How NASA Will Bring the Phoenix Mars Mission To the Web

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.'"

Comments

And it's about time:

[Fluffeh]

It's about time NASA did some of this good old fashioned PR stuff. This sort of thing - just letting people get caught up in the awe of it all - is so much better than any other PR that they could possibly do.

A company that showed me something that they did, that let me get swept away by the sheer audacity of it? That let me be instantly teleported to some other planet in our solar system through amazing photographs? That let me stand on the surface of another planet - even if only in my mind?

Yeah, that's the sort of company that I can
Open my checkbook for.
Petition my local congressman/senator/governing body for.
Happily teach my kids about.
Generally go out of my way for.

Re:And it's about time:

[CraftyJack]

Petition my local congressman/senator/governing body for. Please remember to do this. The many people that have brought Phoenix this far (fingers crossed) have been at it for quite some time. It takes many man-hours to do it right. If the funding isn't there, it can't happen.

This concludes my Sally Struthers moment.

Re:i remember the spirit landing

[eln]

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

Step 1: Get DirecTV
Step 2: That is all.

I know that's not what you meant, just thought I'd point out that NASA TV is on DirecTV, that's where I saw the Deep Impact comet impact happen. It was truly thrilling seeing it all unfold in real time.

World Wide Web

[JuzzFunky]

I guess the term World Wide Web is now totally obsolete...
Solar System Wide Web?

Re:memories are funny things

[Ford Prefect]

Even now, I see the despare that is in the 20-35 y.o. WRT human space flights. Yet, if we really want to explore AND to preserve mankind, then we MUST go along. The reason is that at this time, we are the best tool. High maintence, but still the only flexable tool.

I'm 28. On my shelves are books like Full Moon, a NASA atlas of the solar system, a biography of Sergei Korolev... I'm a bit of a space nut in my spare time (and did the astrophysics degree to prove it).

Human spaceflight is fascinating, but right now it's utterly useless for exploring our own solar system, let alone further afield. There's just way too much sodding plumbing you have to take along too. A radiation-hardened processor controlling a space probe is one thing, but the necessary life support mechanisms, living area, exercise machines, lavatory facilities, windows to look out of, paper underpants, DVD players, Tang, freeze-dried noodles and the machinery necessary to reprocess piss and shit into something more palatable... Humans just aren't designed for spaceflight.

If most of the non-fuel mass of your spacecraft is solely there to stop the human passengers from coughing their guts into hard vacuum, you may be doing something wrong. A far smaller craft which doesn't care less about the one-way nature of its mission, laden with scientific instrumentation designed solely to learn about its destination - that's more like it. And, compared with the human alternative, they're both cheap and disposable - so if something does go wrong, launch another one...

I'd love for humans to walk on the surface of Mars within my lifetime. But I also accept that it would just be another, magnificent white elephant along the lines of the original Apollo missions to the moon - no chance of living off the land when you're so utterly dependent on the exact hardware that took you there. We're more likely to progress long-term by investing in genuinely novel solutions to problems, even if they remain unmanned for the foreseeable future - and the wealth of knowledge about our solar system that we'll have gained from such robotic space probes will be invaluable when we do finally get round to those real attempts at colonisation...

Re:memories are funny things

[Cally]

Yet, if we really want to explore AND to preserve mankind, then we MUST go along. Look, if you can't accept that humans will go extinct one day, here's a whisky and perspective. Life is short, get used to it. I can't understand how so many intelligent people really think the future of humanity is something like a bad 60s movie with everyone living in domes on the moon. IT'S NOT SUSTAINABLE. How is that so hard to understand? A popular way to look at this is to ask: why isn't the future of humanity living in the middle of the Gobi desert?: It's millions of times easier to get there and to live there, and there's a lot more there that's useful to humans than there is on the kmoon (setting aside pure knowledge for the sake of knowing - which is a different argument altogether.) Whenever I express this opinion here on /. I'm -1 troll'd in seconds flat, so mods - before you mod me down - take the time to tell me WHY? What do you know about physics that I don't? Note, resorting to metaphysical arguments about Destiny won't get you anywhere. Real physics (and biology, psychology, social psychology etc) trumps metaphysics every time, I'm afraid.

As much as I dislike W, he has the right idea in going back to the moon. Even if you agree with the goal, which I don't, there's not much point saying "go back to the moon!" when you don't provide the neccessary funding. Hence the gutting on the unmanned Mars program (did you know NASA will be missing two out of three of the next bi-annual Mars launch slots, because the MSL (Mars Science Lab) mega-rover has spent all the money?)