Mars Rover/Mission Thread: Following Our Curiosity

[Buddhas Hand]

New Mexico: Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2

Posted by 360Cities on August 14, 2012 at 2:52 pm.

360° panorama by Andrew Bodrov.

Click the image to open the interactive version.

NASA's MSL Curiosity missionSource Images: NASA/JPL-CaltechWith its rover named Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. In other words, its mission is to determine the planet's "habitability."

[Buddhas Hand]

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NASA'S Mars rover Curiosity is to make a wide detour to explore a "cool" geographical hot spot on the red planet, scientists say.

The scientists reported on Friday that they found temperatures in the planet's Gale Crater to be just above freezing in the first monitoring of Mars temperatures in three decades.

Before driving to its destination at Mount Sharp, which may contain traces of water, Curiosity will head in the opposite direction, to a spot NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has dubbed Glenelg.

NASA's lab at Pasadena said the geologically rich area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain 500 metres from the rover's landing site.

A light-coloured patch of terrain in the region indicates to scientists "a kind of bedrock suitable for eventual drilling by Curiosity".

A cluster of small craters may represent "an older or harder surface" and another spot features a patch of land resembling the rover's landing site, before the nuclear-powered apparatus "scoured away some of the surface", NASA said.

Scientists said they chose the name Glenelg because it is a palindrome and the rover will need to travel back in the same direction to head towards Mount Sharp.

The Glenelg trek will be the rover's first "moderate duration drive target", Mars Science Laboratory project scientist John Grotzinger told reporters, explaining the decision to risk travelling off the planned route.

"It looks cool," he said.

Grotzinger estimated the rover's journey would take between three weeks and two months to arrive at Glenelg, where it will stay for roughly a month before heading to the base of Mount Sharp.

Analysts have said it may be a full year before the remote-controlled rover gets to the base of the peak, which is believed to be within 20 kilometres of the rover's landing site.

A photo of the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, taken from Curiosity's landing site, shows "hills, buttes, mesas and canyons on the scale of one-to-three-storey buildings".

Scientists hope the hydrated minerals thought to be concentrated in the bottom half of the photographed lower reaches will "reveal the area's geological history".

The Mars Science Laboratory is expected to travel as far as halfway up Mount Sharp, a towering 5km Martian mountain with sediment layers that may be up to a billion years old.

NASA plans to obtain photos of the summit "in a week or two".

Grotzinger noted the team's report on the Martian crater's temperature was "really an important benchmark for Mars science".

"It's been exactly 30 years since the last long duration monitoring weather station was present on Mars," when Viking 1 stopped communicating with Earth in 1982," he said

[Sharpshooter]

I love that fact that they want to check it out cause it 'looks cool'.

To me that seems pretty cool.

True explorers.

[Buddhas Hand]

I love that fact that they want to check it out cause it 'looks cool'.

To me that seems pretty cool.

True explorers.

[Sharpshooter]

New picture from Curiosity:

Also, don't forget to click on the picture at post #375 in order to take a 360 degree tour of Curiosity's surroundings:

Click on the picture itself to get started, and go full-screen for best viewing.

[AbbyNucksFan]

so much awesomness in this thread.

[WHL rocks]

HOW MANY PLANETS IN THE UNIVERSE

We have so far discovered 9 in our solar system, and 185 orbiting other stars (as of April. 2006).

But the real number is astronomically huge. There are about 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone. If each of them have the same number of planets (on average) as our own sun, then that's about 4 trillion planets in our own galaxy alone. Multiply that by an estimated 125 billion galaxies in the universe ... that's a lot of planets.

As for when they were discovered, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (and of course, the Earth) are visible to the naked eye and have been known as long as we've looked into the sky.

Uranus was formally discovered as a planet in 1781.

Neptune was discovered in 1846.

Pluto was discovered in 1930.

Another body, larger than Pluto, was discovered in 2005. Currently named 2003 UB313, it is not yet officially classified as a planet (but may be reclassified in September of this year).

The first extrasolar planet (a planet orbiting another star) was officially discovered in 1993, lots were found in the late 90's, and so far we have discovered a total of 185 yahoo answers

so there are billions of planets in our universe and yet ours is the only one that has produced "intelligent" life , that seems to me to be a pretty arrogant assumption .

[WHL rocks]

dl

[Sharpshooter]

Glenelg Intrigue

This image shows a closer view of the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and a destination nearby known as Glenelg. Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT) at the blue dot. It is planning on driving to an area marked with a red dot that is nicknamed Glenelg. That area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain. Starting clockwise from the top of this image, scientists are interested in this brighter terrain because it may represent a kind of bedrock suitable for eventual drilling by Curiosity. The

next terrain shows the marks of many small craters and intrigues scientists because it might represent an older or harder surface. The third, which is the kind of terrain Curiosity landed in, is interesting because scientists can try to determine if the same kind of rock texture at Goulburn, an area where blasts from the descent stage rocket engines scoured away some of the surface, also occurs at Glenelg.

The science team thought the name Glenelg was appropriate because, if Curiosity traveled there, it would visit the area twice -- both coming and going -- and the word Glenelg is a palindrome. After Glenelg, the rover will aim to drive to the base of Mount Sharp.

Full size: http://www.nasa.gov/...b-full_full.jpg

Martian Treasure Map

This image shows the landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate. Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT) at the green dot, within the Yellowknife quadrangle. The team has chosen for it to move toward the region marked by a blue dot that is nicknamed Glenelg. That area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain. The science team thought the name Glenelg was appropriate because, if Curiosity traveled there, it would visit it twice -- both coming and going -- and the word Glenelg is a palindrome. Then, the rover will aim to drive to the blue spot marked "Base of Mt. Sharp", which is a natural break in the dunes that will allow Curiosity to begin scaling the lower reaches of Mount Sharp. At the base of Mt. Sharp are layered buttes and mesas that scientists hope will reveal the area's geological history.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Full Size: http://www.nasa.gov/...b-full_full.jpg

All Around Curiosity

This 360-degree image shows a complete, full-resolution panorama around NASA's Curiosity rover, taken by the Navigation cameras. The pointy rim of Gale Crater can be seen as a lighter strip along the top right of the image. The base of Mount Sharp can be seen along the top left.

The image is a cylindrical projection, which shows the horizon as flat. A cylindrical projection is created by computing the azimuth and elevation of each pixel in the original image and remapping it onto a virtual cylinder. Pixels in the same row of this image are at the same elevation, and pixels in the same column of this image are at the same azimuth.

This mosaic is made of 26 images, 1,024 by 1,024 pixels, taken late at night on Aug. 7 PDT (early morning Aug. 8 EDT). Seams between the images have been minimized as much as possible.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Full Size: http://www.nasa.gov/...4-full_full.jpg

^ Looks so much better in full size and full screen!

First Laser-Zapped Rock on Mars

This composite image, with magnified insets, depicts the first laser test by the Chemistry and Camera, or ChemCam, instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The composite incorporates a Navigation Camera image taken prior to the test, with insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the difference between images taken before and after the laser interrogation of the rock.

The test took place on Aug. 19, 2012.

In the composite, the fist-sized rock, called "Coronation," is highlighted. Coronation is the first rock on any extraterrestrial planet to be investigated with such a laser test.

The widest context view in this composite comes from Curiosity's Navigation Camera. The magnified views in the insets come from ChemCam's camera, the Remote Micro-Imager. The area shown in the circular inset is 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) in diameter. It was taken before the rock was hit with the laser. The area covered in the further-magnified square inset is 8 millimeters (about one-third of an inch) across. It combines information from images taken before and after the test, subtracting the "before" image from the "after" image to make the changes in the rock visible.

Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) inaugurated use of its laser when it used the beam to investigate Coronation during Curiosity's 13th day after landing.

ChemCam hit Coronation with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivered more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second. The energy from the laser excited atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam also caught the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzed it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.

This initial use of the laser on Mars served as target practice for characterizing the instrument but may provide additional value. Researchers will check whether the composition changed as the pulses progressed. If it did change, that could indicate dust or other surface material being penetrated to reveal different composition beneath the surface.

ChemCam was developed, built and tested by the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by France's national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project, including Curiosity, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP

Full Size: http://www.nasa.gov/...5-full_full.jpg

Just a little something from Neil De Grasse Tyson about robots versus human exploration costs/budget

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i2QDpGRQKc

3 of my favorite people on earth, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dr. Lawrence Krauss, and Bill Nye 'The Science Guy'

[Buddhas Hand]

Curiosity Uses Its Laser To Zap A Martian Rock

Move up http://i.forbesimg.com tMove down

NASA Rover Curiosity Sends Back Color Photos Of Mars Alex KnappForbes

Alex KnappForbes Staff

The rock, which is about the size of a human fist, was dubbed by JPL scientists as “Coronation.” The rover’s Chemistry and Camera instrument (AKA “ChemCam“) hit the rock with its laser the course of 10 seconds. The light from the laser was sent as 30 pulses. And each pulse of the laser is over a million watts. By way of comparison, your air conditioner uses about 5,000 watts. That’s a lot of power hitting those rocks. Enough power, in fact, to turn the atoms on its surface into plasma. The light emitted by the plasma is then analyzed by instruments on Curiosity to figure out what Coronation is made of.

Even better, it appears that the ChemCam is working better on Mars than it even did on Earth.

“It’s surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio,” said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice in a press release. “It’s so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years.”

Although Curiosity‘s mission control is at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, many of its instruments were developed with other partners. In the case of the ChemCam, it was developed by theU.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. They didn’t develop it alone. The French national space agency and research agency provided funding to scientists and engineers who were working in a partnership with the Los Alamos lab.

Curiosity herself was pretty excited by the news, thrilling Austin Powers fans around the world with her Tweet announcing this first laser use:

ChemCam’s principal investigator Roger Wiens is also excited, if his statement in the press release is any indication. ”We got a great spectrum of Coronation — lots of signal. Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it’s payoff time!”

I know sharp has just posted an article about this , but this article includes a photo of the rock and a copy of the tweet curiousity sent after zapping the rock .

[Sharpshooter]

Mars....meet Heat Shield.

Heat Shield...Mars.

Curiosity Report For This Week:

Gorgeous BBC Piece on Curiosity and Mars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMl6YW1wen0&feature=related

[Sharpshooter]

David Oh, NASA Engineer, Switches Family To Mars Time After Curiosity Landing

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. -- For one family, an exotic summer getaway means living on Mars.

Martian time, that is.

Since the landing of NASA's newest Mars rover, flight director David Oh's family has taken the unusual step of tagging along as he leaves Earth time behind and syncs his body clock with the red planet.

Every mission to Mars, a small army of scientists and engineers reports to duty on "Mars time" for the first three months. But it's almost unheard of for an entire family to flip their orderly lives upside down, shifting to what amounts to a time zone change a day.

Intrigued about abiding by extraterrestrial time, Oh's wife, Bryn, could not pass up the chance to take their kids – 13-year-old Braden, 10-year-old Ashlyn and 8-year-old Devyn – on a Martian adventure from their home near the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the Curiosity rover was built.

"We all feel a little sleepy, a little jet-lagged all day long, but everyone is doing great," Bryn Oh said, two weeks into the experiment.

Days on Mars last a tad longer. Earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours – the definition of a day. Neighbor Mars spins more lazily. Days there – known as sols – last 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than on Earth. The difference may not seem like much each day, but it adds up.

To stay in lockstep, nearly 800 people on the $2.5 billion project have surrendered to the Martian cycle of light and dark. In the simplest sense, each day slides forward 40 minutes. That results in wacky work, sleep and eating schedules. Many say it feels like perpetual jet lag.

The Oh family broke in slowly. A sign on their front door warns: "On Mars Time: Flight Director Asleep. Come Back Later."

Days before Curiosity's Aug. 5 touchdown, the children stayed up until 11:30 p.m. and slept in until 10 a.m. In the beginning, it wasn't much different from a typical day on summer vacation. As the days wore on, they stayed up later and later, waking up in the afternoon and evening.

