FUCK YEAH! Curiousity landed okay and sending images

[Bill]

Excellent. Pretty much the best that humans can do has just been done.

[Cleo]

Work up at 2 am and had to check if it had been successful and was amazed that it was.

Fucking Awesome!

[Greenguy]

I'm following it on Twitter
https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity

Since you 2 seem to know a lot more than I do about it, can you post some good links/sites for us novice people to look at?

[cd34]

I watched it live from the time their livestream had 7800 viewers to the time it had over 200k.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

is the mission page, space.com had a really good writeup as well.

http://www.space.com/16385-curiosity...aboratory.html

The original 7 minutes of terror video:



A great tweet: Gold medal for NASA in the 563 billion meters

Matthew Inman (TheOatmeal) found this image in their hidden stash: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-h.../s407/mars.jpg

This was a fairly apt tweet:

https://twitter.com/JobVranish/statu...07550173925377

Another one of the first pictures:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-D...0/BaDumTss.jpg

[cthulhu_waves]

Let there be Martians. Let there be Martians. Let there be Martians.

[javbucks]

Originally Posted by cthulhu_waves

Let there be Martians. Let there be Martians. Let there be Martians.

Hope they come in peace

[cd34]

Another good image: http://i.imgur.com/GZUt9.png

Oreo's Tweet: https://twitter.com/Oreo/status/232264730700566528

[pc]

Originally Posted by cd34

Another good image: http://i.imgur.com/GZUt9.png

...

[Cleo]

NASA’s Nuclear-Powered Mars Rover Curiosity Essentially Has The Same Brain As A Bondi Blue iMac G3

Here’s an interesting little factoid for you. The Curiosity rover — which landed last night on Mars, remote controlled by a team of NASA scientists armed with MacBook Pros — runs on a RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer.

This computer, in turn, is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 CPU, which Intel first introduce on November 10, 1997. This CPU was used by Apple in many computers in the late 1990s, including the original iMac.

As one insightful redditor notes: “Curiosity is essentially a 2-CPU Power Macintosh G3 with some nifty peripherals and one HELL of a UPS.”

[Bill]

oh noes, now we got two years of mac snobbery to look forward to. or more.

lets hope it's more.

the pic with alien is funny.

[Cleo]

Just means that the average smart phone has way more computing power than the rover.

That Mac came out back when I was still doing computer consulting. I both loved it and hated it.

[Bill]

that seems to reveal an odd robot building engineering concept.

why wouldn't you build a robot like that with a design that uses computing technology only a few generations old?

couldn't you set up the engineering process so the computing functions can be updated as you go along?

I understand one needs to write all kinds of specialized programs, but, still, seems odd that they would accept such limitations.

[Bill]

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

[Cleo]

I wonder if there any images of it coming down on its rockets after the chute was released?

At some point they will probably locate the wreckage of the rockets.

Be really cool if it finds some fossils or something.

[pc]

Originally Posted by Bill

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

I think that if they were able to spot Curiosity landing with Reconnaissance Orbiter, their knowledge of Mars, orbiters science and technology and whole communication process is way more deeper than they are telling the public.
I'm not talking about conspiracy theory or any other top secret stuff that the internet is just full of it, aliens etc.. but just the ability of catching a landing moment of one space ship on Mars with another ship orbiting Mars, millions of miles from Earth is just astounding. NASA's super computing power and the ability to use those huge amount of data is definitely something.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Bill

Kinda cool

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/06/cur...ght-in-th.html

They cropped that photo:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...hield-spotted/

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Cleo

I wonder if there any images of it coming down on its rockets after the chute was released?

That's what MARDI was for



4 frames per second, 297 frames during landing.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by pc

I think that if they were able to spot Curiosity landing with Reconnaissance Orbiter, their knowledge of Mars, orbiters science and technology and whole communication process is way more deeper than they are telling the public.

We have two orbiting satellites going around Mars. One is part of the deep space network and is a relay station, i.e. low power transmissions go to it, it relays those back to earth. The other is a satellite that has been doing spectral scans of the surface. Both were near the landing zone on purpose so that they could possibly get pictures.

Cleo, we have used the orbiters to find older crashed stages, and, did find the Beagle (the UK lander that crashed) and confirmed it in late 2006 when the RO arrived.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/ shows some of the pictures - including pictures of Spirit and Opportunity.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Bill

that seems to reveal an odd robot building engineering concept.

why wouldn't you build a robot like that with a design that uses computing technology only a few generations old?

couldn't you set up the engineering process so the computing functions can be updated as you go along?

I understand one needs to write all kinds of specialized programs, but, still, seems odd that they would accept such limitations.

Millions and millions of existing lines of test code using that particular chipset which isn't compatible with today's chipsets. The OS that has been designed to handle these has been written over the years. They have extremely low power versions of these, while today's chips are still using 35-65 watts (the Curiosity has a total power output of 105 watts (I think)).

Basically, they picked the best chip at the time, wrote the OS around it - it was compatible with prior chips, does embedded very well, is reliable, true and tested, and they have millions of lines of code to support it.

In order to use newer chips, we have to fix their power consumption, deal with segmented memory architectures, etc. Though, segmented memory architecture is less noticeable now with 64bit CPUs.

[Cleo]

But does it have the Mac startup sound when it boots?

[pc]

The last rovers ( Spirit and Opportunity ) that landed on MARS, are still "alive" ?

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by pc

The last rovers ( Spirit and Opportunity ) that landed on MARS, are still "alive" ?

Just one of them are.

Not bad for robots that were only supposed to last for six months.

[cd34]

Everyone forgets poor Sojourner.



And the two Viking missions in 1975.

But yes, Opportunity (landed March 2004) and Curiosity are currently the only two landers operating on the planet. Orbiting, we have Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey.

[cd34]

Cleo:

The wreckage post: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ms.../PIA16001.html

[Bill]

Originally Posted by cd34

Everyone forgets poor Sojourner.

good candidate for best "before it was cool" ever.