Curiosity Rover Makes First Foursquare Check-In On Another Planet

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Curiosity Rover Makes First Foursquare Check-In On Another Planet

Posted by samzenpus on Friday October 5, 2012 @12:03AM from the martian-marketing dept.

cylonlover writes "NASA launched a strategic partnership with location-based social networking site foursquare in 2010 with the first-ever check-in from the International Space Station (ISS) by astronaut Doug Wheelock. Now the space agency has gone one better with the first check-in on another planet thanks to its Curiosity Mars rover. Since fellow foursquare users will have a hard time checking in on the Red Planet themselves, they'll instead be able to earn a Curiosity-themed badge for visiting locations relating to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The badge will be available later this year and is designed to spark the scientific curiosity of foursquare users by encouraging them to visit science centers, laboratories and museums."

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What next? by gelfling · 2012-10-05 00:07 · Score: 5, Funny

Curiosity is a judge on America's Got Talent?
1. Re:What next? by SJHillman · 2012-10-05 00:12 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  No, but it will be a judge on Martian Idol. The best part is the thin atmosphere prevents any of the contestants from "singing" very loudly in the few seconds before they pass out from lack of oxygen.
2. Re:What next? by Seumas · 2012-10-05 03:31 · Score: 2
  
  It's pretty fucking depressing that all of the biggest news items in the press about an SUV that we drop on another planet is . . . the social networking it does.
  Maybe it's time to just pack it in, consume whatever is left on this planet, and flash out of existence.
3. Re:What next? by Antipater · 2012-10-05 08:11 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So what? Nobody cared about lunar geology or the LEM's stability problems, either. They cared about astronaut ice cream and a guy playing golf on the moon. If it weren't for stunts like this, nearly everyone would forget that we landed an SUV on Mars at all. When Curiosity tweets, or releases a Will.i.am single, or does something else that the public actually cares about, it reminds people how NASA can do awesome things.
  Like it or not, the way to get more space funding is to put popular fads in space.
  
  --
  Everything is better with chainsaws.
Curiosity runs ios 6 by badford · 2012-10-05 00:10 · Score: 5, Funny

so it was actually on mercury. Damn Apple maps!

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-badford
Anything to generate interest in math and science by slacka · 2012-10-05 00:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm fine with this as long as any revenue generated from this is going towards science or advancing NASA's missions.
Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-05 00:19 · Score: 3, Funny

Gender unspecific - that's why it's so damn curious
Re:Most interesting part... by ZeroSumHappiness · 2012-10-05 00:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

From what I recall vaguely, Mars has some sort of GPS system set up. Searching it they use GPS towers that give GPS to a small area.
Mayor of Mars? by ZeroSumHappiness · 2012-10-05 00:20 · Score: 2

Or would it be more like God-Emperor by the time anyone else sets foot there?
1. Re:Mayor of Mars? by dkleinsc · 2012-10-05 00:38 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Nah, it's against its programming to impersonate a deity.
  
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  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
Re:Quick question by Chuq · 2012-10-05 00:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Mars Rover Bicuriosity will be visiting Uranus next year.

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- Chuq
Re:Most interesting part... by spacefight · 2012-10-05 00:25 · Score: 3, Informative

Last modified Mon, 1 Nov, 2010 at 14:42 Nowhere it says on that article, that it is deployed... http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120817.html
How sad by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2012-10-05 00:27 · Score: 4, Informative

NASA should be doing pure science, and that should be reason enough to excite Joe Public. I mean hell, I can't get over the fact that I can see detailed images of Mars from the comfort of my own living room. If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would never have believed it. Yet, there we are - humanity is there through its machines. It should blow people's minds!
Instead of that, NASA is regularly forced to do shitty high-profile, useless and pathetic "interstellar internet" stunts with shitty dotcoms to attract attention, and presumably funding. That's how sad, uneducated and blaze people have become.

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"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1. Re:How sad by wbr1 · 2012-10-05 01:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  That's how sad, uneducated and blaze people have become.
  We are so on fire (blaze) we are not unimpressed or bored (blase).
  If you want to complain about the uneducated masses, at least use the correct words lest you be considered uneducated yourself.
  
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  Silence is a state of mime.
2. Re:How sad by SonnyDog09 · 2012-10-05 01:51 · Score: 2
  
  ... and the folks in mission control will be required to drink a Coca Cola during when they are interviewed. They will also be required to say things like "The Penzoil, Gatoraid, Whizzo-Butter Rover had a good day today."
  
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  Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
3. Re:How sad by DerekLyons · 2012-10-05 02:29 · Score: 2
  
  I mean hell, I can't get over the fact that I can see detailed images of Mars from the comfort of my own living room. If someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would never have believed it.
  Just out of curiosity (if you'll pardon the pun), just how much older than sixty (being charitable) are you? Because such things have clearly been coming since the first blurry images from Viking popped up on the boob tube in the comfort of my parent's living room back in the seventies when *I* was a kid.
Re:What is foursquare by Dogtanian · 2012-10-05 00:33 · Score: 4, Informative

What is foursquare? I just looked and it looks like some cut-down facebook thingy
It's basically the most self-indulgent, navel-gazing, self-important-attention-whoring, up-their-own-arse and downright pointless aspects of social media distilled to a level of 100% pure worthlessness.

This is quite obviously another would-be public-attention-grabbing stunt along the lines of the Will.I.Am transmission a few weeks back, and it's open for debate which of the two are worse.

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Re:Quick question by dkleinsc · 2012-10-05 00:37 · Score: 3, Funny

No it won't: Astronomers changed the name to Urrectum to end that stupid joke once and for all.

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I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
Re:Quick question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-05 00:40 · Score: 2, Funny

Well it has a drill and 17 cameras connected to the internet to document it's drilling. So I would says its male.
Re:Quick question by Megane · 2012-10-05 01:05 · Score: 4, Funny

Urectum? U nearly killed um!

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Female by Morgaine · 2012-10-05 01:21 · Score: 3

Is Curiosity rover male or female?
On report panels and interviews, the scientists and engineers on the Curiosity team refer to the rover as "she" and "her" .
Using the female gender seems to be traditional for ships, so perhaps that extends to spaceships, and by association, to space probes.

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"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1. Re:Female by fallen1 · 2012-10-05 03:26 · Score: 2
  
  Would not calling a space probe "her" then bring all new meaning to the victims who have been anally probed? Would that not mean that "she" was hermaphroditic??
  
  --
  Dream as if you'll live forever.
  Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
  ~Anonymous~
Re:Most interesting part... by Whizziwig · 2012-10-05 02:32 · Score: 5, Informative

there's now a planet enum internally (only mars + earth for now ... hopefully we go do something interesting on the moon again soon), and an alternate latlng field that we're storing the planet-specific coordinates in. The web rendering code knows to look for the astralLatLng if planet != earth. So that all our current clients and api consumers don't explode , we're pushing out the earth latlng of mission control via the public api.
Re:What is foursquare by Have+Blue · 2012-10-05 04:17 · Score: 2

It's a service which helps you post your location/patronage on social media, basically. Rather than typing in "I'm at the Starbucks at 14th and 2nd Avenue" you use a GPS-driven search to find it.

It also gives you points for doing this and ranks your activity against your friends, which is why some people get really into it.