One day last week, the family ate a 3 p.m. breakfast, 8 p.m. lunch, 2:30 a.m. dinner and 5 a.m. dessert before heading off to bed.

To sleep when the sun is out, their bedroom windows are covered with aluminum foil or cloth to keep out any sliver of light. In the hallway, a handmade calendar keeps track of the days and schedules are written on an oversized mirror. A digital clock in the master bedroom is set to Mars time.

Bryn Oh keeps a meticulous spreadsheet updated with her husband's work hours and the family's activities. They wear a wireless device that monitors their steps, calories burned and sleep patterns.

When David Oh tells co-workers on Mars time and friends on Earth time about the switch: "Some of them think it's really cool to have the kids along. Some who worked on other Mars missions have said, `You're crazy.'"

Being night owls has its perks: Braden, Ashlyn and Devyn saw their first shooting star. The family went on night hikes in the hills around the neighborhood. They had a late dinner in Hollywood and gawked at street performers on the Walk of Fame with other tourists. They saw a midnight screening of a zombie film and then went bowling.

One night, Bryn Oh took the children biking in an empty parking lot. The youngest shed his training wheels, and for the first time, pedaled around.

Of the three, Ashlyn has the most difficulty sticking to the Mars rhythm. She tends to wake up too early and balks at naps.

"It's awesome, but it's tiring" she said.

Braden thrives on the weird hours. What teenager doesn't like staying up as late as possible and having frozen yogurt at midnight? He started a blog detailing the family's experiences.

Earthly sacrifices were made. The family traded a real vacation for a glorified staycation. Dental appointments, harp lessons and play dates were scheduled around when the kids were awake, which was a moving target every day.

Still, they managed to host a party a week after the landing, throwing a Mars-themed backyard barbecue complete with a cake shaped like Gale Crater, Curiosity's new home, and topped with candles shaped like stars.

Bryn Oh said it's easy to lose track of what day it is. A simple question like "What time is it?" is difficult to answer. Do you mean Earth time? Curiosity time? The time that their bodies think they're on?

For the mission workers, the schedule is also more grueling than in the past. Their work hours tend to whiplash around depending on when orbiting spacecraft fly over the rover landing site to relay signals to Earth. One shift sends up commands spelling out what Curiosity will do for the day; another pores over the pictures beamed back.

To cope, workers talk as if they're on Mars, saluting "Good morning" to one another even though it might be dark outside. Cots are available for siestas. There's also free ice cream – "a little pick-me-up in the middle of the night," said mission manager Mike Watkins.

Watkins said it's tough for anyone to stray from Earth time let alone a family.

"It's something they're going to remember the rest of their lives," Watkins said.

There have been growing pains. David Oh accidentally showed up to work an hour early one time. The youngest tended to get tired at night.

The family recently reached a milestone: Staying up through sunrise and sleeping during the day.

And just as the children get used to Mars time, they'll have to reboot later this month when they revert to their terrestrial ways in time for the start of school.

[Sharpshooter]

Allow me to highlight this BBC documentary in HD around the lead up to the recent Mars Landing of Curiosity.

If you haven't seen it, trust me, it's worth watching. Really high production value and the best video you've seen about the event thus far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMl6YW1wen0&feature=player_embedded

[Stefan]

App

[Sharpshooter]

The Heights of Mount Sharp

With the addition of four high-resolution Navigation Camera, or Navcam, images, taken on Aug. 18 (Sol 12), Curiosity's 360-degree landing-site panorama now includes the highest point on Mount Sharp visible from the rover. Mount Sharp's peak is obscured from the rover's landing site by this highest visible point.

The Martian mountain rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater. Geological deposits near the base of the Mount Sharp are the destination of the Curiosity rover's mission.

The pointy rim of Gale Crater can be seen as a lighter strip along the top right of the image. Mount Sharp can be seen along the top left. This full-resolution image shows part of the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover taken from one of the rover's Navigation cameras looking toward the back left of the rover.

