heise online has created a self-image of Curiosity.



more can be found here:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Mars-Sonde-Curiosity-Gesendete-Bilder-ermoeglichen-Panoramaaufnahmen-1663717.html

Indeed! Sweet 360 degrees panorama around Curiosity:


This is still the low-res stuff though, it was actually assembled from hundreds of 144x144 images.

You can see a greyish area on the ground to the right; that's the result of the rocket exhaust from the skycrane lowering the rover to the ground blowing away some of the surface red dust and revealing the bedrock underneath (yes, Mars is only red on its very thin top layer).

Also, a cool pic from MRO showing where the different parts of Curiosity's descent and landing apparatus ended up (the rover itself is labeled MSL on there, for Mars Science Laboratory):

Stunning HB, I absolutely cannot fucking wait for the Hi-res pics.

When I was younger I expected to be traveling to other star systems by now, not still tooling around Mars.

I'll take what I can get, don't take me wrong: but "amazing progress" is a bit much for me. In my view our refusal as a society and race to see the great benefits of space exploration has stunted our growth.

In short: I want more. Much, much more.

Interstellar travel is a hundred years off, and that's just for unmanned probes. I think something will be launched in the 'near' future, but even then it would take 50 years to get there at least and another 4.5 years for it to reach us. That's just to the nearest star.

It'd be a stretch to say that 2050 is the earliest to launch a mission like this. Maybe 2150? Manned missions are farther off.

This is going by current technological achievements. You never know, we might discover some way to easily transcend the limit of lightspeed and be off to the stars by the 22nd century.

Or we might have so many problems on Earth that the farthest a manned mission ever gets is Mars.

Cowboy Bebop says colonizing the solar system is possible by 2071, so they better get crackin'.

Voyager would like a word with you.

Err... what? Voyager took 35 years to get near the edge of the solar system, 18 billion km away. The nearest star is more than 40 trillion km away, dude. Simply exiting our comparatively small solar system is nowhere near actual interstellar travel to another star.

I think he mixed up interstellar travel with travel through interstellar space.

Must've been that. I took that as a comment as to how long it would take to reach interstellar space, not a star. That's what I get for not paying proper attention.

Check out the surface of Mars

http://mars.arounder.com/en/sightseeing ... onder.html

I can't wait till we have Google Mars the way we have Google Earth.

We got this: http://www.google.com/mars/

I'm so glad that some else here likes Dork Tower, too. Kovalic is a nice fellow, BTW, and seeing him explaining the origins of the Munchkin characters in a con about a century ago was illuminating in many ways.

More to the point of this thread, two items:
1) http://vimeo.com/45878034
2) Perseids tonight. Go out, look to the skies.

Sorry, I'm not really familiar with it other than knowing the name, actually. I just saw this one linked somewhere.



Pretty awesome.

Based on a 20 minute sample, the Perseids are still nicely active. Leave the computer, get out, let your eyes adjust for a while, and watch patiently; they are a rewarding sight if you get just a bit lucky.

Every time I check this thread what immediately comes to my mind is this. Awesome stuff, keep it coming so lazy me doesn't have to keep track of everything myself

They were awesome. Truly awesome. Would be cool to see the martian night sky from the rover's perspective.

Watch Curiosity's descent (simulation),

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia ... dex-2.html

Hi-res Mars panorama: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA16051.jpg

Interesting, one of Anthrax's songs was played on Mars.

http://www.metalunderground.com/news/de ... wsid=83642

It's likely each staff member was allowed one song to put onto the playlist.

Curiosity started rolling today.




In other news, NASA's next Mars mission is now set to launch in 2016. It will be a lander called InSight, based on Phoenix's design, that will carry instruments (such as a drill and seismograph) to study Mars' interior.

Yeah, it'll be a while before it reaches Mount Sharp (by the end of the year, so they say). It's doing more than I expected, too. So far it's tracing the radiations levels, reading air/temperatures, and more.

Nothing's disastrous about that damaged wind sensor right?

Heh. We don't think alike, which is cool.

If there was some kind of raffle for people to be put on a spaceship heading to another planet to live the rest of their lives, I would enter the raffle.

Not that I hate it here. I love it. But I've always wanted to journey elsewhere....be that pioneer to another star system.

I guess I'm a bit of a dreamer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19381098

Uh oh, Neil Armstrong died.

There aren't many people you can call a worldwide hero. Lots of national heroes. But someone who did something for the whole world?

Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong are 2 of these heroes. And now both are gone. RIP Neil Armstrong.

I would have demanded in my will to be buried on (nicer words for "shot to the") moon, but that's just me. R.I.P.

R.I.P.

Or shot out into space Star Trek style. Poor bastard.

Let's see... If I ever manage live up to 82, I personally think there would be absolutely NO reason to call me a "poor bastard". I'd consider that winning. If I got to walk on the Moon, that would be a huge bonus on top of that.

What a weird way to put it, dude.

Yep, a great life. To be celebrated.

Holy shit, amazing photo of Mount Sharp:





Edit: while it may look like a small hill, that's actually a huge faraway mountain. Look at this composite photo with the distances marked:

I'm assuming that Curiosity was on a hill when it took the photo?

Anyway, yeah, that's amazing. How much longer is it going to take?

Yeah, he lived a full life

So we got to go to the observatory today for Astronomy, what a blast. I'll get a pick of some of the telescopes campus has if anyone's interested- it's some pretty cool stuff for a such a small school.

To reach the mountain? The current plan is to spend about a year studying the rocks and soil of the crater floor while Curiosity slowly makes its way to the base of Mount Sharp.

Nothing like a bit of astronomy to help put human affairs into perspective. The Andromeda Galaxy alone contains more than a trillion stars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy