal," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. "Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it's payoff time!"

ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark at each of the 30 pulses. The goal of this initial use of the laser on Mars was to serve as target practice for characterizing the instrument, but the activity may provide additional value. Researchers will check whether the composition changed as the pulses progressed. If it did change, that could indicate dust or other surface material being penetrated to reveal different composition beneath the surface. The spectrometers record intensity at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.
"It's surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio," said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. "It's so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years."

The technique used by ChemCam, called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, has been used to determine composition of targets in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, and has had experimental applications in environmental monitoring and cancer detection. Today's investigation of Coronation is the first use of the technique in interplanetary exploration.
Curiosity landed on Mars two weeks ago, beginning a two-year mission using 10 instruments to assess whether a carefully chosen study area inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

ChemCam was developed, built and tested by the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project, including Curiosity, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.
More information about ChemCam is available at


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## OrbitalResonance

lazer hole is smaller than i expected


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## Jcgrey

*Mars rover: Wind sensor damaged on Nasa's Curiosity*

Source: *BBC*

21 August 2012 Last updated at 20:03 GMT

*Mars rover: Wind sensor damaged on Nasa's Curiosity*

By Jonathan Amos 
Science correspondent

Nasa has reported its first setback in the Curiosity rover mission to Mars.

A sensor on the robot's weather station that takes wind readings has sustained damage.

The mission team stresses this is not a major problem and will merely degrade some measurements - not prevent them.

It is not certain how the damage occurred but engineers suspect surface stones thrown up during Curiosity's rocket-powered landing may have struck sensor circuits and broken the wiring.

*-snip-*

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19338870


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## Jcgrey

*New HD Video Lets You Plummet to Mars With Curiosity*

By Adam Mann

Watching this amazing high-definition video of Curiosity's hair-raising landing on Mars will make you clutch at your armrest. Compiled from the probe's MARDI descent camera, it is the best landing video yet and gives you a chance to experience what it's like to ride along with the rover down to the Martian surface.

The video starts with Curiosity's heat shield being jettisoned from its landing stage body - comprised of the rover tucked up beneath a UFO-like platform. The rover hovers for a while under its parachute, wobbling back and forth as it takes in the spectacular view of craters and the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, its eventual target. Vertigo kicks in as the rover dives lower and the engines kick in for Curiosity's powered descent sequence.

Though they can't be seen in the video, the rover gets lowered down on 25-foot-long cables for its "sky crane" maneuver near the end. Just before hitting the Martian soil, the engines kick up a huge amount of dust and pebbles, which obscures the ground and may be responsible for damaging one of Curiosity's wind sensors. The soft landing went off with pitch-perfect precision and was a big victory for NASA engineers.

This video was compiled by visual effects editor Daniel Luke Fitch from the high-resolution images that the rover has beamed back. All but a few frames from the descent video have come back at this point, with low-res thumbnails filling in for the missing ones in the video. The images have been enhanced with noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening "to make it look as good as it could," said Fitch.






more 
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/hd-curiosity-landing/


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## Jcgrey

On sol 13 Curiosity took a few more images to add the peak of Mt Sharp/ Aeolis Mons into the initial panorama from Bradbury Landing. Here is my attempt to add these images and to extend the sky to make the composition a bi better.










And here is a crop with slight enhancement of just the mountain (Mt Sharp or Aeolis Mons). A sight to behold! 









Truly impressive full size versions at link 
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/msl3v3


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## DeniseAfterAll

Jcgrey said:


> On sol 13 Curiosity took a few more images to add the peak of Mt Sharp/ Aeolis Mons into the initial panorama from Bradbury Landing. Here is my attempt to add these images and to extend the sky to make the composition a bi better.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here is a crop with slight enhancement of just the mountain (Mt Sharp or Aeolis Mons). A sight to behold!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Truly impressive full size versions at link
> http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/msl3v3


Do you know how badly I wanna finger some of those rocks and pebbles?


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## Jcgrey

Me too! err. umm yep


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## OrbitalResonance

You Pebbleiles :no

:]


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## Jcgrey

^ Awesome image!!



> high-resolution shot of the Curiosity rover's ultimate goal: the stratified flanks of Gale Crater's 3.4-mile (5.5-km) high central peak, Mount Sharp. The image was taken with Curiosity's 100mm telephoto Mastcam as a calibration test&#8230; if views like this are what we can expect from the MSL mission, all I can say is (and I've said it before) GO CURIOSITY!
> 
> "This is an area on Mount Sharp where Curiosity will go," said Mastcam principal investigator Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems. "Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune field is between us and those layers. In front of the dark sand you see redder sand, with a different composition suggested by its different color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity - some rounded, some angular, with different histories. This is a very rich geological site to look at and eventually to drive through."


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## Jcgrey

*N165 aka Coronation ‏@N165Mars 
Want to see my night sky? 1. Get free software http://www.stellarium.org 2. Set location Mars, 4.49°S, 137.42°E. 3. Come visit, look up. #dreambig *

Pretty sweet. I already had Stellarium and setting the coordinates was a snap. First thing I did was look for home. Earth is a morning star right now from Mars.


