NASA Releases HiRISE Images of Curiosity's Descent

gcnaddict writes "NASA released content from the MRO HiRISE imager taken during the descent of the Curiosity Rover. Among the most notable artifacts are the images themselves as well as a diagram showing the exact location of the rover relative to NASA's target." Update: 08/07 00:15 GMT by U L : And now for a picture from the rover itself.

Comments

Fantastic!

[PPH]

Nice shot. And kudos to the folks who painted the white square on the surface of Mars. If only the people who striped our freeways could have done such a good job.

Too cool

[Niris]

Watched the stream last night of Mission Control, and coupled with this and the other images it has just been too cool.

Re:Too cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, things are going the other way. NASA's unmanned space budget is being cut.

The Obama administration plans to massively cut funding for NASA’s planetary exploration program. Zubrin writes that Obama’s 2013 budget would permit the continuation of a couple of projects—the MAVEN orbiter and the Mars Science Curiosity Lab—but would otherwise leave planetary exploration without much of a budget. The space astronomy program, too, faces deep cuts.

The overall NASA budget is similar, but unmanned probes and robotic science budgets have been savaged :-(.

Re:Too cool

[poly_pusher]

I don't care what it costs, I want a drill sent to Europa...

Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision. I was all for a reduction in manned space travel expenditures and ending the money pit that was the shuttle program "Thanks Nixon!" However, I was under the impression that they surely would not impose cuts to NASA and JPL's hugely successful unmanned missions. The things Nasa has accomplished over the past 15 years with rover's, probes, and telescopes is astonishing.

Nope, you're not alone...

Re:Too cool

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

A drill to Europa? You are just gonna find a lot of dead people and France's perfume deposit.

Re:Too cool

[poly_pusher]

+1 :)

Or Enceladus or a rover-y thing to Titan. Seriously though it seems like we've discovered all this amazing stuff about our solar system and right when we're on a solid path to explore these discoveries in depth, poof! there goes the funding...

Re:Too cool

[dgatwood]

Unfortunately, things are going the other way. NASA's unmanned space budget is being cut.

Here lie the last remaining artifacts from a once-great race—the humans—their great potential cut down in its prime by their tremendous lack of foresight. For centuries, the great thinkers had shouted the need to venture among the stars, but their leaders were too busy worrying about building bigger and better weapons to defend themselves from their neighbors. When the great war came and the environment was poisoned beyond the ability to sustain life, the politicians pointed fingers and blustered their "I told you sos", but in the end, it made little difference. Their fate was sealed long before.

Re:Too cool

[fiannaFailMan]

Why spend 2.5 billion on NASA when you can buy a few more Solyndra's.

Why spend 2.5 billion on NASA when you can buy one B2 stealth bomber?

Re:Too cool

[FussionMan]

Write your local politician to change this. Just a few letters make a huge difference.

Re:Too cool

[MobileC]

Write your local politician to change this. Just a few letters make a huge difference.

Our local politicians have no influence in the affairs of a foreign nation.

Re:Too cool

[SilenceBE]

Remember, all American's can have an impact on that decision.

But may I ask - as a European - how you could do that ? It doesn't seem that you can vote on the other guy because from my POV he seems worse then Obama regarding science. And politicians have the habit - once they are in power - not to listen to the public anymore.

We had him for a couple of days here in Europe and the general consensus was that he remind us a lot of Bush junior and that there is potential that he gets your country in another expensive war. The money will need to come from somewhere and the guy didn't come over as particularly bright or somebody who likes intellectual challenges which science provoke.

Re:Too cool

[Sean Riordan]

Ugh ....
Maryland - Goddard Space Flight Center
New Mexico - AF Research Lab - Space Vehicles, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs
Colorado - Ball, Raytheon, etc
California - JPL, Livermore Labs and way too many others to list
Virginia - Navy Research Lab, Wallops Island
Texas - UT Dallas, Texas A&M, Johnson Space Center, many more
Arizona - Orbital Sciences Corp., GD, etc
Tennessee - Oakridge
Alabama - U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Utah -Space Dynamics Laboratory, L3
Florida - Kennedy, ATK and many more
Alaska - Kodiak Island

The space industry is spread out over the entire country. This list could go on and on. Saying it is only Florida and Texas that benefit is mildly absurd. I agree with the idea, but it isn't nearly as narrow as that.

Freaking incredible.

[Bitsy Boffin]

Just think about this a moment. NASA took a photo from a satellite, of a probe landing on another planet. And they got telemetry relayed about the landing from ANOTHER satellite.

And it's not just a bright pixel, you can clearly see what it is.

Stunning.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[gcnaddict]

You're not the first to think that, either. The same message was conveyed by the BadAstronomy blog when the same such shot was released from Phoenix.

Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.

Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Firehed]

I mean that's cool and all, but I think the more significant piece is that the landing was accurate to within 2km with a journey covering nine months and somewhere roughly around 200m km. Scale that down to something we can actually comprehend, and it's using autopilot for 100km and being accurate to within 1mm. Where talking to your co-pilot takes as much as 14 minutes, with another 14 minutes to hear their response.

We've got some damn fine people working on this.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[SomeJoel]

But there will always be pathetic yahoos who, out of some desire to make themselves feel important will deny our species' technical abilities.

Yes, and they will post about it on the Internet without ever sensing the irony.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[MachDelta]

It turns out that space is in metric. Who knew?

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Swampash]

We've got some damn fine people working on this.
And a lot of them will be looking for work after the next round of NASA budget cuts - no matter who wins the next election.

NASA's budget as a fraction of federal spending is 0.48%. That's the lowest it's been since 1960. And it's getting smaller.

Dig on this:

Curiosity project budget: USD 2.5 billion

Cost of "War on Terror" so far: USD 1.36 trillion and counting (yes that's one thousand three hundred and sixty billion)

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Spy Handler]

Reminds me of the story where humans send a robotic probe to another star, and after decades of traveling it finally gets there and beams back the first images. The people at mission control yawn and are hardly excited because they've all seen the images already; during the time the probe was in transit, the aliens from that star already came to earth via warp drive. And the only person in the room who was excited about the whole thing was an alien in attendance, because the aliens have warp technology but they don't have good robotics.

Well if we ever get humans orbiting and living on Mars, these images will seem about as exciting as Columbus's sketches of Bahama island. Just a thought.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

All of space, including most of planet earth. Well, except for some very uneducated areas ;)

Re:Freaking incredible.

[the gnat]

Director Bolden, on his meeting with Obama on NASA strategy, mission: " ...perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering."

This was one throwaway line by a federal bureaucrat in a single substance-free interview, where he was obviously trying to pander to his audience. (And the White House very quickly corrected him, as has been pointed out previously.) Do you really believe that anything NASA has done since then has been designed to further this supposed goal? Please, explain how the Curiosity mission has been corrupted to soothe the feelings of Muslims.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[MtViewGuy]

What is totally amazing about that image is not only do you clearly see the shading of the parachute itself, but you also see _in the same picture_ the protective heat shield cover falling away from the lander, too. In short, one of the most amazing images ever produced by NASA. (thumbs up)

Re:Freaking incredible.

[jo_ham]

The difference is this: providing for the national defense of the United States is the constitutional duty of the federal government, funding for science and space projects is not.

BOOM.

Not sure how the Iraq war is really "providing for the national defense of the US" though.

Maybe stop the war 2 weeks early and we could fund another couple of these amazing missions to Mars and beyond.

Re:Freaking incredible.

[Swampash]

I noticed that the White House called this "a great day for America", "a great day for this nation", etc. Repeat ad nauseam.

Would it really have killed them to say "a great day for humanity"? I don't think Americans would have minded.

As a non-American that's the sort of thing that normally makes me cringe. But you know what? Today I don't give a fuck. NASA has to beg for every cent it gets from the Federal govt and anything NASA does to justify the money it gets is fine by me today.

As a space geek I totally understand why this sort of language is getting used. It's marketing. NASA has to sell this sort of stuff to Bubba the Taxpayer. Bubba don't care about searching for life on other planets. All that science shit is for the nerds Bubba used to bully in highschool. But label it AMERICA KICKING ASS and all of a sudden Bubba does care, and you better believe he's in favor of it.

Turn the whole fucking event into an ad for NASA with a tagline of "AMERICA FUCK YEAH" and then see if either of the Presidential candidates dares go into an election promising to cut space funding. I'll grin and bear it.

Image sources

[Ryanrule]

Tiff images

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/tiff/

XML source file for day 0

http://landingimagecatalog-1450153822.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com/landing/images_sol0.xml

Photography has come a long way

[lemur3]

I think something missed in all of this is how powerful imagery is.

Imagine a world without photographs ?

This mission, and ones before it.. highlight how important this invention, photography, is.

