Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm getting quite excited about this now. Such an ambitious and audacious piece of engineering. I hope it all works.

Anyone else planning on getting up early to watch?

How early? I probably won't be able to, but I think it is proper exciting, and really good that we can and are doing this sort of thing. But i'm totally gay for space travel, anyway.

Half six I think.

Thanks. I'm up then anyway, so might stick the stream on over breakfast.

Or you could have a shower beforehand.

What a waste of money. Would be better off building skateparks.

?

Outstanding!

Impressive

So the idea of Curiosity is to send back results on soil samples & pictures.
How long will he run for?

Cracking pictures up minutes after landing

At current levels of fitness, about thirty seconds.

but not if you stay up late the night before, you idiot.

According to the Guardian the mission is for a year...but I'm sure they'll be hoping that they can run for longer as per the other two ickle rovers.

Presumably though since this one is nuclear rather than solar powered they will know precisely how much power they have.

I give it 40 years before we are mining Mars for minerals.

I just hope those Libyan terrorists don't find out that the bomb they were given was made out of pinball machine parts, and that the scientists can continue to use their plutonium vehicle in peace.

Seriously touching giddy hugs in Nasa control, I found it very sweet. Good luck and excelsior to you, Curiosity!

That's a Martian year, almost two years our time. And it's "at least as long", meaning the scientists cannot guarantee nothing will break down beyond that; presumably it stands a good chance of lasting a lot longer.

Curiosity cost $2.5bn. The Olympics were $19bn. Hmmm.

So according to the MSL project manager:

I'm not impressed. So far it's just pages and pages of pictures of a baby.

They should have sent Myp.

Hmmm indeed mate, like you also I suspect, I know which of these two projects I consider to be of greater value. But anyway.

This is fantastic news. I can't wait to hear details of the data that's yielded, particularly as regards any evidence of fossilised microbial life.

In terms of the operational lifetime of the craft, the figure given is probably conservative; I would not be at all surprised to see this rover operate for at least double the stated objective time duration, barring any catastrophic accident (as actually happened way back in the Soviet era with their second Lunar rover, Lunokhod 2 - the first non-terrestrial traffic accident lol).

I think you'll find the Olympics cost $7388482527 trillion.

At least.

And it'll be quadruple that by tomorrow.

Yeah, but you still cost $2.5 billion, so I'd keep quiet.

Because I'm worth it.

*strokes hair*

I deal with the motor manufacturer in the (previous) rovers and they are so chuffed with the performance of their motors on freaking Mars! They spent ages working on them to guarantee the minimum mission time, and they are still going, way over that! It is bloody impressive stuff.

So this new rover is much more advanced in terms of sciency stuff and on board laboratory right? Did the other rovers have on board laboratories and material collectors?
Can they get the old rovers that still work to bring their material to the new rover instead? They could have a little rover shindig on mars.

That would be a little like getting someone in London to meet up with someone in Los Angeles and someone in Hong Kong, and all they can do is walk (ignore the oceans for a minute)

Malc

Oh and one of you has a limp and another one is paralysed.

Malc

Don't talk to me about details, i'm just the big picture man.

picture this: it's big.

From memory, the surface area of Mars is larger than the surface area of land on Earth.

Malc

Bullshit. I've seen it in person, and it's tiny.

Next you're going to tell me that's because it's really, really far away.

Look, they are all on the same picture, how far apart can they be if they fit on a 3 inch long photo!

Cool time lapse of the descent...In Color!

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogal ... =149974611

...but very small

http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

Actual mars and everthing, in HD and stuff.

That's amazing.

Coo, very cool.

How come they all land in roughly the same area? What happens if life is on mars but it's on the other size of the equator?

HD version of the plummet...truly we live in the greatest of times

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/ ... y-landing/

That's awesome. Thank you.

Jesus Christ. What was I saying about comments on websites earlier? An example from that Wired link:

"I don't agree. The US lets European countries participate with their own pieces just to make them happy. The way you do when you ask a 4 years old child to help you with a market investment decision. He/she gives you an answer, you make them feel lie they are important, and once you achieve some result you tell them they helped. Europeans are not different. But without the US Europeans wouldn't even have toilet paper"

Sigh.

Stop reading comment sections, they are only there to tempt you over into the 'krazy-sphere'.

Lubberly

Although looking at it I can't help but think that Classic Who got it right when visualising all alien worlds as a gravel pit.

Think of the awesome skate park they could build there!

Seriously though, the images coming back are such high quality it's like you could be standing there on another planet - freaky.

I agree. Although it does make me smile slightly that the only way to get people interested in geology is to do it on Mars.

Incredibly clear picture of bits of the rover where it has found a small silver thing that might have fallen off it. I'm liking the "yeah, cable ties'll sort it, no worries" approach to tidiness, too.