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## millenniumman75

Hearing about the weather conditions there is fascinating to me

but 

It just occurred to me....they technically can't say "geology" there since they are talking about Mars. "Geo" is supposed to mean Earth, isn't it?


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## Jcgrey

Technically it comes from Greek for 'earth study' Geology that is. I suppose the correct term is astrogeology.


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## Jcgrey

NASA Curiosity Rover Begins Eastbound Trek on Martian Surface
08.29.12

 Soil clinging to the right middle and rear wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can be seen in this image taken by the Curiosity's Navigation Camera after the rover's third drive on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 
› Full image and caption › Latest images › Curiosity gallery › Curiosity videos

 
On Aug. 28, 2012, during the 22nd Martian day, or sol, after landing on Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover drove about 52 feet (16 meters) eastward, the longest drive of the mission so far. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 
› Full image and caption

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has set off from its landing vicinity on a trek to a science destination about a quarter mile (400 meters) away, where it may begin using its drill. 
The rover drove eastward about 52 feet (16 meters) on Tuesday, its 22nd Martian day after landing. This third drive was longer than Curiosity's first two drives combined. The previous drives tested the mobility system and positioned the rover to examine an area scoured by exhaust from one of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft engines that placed the rover on the ground.

"This drive really begins our journey toward the first major driving destination, Glenelg, and it's nice to see some Martian soil on our wheels," said mission manager Arthur Amador of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The drive went beautifully, just as our rover planners designed it." 
Glenelg is a location where three types of terrain intersect. Curiosity's science team chose it as a likely place to find a first rock target for drilling and analysis. 
"We are on our way, though Glenelg is still many weeks away," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "We plan to stop for just a day at the location we just reached, but in the next week or so we will make a longer stop."

During the longer stop at a site still to be determined, Curiosity will test its robotic arm and the contact instruments at the end of the arm. At the location reached Tuesday, Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) will collect a set of images toward the mission's ultimate driving destination, the lower slope of nearby Mount Sharp. A mosaic of images from the current location will be used along with the Mastcam images of the mountain taken at the spot where Curiosity touched down, Bradbury Landing. This stereo pair taken about 33 feet (10 meters) apart will provide three-dimensional information about distant features and possible driving routes.

Curiosity is three weeks into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.


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## Aphexfan

OrbitalResonance said:


> You Pebbleiles :no
> 
> :]


Amazing image!!


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## Jcgrey

But alongside these show pieces, Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - is already warming up its instruments for a science mission of unprecedented scope on the Red Planet.

Nasa said that the rover was already returning more data from Mars than all of the agency's earlier rovers combined. 
*** 
For now it is examining the "scour marks" left by the rocket-powered crane that lowered the rover onto the planet's surface, giving some insight into what lies just below it. 
*** 
But what has caught the interest of Nasa engineers already is what is called an "unconformity" spotted in the rover's first images of Mount Sharp.

The term refers to an evidently missing piece in the geological record, where one layer of sediment does not geologically neatly line up with that above it. 
*** 
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19396270


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## Jcgrey

09.04.2012
Curiosity Checks Sample of Martian Atmosphere

Mars Rover Curiosity in Artist's Concept, Wide
This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life.
​
Curiosity continued to work in good health during the Labor Day weekend. The rover drove 98 feet (30 meters) during the mission's Sol 26, on Sept. 1. The drive included a test of the rover's "visual odometry" capability for using onboard analysis of images to determine the distance it has driven. Sol 26 activities also included an empty-cell test analysis by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM) analyzed a sample of Martian atmosphere as an overnight activity from Sol 27 to Sol 28 (Sept. 2 to Sept. 3).
Planned activities for Sol 29 (Sept. 4) include another drive.
Sol 28, in Mars local mean solar time at Gale Crater, ended at 1:58 a.m. Sept. 4, PDT.


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## Jcgrey

*Nasa's Curiosity rover 'sniffs' Martian air (BBC)*

By Jonathan Amos

Science correspondent, BBC News

Nasa's Curiosity rover has measured the Red Planet's atmospheric composition.

The robot sucked the air into its big Sample Analysis at Mars (Sam) instrument to reveal the concentration of different gases.

It is the first time that the chemistry of the atmosphere has been tested from the surface of the planet since the Viking landers in the 1970s.

The Sam analysis is ongoing but no major surprises are expected at this stage - carbon dioxide will dominate.

CO2 is the chief component of the Martian air, as the Viking probes found. Of keener interest will be whether a signal for methane has been detected by Curiosity. 
*** 
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19513490


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## Jcgrey

More pictures at link...

Yes, the Curiosity rover is on the move, evidenced by the rover tracks seen from above by the outstanding HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. If you look closely, visible are the rover's wheels and even the camera mast. While this image's color has been enhanced to show the surface details better, this is still an amazing view of Curiosity's activities, displaying the incredible resolving power of the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.










