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How NASA Will Bring the Phoenix Mars Mission To the Web

Posted by Soulskill on from the real-time-feed-of-real-angry-martians dept.

lgmac brings us a story about how NASA will bring information from the Phoenix Mars lander to the internet in the coming days. CIO Magazine speaks with JPL's chief knowledge architect and others about how they'll provide massive amounts of data from the lander to suit the needs of an audience ranging from professors to 8-year-olds. We've been discussing the Phoenix mission for quite a while now. The landing is on schedule for Sunday at roughly 5PM PDT. "'In previous missions, a system like this didn't exist and people were sharing images via external drives,' Bitter says. Some of the images are put up immediately and captioned, or sent to museum audiences, while others are made part of huge mosaic pictures that display the majesty of what the NASA spacecraft encounters, she says. In addition to the sheer volume of data that must be sifted through, challenges included the large, dispersed team, Holm says. 'The content management system has to be easy to use and agnostic,' she says, 'It's all about speed and accuracy of data.' Video on the Web represents one of the biggest changes for modern-day missions for the public, Holm says. 'There's a visceral response we get from people. They feel like they're really there.'"

4 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. If NASA gets slashdotted... by 3waygeek · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Science Channel will have live coverage Sunday night between 7 & 9 PM ET.

  2. Re:i remember the spirit landing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If the webcast is unavailable due to overwhelming demand (there's a lot of nerds out there...slashdotting sometimes even happens to NASA), you might try the local public access TV channel. The one here in Portland often picks up the NASA TV broadcast for major events like this, and they take it from the satellite broadcast, so NASA TV server bandwidth isn't a problem.

    If you're really hardcore, there's instructions on the NASA TV site for how to receive the digital satellite broadcast.

  3. Re:And it's about time: by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative

    But it's a bit hit and miss. Along with funding the creation of some good youtube videos, and some good web design, they're also blowing a whole bunch of cash on a Second Life presence.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. They Don't Run IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Actually they don't run IP from the spacecraft as generally bandwidth is scarce and IP is for this purpose atleast bandwidth wasteful. But I beleive they are looking into it. but not using traditional TCP/IP through.

    -AC