Curiosity will rock the world! Mars Rover UPDATES - - October 13 latest Martian panorama..

"We must now reconsider and question all the successes scientists are so proud of. Is true progress a matter of sending spacecraft to other planets? And to do what, after all? To exploit their resources and introduce the same disorder we have created on earth? Why go and disturb the entire universe now? There is nothing wrong with wanting to explore the cosmos, but not before we have understood and resolved certain things here on earth. People have no respect; they think they are free to go anywhere without concern for the upheavals they cause. But one day they will pay dearly for this violence. As long as scientists have no other goal but to give people the means to assault nature, to dig it up and exploit it, with no consideration whatsoever for the damage they do, they have no right to be proud of the so-called progress they bring about for civilization."

Excitement building for the next MSL presser in 45 min:
[link to forum.nasaspaceflight.com]

&

[link to www.unmannedspaceflight.com]


hint at MARDI goodies to be shown...

Drumroll, please... the latest news & images from Mars via @NASAJPL, 4 pm PDT (2300 UTC) Watch live:
[link to www.ustream.tv]

This is the rover that landed via a "Sky Crane", therefore it is obviously better at taking photos!

Here's the first pic!!!

:mars-pic:

:giggler:

Great pic!
Soros funds the Alien Spring!

[youtube]
[link to youtu.be]

how do you post a youtube link like you did?

Alien Spring!

LMAO!

New Mars Rover to Raise Its Camera-Packed 'Head' Today


On Monday — the mission's first Martian day, or Sol 1 — the six-wheeled robot was slated to deploy its high-gain antenna, enabling better communications directly with Earth. The Curiosity team also planned to take a five-hour measurement with the rover's Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD. [Gallery: Mars Rover Curiosity Landing Success]

And today, on Sol 2, Curiosity will untuck its instrument-studded head, which is officially known as the Remote Sensing Mast (RSM).

"The big thing on Sol 2 is the RSM deploy," said mission manager Mike Watkins, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory here. The mast hosts four navigation cameras, or navcams, and these should get their first workout today as well, Watkins added.

More:
[link to www.space.com]

First color image from Curiosity rover: It looks dusty on Mars


First color image from Curiosity rover
[link to scinewsblog.blogspot.de]


and dont forget for NASA documents on HiRISE and the MRO, check out the NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS):
[link to ntrs.nasa.gov]

Google Doodle Pays Subtle Homage To Mars Rover Curiosity


:googlemarscurios:

More:
[link to techcrunch.com]

Actually, about that first color image.....

The lens dust cover s still on and will not be removed until other tests are completed. The dust kicked up from the landing jets have clouded most of the cameras and will be removed within 2 or 3 days.

We can expect crystal clear images very soon.

ah yep big thx for this!


What does Mount Sharp look like on Mars? Check it out -- Here are the latest images from the Mars Curiosity rover:
[link to www.nasa.gov]

Tired of looking at a red planet? Check out this stunning first image of a blue planet by Europe's MSG-3
[link to www.onorbit.com]

Curosity big boy hobbies funded by people who will not be able to buy food in the near future.

Curiosity sol 1 and planned activities for the next few sols



I hardly know where to begin writing today: so much information! I'm going to have to break it into chunks and handle one at a time.

There was a press briefing this morning, featuring mission manager Mike Watkins along with MAHLI principal investigator Ken Edgett and HiRISE scientist Sarah Milkovich. After it was over, I asked Mike Watkins to explain to me what the plans are for the next few sols. I'll cover the cool HiRISE image of the landing site and the MAHLI image in separate blog entries.

By the way, a "sol" is a Martian day, about 24 hours and 40 minutes long. I'll often use "tosol," "yestersol," and (more rarely) "nextersol" (a word I learned from Scott Maxwell) to mean today, yesterday, and tomorrow in Martian days. It's important to distinguish time reckoned on Earth from time reckoned on Mars because of the different rate at which solar days elapse; "tomorrow" means the Earth day after this, August 8; "next sol" or "nextersol" means Curiosity sol 3, since it's currently sol 2 at Gale crater....


ReadMore:
[link to www.planetary.org]

Follow your curiosity

Very cool Mars Curiosity rover desktop
[link to allsizewallpapers.blogspot.co.uk]

Someone's already stitched together the start of a panorama from the NavCam images that were sent down overnight:

[link to www.nivnac.co.uk]

wow nice one !

OK, so after all of the money spent on this, what have we learned?..

..that Mars is as dead as we always knew it was!

OK, great! Now what? Can we get a refund? What good is all of this doing and/or going to do for mankind?

Now that link was worth clicking on, great job !

This is a great thread, negativity for a few poster won't bring me down. Please try to look at the bright side AC, we have great images and you might learn something.

Latest pic from Curiosity shows shadow of rover's head (and cool Atari logo!)

[link to lightsinthedark.wordpress.com]


:robonautweight:

There's two more years to go.


We did?


It's planetary science.
Each planet is a special case of the processes that make a planet.
Studying other planets helps us understand these processes in general and will help us to understand the Earth better.

For the long run, since when has exploration and basic research not benefited mankind?

I'm just saying, we've had plenty going on at/with Mars for years now, why send another rover there? Why not to somewhere else with potential?

Why not spend the money on going back to the Moon and doing something meaningful? There are all kinds of resources there. How about colonizing it? Hell, it's many millions of miles closer, and we could actually do something there.

I just don't see how and/or who makes these decisions?

Other planets and moons are even harder to send landers to with current tech and budget restrains.
And there is still a lot to learn from Mars.


Exploitation and colonisation is not really NASA's bailiwick.
That's more for private corporations.
Private corporations willing and able to invest hundreds of billions in such an endeavour.


Basically the White House and Congress.
NASA itself can only suggest projects. Its budget isn't a bag of money each year, it's an itemised list. Do this, do that, at these and these expenditures.

Picture doing a remote software upgrade. Now picture doing it when the machine you're upgrading is a robotic rover sitting 350 million miles away, on the surface of Mars. That's what a team of programmers and engineers at NASA are dealing with as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity, which landed safely on the Red Planet earlier this week. 'We need to take a whole series of steps to make that software active. You have to imagine that if something goes wrong with this, it could be the last time you hear from the rover,' said Steve Scandore, a senior flight software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'It has to work,' he told Computerworld. 'You don't' want to be known as the guy doing the last activity on the rover before you lose contact.


ReadMore:
[link to www.computerworld.com]

Let's hope it's not Windows operating system.

Would you fly in an aircraft made by Micro$oft?

Space IS Earth.

No more than we can afford to ignore the fact that we are living on a changing planet with a fragile biome, can we afford to ignore that this same planet is in a changing solar system about an energetic but temporary nuclear reaction.

What we study "out there" tells us just as much about what is "right here."