The two "blue" marks (blue is, of course, false color) seen near the site where the rover landed were formed when reddish surface dust was blown away by the rover's descent stage, revealing darker basaltic sands underneath. Similarly, the tracks appear darker where the rover's wheels disturbed the top layer of dust.

http://www.universetoday.com/97233/curiosity-on-the-move-hirise-spies-rover-tracks-on-mars/


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## Jcgrey

*Curiosity's drill could contaminate Mars*

For all the hopes NASA has pinned on the rover it deposited on Mars last month, one wish has gone unspoken: Please don't find water.

Scientists don't believe they will. They chose the cold, dry equatorial landing site in Mars' Gale Crater for its geology, not its prospects for harboring water or ice, which exist elsewhere on the planet.

But if by chance the rover Curiosity does find H2O, a controversy that has simmered at NASA for nearly a year will burst into the open. Curiosity's drill bits may be contaminated with Earth microbes. If they are, and if those bits touch water, the organisms could survive.

The possible contamination of the drill bits occurred six months before the rover's launch last Nov. 26. The bits had been sterilized inside a box to be opened only after Curiosity landed on Mars.

more 
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mars-contaminate-20120910,0,365701.story


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## millenniumman75

I don't like the idea of Earth microbes on Mars. That is just wrong on so many levels.
I hope they don't find water either.

I can't breathe on Mars, but I have always known that. I want to hear more about their weather, so the air thing is pretty neat.


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## T-Bone

The number of homes that could have been built, the number of children fed and clothed, that much more money to find/create new and better sources of energy....but no. We have this. Human curiosity at it's most pointless. What.. a.. drag.


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## Jcgrey

*Most valuable penny of universe helping Mars Curiosity rover*

Most valuable penny of universe helping Mars Curiosity rover

A century-old coin which is currently helping NASA's Curiosity rover explore the surface of Mars has been hailed as the most valuable penny in the universe.

The coin, one of the first batch of Lincoln pennies ever minted, is a tool to help scientists calibrate the hi-tech cameras of the rover, which is sending an amazing series of images from the Red planet back to Earth.

According to Gizmodo, If you calculate the share of the voyage's cost which is attributable to the 2.5-gram penny, it comes out at USD 7,000.

The coin is part of the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera, pictures of which have recently been beamed back from Mars, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

Pennies are traditionally used by geologists to provide a sense of scale in their pictures.

Even though Curiosity has other, more sophisticated calibrators, NASA has still included the penny in homage to the scientific custom.

This penny is not just any coin - it was minted in 1909, when the Lincoln design was first instituted on the 100th anniversary of the Great Emancipator.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/m...niverse-helping-mars-curiosity-rover/1000157/ 
The coin is a 'VDB cent', marked with the initials of its designer Victor David Brenne


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## Jcgrey

*Curiosity Finds Evidence of An Ancient Streambed on Mars*









NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

The Curiosity rover has come across a place in Gale Crater where ankle-to-hip-deep water once vigorously flowed: an ancient streambed containing evidence of gravel that has been worn by water. At a press briefing today, members of the Mars Science Laboratory team said the rover has found "surprising" outcrops and gravel near the rover landing site that indicate water once flowed in this region, and likely flowed for a long time.

"Too many things that point away from a single burst event," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "I'm comfortable to argue that it is beyond the 1,000 year timescales, even though this is very early on in our findings."

"Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient streambed," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/97620/curiosity-finds-evidence-of-an-ancient-streambed-on-mars/


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## Jcgrey

Mars Curiosity rover stops sampling to check out shiny object seen on surface 
The Curiosity rover is stopping its sampling of soil from the surface of Mars because of a shiny object noticed on the ground.

A photo released by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Curiosity's first scoop of Martian soil also revealed a bright object nearby.

The planned sampling has been stopped so that scientists can get some additional images of the unknown object and assess any impact on the rover's activities.​
More at link, with photos


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## Jcgrey

The Mars Rover found a bit of material on the Martian soil that appeared distinctly unnatural... a material that appeared to be the product of technology. There was some interest and speculation about the amazing artifact.

See the shiny sharp-edged thing in the center...










The intelligent race that created the artifact has been identified.

It's a piece of the Mars Rover that fell off. 
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.co...bject-likely-rover-plastic.php?ref=fpnewsfeed


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## Jcgrey

*New 'Shiny' Objects Found by Curiosity Rover Are Likely Indigenous*










A bright particle found inside a scoop hole created by the Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Last weekend, the Mars Curiosity rover scooped out a few "bites" in the small, sandy dune known as Rocknest and inside the second scoop hole was a small, shiny particle, as we reported earlier. This speck - and others like it in the pit - is different than the previous object that looked like plastic and may have come from the rover itself. After some analysis, the MSL science team thinks the shiny particle is just part of the soil on Mars.

"As the science team thought about it more and more, the bright object is about the same size as the granules that it's in and it is not uniformly bright," said John Grotziner, MSL project scientist. "We went back and forth, and the majority of the science team thinks this is indigenous to Mars."

And so, Grotziner said, these shiny objects likely represent a science opportunity rather than an engineering hazard.

http://www.universetoday.com/98080/new-shiny-objects-found-by-curiosity-rover-are-likely-indigenous/


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