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Curiosity Lands On Mars
The Mars Science Laboratory, a.k.a. Curiosity, is now less than an hour from touchdown on Mars. It's scheduled to land at 1:31 AM EDT (0531 UTC). The landing will be monitored by the Odyssey orbiter, which will be the data relay between Curiosity and Earth. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be listening to Curiosity as well (yes — two of our probes orbiting another world will be watching a third). While Odyssey will be giving us close to real-time updates (as close as possible, given the 14-minute time delay), MRO's data will take a bit longer to be processed and evaluated. NASA is broadcasting from the JPL mission room right now. If you'd like to watch a pretty awesome graphical visualization of the mission, check out eyes.nasa.gov. If you'd like to play around with a Java app showing Mars-local times and seasons, check out Mars24. If you'd like to watch unofficial coverage, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait and a bunch of other astronomers are hosting a public Google Hangout. If you'd like to read a detailed explanation of the landing, checkout NASA's press kit (PDF), and there's also a post about what to expect when the rover starts sending pictures back to Earth, which will be about two hours after the rover lands. Good luck to everyone involved! We'll update this post when we get word on the landing.
Update: 08/06 05:33 GMT by S : Curiosity is on the ground! Everything looks nominal, and everybody at JPL is cheering. Congratulations, folks. They're continuing to receive telemetry from Odyssey, and the connection is strong. They've now received the first images back from Mars of Curiosity on the ground. A press briefing is scheduled in a little bit (2:15AM EDT, 0615 UTC), and several more throughout the day as more data comes back.
Update: 08/06 05:33 GMT by S : Curiosity is on the ground! Everything looks nominal, and everybody at JPL is cheering. Congratulations, folks. They're continuing to receive telemetry from Odyssey, and the connection is strong. They've now received the first images back from Mars of Curiosity on the ground. A press briefing is scheduled in a little bit (2:15AM EDT, 0615 UTC), and several more throughout the day as more data comes back.
Richard C. Hoagland will be on describing the Martian civilization that NASA is hiding from us.
"Relative to whose frame of reference, blueworlder?"
The Council of Elders has confirmed the interception and destruction of the latest mechanized terror from the blue world.
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, addressed the planet thus:
When a junior combat reporter pointed out that the link between the carrier vessel and the mechanized invader may have been designed to be broken at the moment of landing, that the actual threat was the so-called "power source" and not the flying invader, and suggested that if the Martian Defense Force had just waited just a few seconds longer, the squibs holding the skyhook to the skycrane might have failed, resulting in the carrier vessel crashing down upon the invader, thereby destroying both, K'Breel had the combat reporter's gelsacs placed directly in front of the dormant invader's photonic weapons.
"If the blue-shirted denizens of the blue world seek evidence of organic matter so strongly," mused K'Breel, "then let them have their fill of it!"
(Because the Council must to draft at least two of these press releases with every new phase of the battle, the Speaker would like to thank the infiltrators at the Martian Cyberdefense Detachment (unit 216.34.181.48) for remaining as glued to the screen over the past fifteen units of time as everybeing on the Council was.)
That sounds great! But where is her boyfriend?
And the gold medal for the all-species 350M KM space landing goes to NASA, who scored a perfect 10 for landing on the surface of Mars!
Congratulations to NASA and the JPL. Dare Mighty Things indeed.
The first encounter with alien life has not gone well. A catlike alien has been squashed and killed by Curiosity.
Sky crane for the win. I had images in my head of hovering Eagles from Space 1999. :-)
We are not alone
Saw lots of Apple laptops there at JPL in the video. :-)
When they first put together the Mars mission in 2004, the Library of Congress was smaller than it is today.
So instead of confusing people with 2004 LoCs vs 2012 LoCs, they just went with miles.
It's what helped them land the Curiosity rover only a few meters from the original target.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Message from Curiosity: Landed safely. Initiating primary directive - kill cats.
It's obvious that god put it on Mars, then.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Kudos to the people of the US for funding it!
While we're exchanging acknowledgements, my heartfelt gratitude goes to the EU for their efforts in compelling the world to standardize on micro-USB for cell phone power and data.
Offtopic, I know, but very much appreciated :-)
Since I'm from Europe I'd like to add: Kudos to the people of the US for funding it!
And a special thanks for sticking with the metric system this time.
If the translation is of the same quality Google Translate usually produces, your girlfriend is wondering why the US is invading the Red Sea with an autonomous sorcery platform.