Slashdot Mirror
Where To View the Mars Curiosity Landing
An anonymous reader writes "In addition to the NASA mission pages here's a decent list of links showing where you can view the Mars Curiosity Landing online or at an event. Does anyone have recommendations for other sources of coverage on August 6?"
I'll be joining the Fraser Cain hangout on G+. BA will also be there. :)
I've found spaceflightnow.com has some of the best coverage of space missions around. They usually have live updating mission status center and live streaming video and I'm sure this event will be no different.
I would say there's plenty of great reasons for wanting to watch this - witnessing a fairly major event in history (possibly even more major depending on what it finds on the planet), seeing science hard at work, watching how millions of dollars and collaboration between thousands of people can pay off.
However, ultimately, the reason many people will be watching is purely to be there if something goes wrong. There'll be fireworks, or at least some sort of graph that suddenly dips.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
For those blessed with living near JPL in Southern CA, there usually is a big event at Pasadena City College (where I viewed a few previous landings). I think there are very knowledgeable speakers from JPL who are usually there (along with the media). Maybe this was one of the suggestions in the link posted above, I couldn't access the site.
JPL by the way has a great series of monthly(?) free to the public lectures on its various deep space programs, often given by the lead investigator! A great way of nerding out.
When I was fairly young, I remember being allowed to spend the night at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia by myself to watch the first moon landing live. The moon landings certainly inspired a generation of engineers and scientists. I'm not sure what the equivalent is today? (Watching Wall Street and becoming a hedge fund manager?)
If you want to read a great book about JPL, check out "Moon Hunters: NASA's Remarkable Expeditions to the Ends of the Solar Systems". Out of print, but probably available in your library.
There is a much more comprehensive list of viewing parties organized by the Planetary Society at http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/events/planetfest-2012/worldwide.html
It's where NASA films all their best stuff.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
You can watch it virtually using this online tool:
http://eyes.nasa.gov/index.html
Will let you visualize the Mars rendezvous and "I think" the decent.
A better Idea would be to watch Streaming NASA TV
Streaming NASA TV
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
NASA TV on USTREAM
http://www.ustream.tv/blog/2012/07/31/get-excited-the-mars-rover-landing-will-be-live-on-ustream/
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I'll watch it at TwiT.tv -> http://twit.tv/2012/07/30/mars-landing-special-aug-5th-10pm-pdt
The presenters/guests to this event will be:
Jonathan Strickland (How Stuff Works) -> http://www.howstuffworks.com/jonathan-strickland-author1.htm
Dr Kiki (Dr Kiki Science Hour) -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiki_Sanford
Phil Plait (Bad Astronomer) -> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/20/mars-attacks-of-the-show/
Steve Sell (JPL, Sky Crane) -> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/30jul_skycrane/
Hope they do a good job!
Peace!
I happen to like SpaceVidcast:
http://www.spacevidcast.com/live/
They frequently stream NASA TV, plus you have a chatroom full of space nerds who more often than not have answers to almost any technical question you can think up. The only problem comes if they are crushed with visitors, but I've seen them handle 20k simultaneous users before. The chat room gets sort of nuts when you have that many people, so it isn't perfect.
Ben and Cariann also do color commentary when things get pretty slow, but also know when to shut up (unlike the NBC commentators for the Olympics).
Set up your dish and tune into the Martian Cable News Network Phobos feed on M band for coverage of their intercept efforts.
So far the overall intercept rate has been about 70%. However the M.A.F. hasn't had much luck shooting down those pesky US built rovers.
Don't bother with trying to get audio. Martians hear in the IR band.
Same solution as everything else: timeshift it. Defer source-selection until after some other chump sucker has done all the hard work. Let someone else figure out which videos cover it best. Then a few hours/days later, see which videos are being raved about, and watch them.
This is the very best, most sastisfying, least time-wasting, most educating, most convenient, fastest, least-bandwidth-intensive, most efficient approach, and it works just as well for NASA as it does for all other forms of news which don't involve nuclear attacks, tornados, or other stuff like that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Does anyone know why the landing is so late? I am in California, and the landing isn't till 10:30pm here, so my kids probably won't be in bed till after 11 on a school night. It is even worse for east coasters. Couldn't NASA have scheduled the landing for US prime time to get more viewers and interest? Maybe this is the only time the rotation of both planets is lined up right.
your naivete and belief in human wonderment is amusing... sort of. But clearly you have no idea what the ghettos are like. You wouldn't last 30 minutes in Compton or any other inner city 'hood after sundown. Before you can get that big screen TV set up to show the disadvantaged youths the amazement of Mars, they will have taken that TV, your wallet, your car, and beat you senseless. Simply because you're white. And you'd be lucky to not get shot. I am not exaggerating.
WNYC's excellent program, RadioLab will have a Google Hangout and possible a meatspace meetup somewhere in the Lower East Side in NYC.
Headliners for their event include:
Side note: RadioLab is a production of New York's NPR affiliate. Apparently the show is just a couple years old and apparently it's not carried on stations everywhere. If you haven't heard it, and you like science, check out their podcast. It's quirky, incredibly well produced, and overall very well done.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Because the US doesn't use the British Imperial system? It's called the American Standard system.
A rose by any other name...
In terms of measurements there's "The Metric System" and "a bunch of outdated, confusing, inconsistent systems which are mutually incompatible DESPITE having identical names for some measures".
For scientific and engineering purposes spanning the entire globe, the choice is obvious except for countries which simply refuse to co-operate.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.