We have photographs of this on its chute landing.. this is the second time we've done it.. and we got photographs back as soon as it landed.. This is great... and the excitement of the crew, and the public, upon seeing these images is a testament to how far photography has come in the past 150ish years.

Kudos to all of those who made this happen.. for the science it will do.. and further affirming the power of images in our world..

Re:I don't quite get

[Chuck Chunder]

"The Curiosity Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) captured the rover's descent to the surface of the Red Planet. The instrument shot 4 fps video from heatshield separation to the ground." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I

Cheap Mission

[ThePeices]

What amazes me is how cheap the entire MSL mission is...

The entire budget was only 4 days in Iraq/Afghanistan, or approx USD$2.5billion.

NASA's entire budget is less than what the US Army spends on air-conditioning in Iraq/Afghanistan ( USD$20 billion ).

I. Kid. You. Not.

Re:Cheap Mission

[ScentCone]

And which mission is the one trying to prevent another entire generation in that region from falling under the control of a bunch of medieval-minded religious thugs who drag school teachers out into the town square and shoot them in the head in front of their students for talking about current events and science? You know, things like landing an SUV on Mars with the help of female scientists who are allowed to drive themselves to work where they can talk to men, read and write, and make a living doing science.

You're right. We can only do one thing at a time. We should focus on more rovers, and tell the Taliban that they're welcome to roll that region back into the Dark Ages again, and do their level best to work their way into more influence in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Or maybe it is possible to do two things, possibly even three things, at once? In the interests of both practicing fantastic science like this, and endeavoring to show the world that Western Civilization thinks its rude to burn down school houses for daring to talk about it. Nah, that's crazy talk, right?

Re:Cheap Mission

[Anonymous Coward]

http://costsofwar.org/article/education-universities-iraq-and-us/

When I was being a vocal critic of the war in 2003, it never ceased to amaze me how little of conditions in Iraq Americans actually knew...

Re:Cheap Mission

[radio4fan]

And which mission is the one trying to prevent another entire generation in that region from falling under the control of a bunch of medieval-minded religious thugs...

Neither. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have exactly as much to do with women, education and religious freedom as they have to do with exploring Mars.

Which is to say, nothing at all.

Re:money...

[Artifakt]

Competition s a basic tendency of humans. 2 billion dollars spent on getting an advanced robot to do something extremely difficult is so much better than competing to build more nuclear weapons, stealth drones, and cruise missiles, that disparaging it is counter your and my personal survival. The people who are hyper-paranoid will not stop feeling like all life is a savage competition because you criticise any non-violent competition between peoples groups or nations as not living up to your definition of 'loving'. Instead they will put all their competitive drive into making the whole planet into a smouldering pile of rubble in a misguided and delusional effort to wipe out everyone who even might be a potential enemy. If you want them to stop that, you learn to respect when competition gets focused into technological achievement, excellence in sports, creating art or pure science or even just persuing a harmless hobby, and not just taking care of people.
            Sure, you can tell them that a civilised country proves it's the freeest and best by building a better and better safety net for its citizens, feeding its poor, finding meaningful work for everyone, educating all citizens, and other such dreams if you want, and some of the hyper-competitive paranoids will listen a little and get on the bandwagon and grow out of being so afraid, but if you keep slamming everything else but basic care of the poor, all you will do is drive those people back into their caves, where they currentlly keep about 3,000 Megatons of very bad solutions to the problem of the poor and all those other things that just might be good in your eyes.
          Curiosity is about a lot more than just looking at some rocks, but even if you reduced it to that, how is it in any way morally inferior to spending about the same amount figuring out how to put Cobalt-60 jackets on thermonuclear weapons, just so you can make not only human life extinct but clear the planet of bacterial life as well? Spending 2 billion on preserving the 'vitally important' model railroading hobby is better than building more death machines. An Olympics is better than more instruments of totalitarian population control. Finding a cure for male pattern baldness is better than inventing weaponized Ebola. While we are at it, any of those things are better than rewarding bankers for screwing up everyone else's economy,. If you can waste your energy on sarcasm and insults for a program like Curiosity, just what are you willing to say to the Pentagon procurement offices, the TARP system, or Wall street in general? If you are not screaming at them, at the top of your lungs ,every second of every waking day, your responses are not sanely proportionate.

Space metric? No way!

[neoshroom]

Actually, space is all in the English system. By a strange coincidence most of the aliens have 12 fingers, 3 toes and 1760 of an appendage we have no name for, so it makes the math easier and is more logical.