The image is a cylindrical projection, which shows the horizon as flat. A cylindrical projection is created by computing the azimuth and elevation of each pixel in the original image and remapping it onto a virtual cylinder. Pixels in the same row of this image are at the same elevation, and pixels in the same column of this image are at the same azimuth.

Along with the four Navcam images taken on the 18th, each 1,024 by 1,024 pixels, this mosaic includes 26 Navcam images, of equivalent resolution, taken late at night on Aug. 7 PDT (early morning Aug. 8 EDT). Seams between the images have been minimized as much as possible.

The previously released, 26-image Navcam mosaic can be found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16074.html.

Mars Science Laboratory is a project of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by JPL. Curiosity was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Full Size Picture available here: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/678284main_pia16077-full_full.jpg

Make sure you enlarge the picture in Full Screen. Great shot of Mt.Sharp.(The place where Curiosity's eventually heading)

[Buddhas Hand]

Wiggle in the Gravel

This set of images shows the movement of the rear right wheel of NASA's Curiosity as rover drivers turned the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars. Engineers wiggled the wheels as a test of the rover's steering and anticipate embarking on Curiosity's first drive in the next couple of days. This image was taken by one of Curiosity's Navigation cameras on Aug. 21.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[Dellins]

[Sharpshooter]

^ Great stuff, thanks guys.

[Sharpshooter]

Not exactly Curiosity related but definitely Mars related......and proudly Canadian.

Catherine Johnson, U.B.C. Prof, Among Scientists On Team For 2016 NASA Mars Mission.

VANCOUVER - As NASA's Curiosity rover beams back photos of the rocky surface of Mars, another group of scientists, including one from British Columbia, is preparing the next mission to uncover what's underneath.

Prof. Catherine Johnson, of the University of British Columbia, is among the scientists whose project, named Insight, was selected by NASA this week as part of the U.S. space agency's Discovery program, which invites proposals from within the scientific community.

Insight will send a stationary robotic lander to Mars in 2016, drilling down several metres into the surface as it uses a combination of temperature readings and seismic measurements to help scientists on this planet learn more about the Martian core.

What they find, explains Johnson, will offer not only a better picture of how Mars has evolved in its 4.5-billion-year history, but it will also add to scientists' knowledge of how other planets, including Earth, form.

"It's understanding the Earth's nearest neighbours to understand: is the earth typical or different from its nearest neighbours? It's really about the context of understanding our own planet," explains Johnson, who is the only researcher from a Canadian institution on the project.

"When we think about the astronomy world, we now know about many other planetary systems in the universe, and yet we don't know what the basic structure of Earth and the Earth's neighbours are. It's really what should be on page 2 or 3 of the textbooks in order to be able to understand the Earth."

The Insight lander is expected to launch in March 2016 and touch down on the red planet in September of that year.

A seismometer will measure seismic and tectonic activity such as quakes on the surface, while a probe will drill down five metres into the ground to take temperature readings.

Johnson will be among the scientists analysing the data, which she says will be used to determine the size of the Martian core, its temperature and its composition — that is, how much of it is solid and how much is still liquid.

Currently, scientists can only speculate on what's below the surface of Mars, but Insight will help confirm whether those guesses are accurate.

Their conclusions will offer more information on what happens in the early stages of a planet's history, says Johnson.

"This experiment tells us about the end result of the very first stage in planetary evolution — what happens after you have a big lump that's a mixture of rock, metal and a bunch of gasses," she says.

"Knowing exactly how big it (the core) is and which part of it is liquid and which part of it is solid would provide huge constraints on how the planet has evolved over its history. At the moment, we can make lots of guesses, but it's really important to understanding Mars and to understand why Mars and the Earth are so different."

Johnson also wants to determine when Mars had a magnetic field — and when it lost it.

Scientists believe Mars had both an atmosphere and a magnetic field until about 3.8 or 3.9 billion years ago, but they don't know exactly when they disappeared or why.

In particular, Johnson wants to know which vanished first. In other words, did the atmosphere disappear because there was suddenly no magnetic field, or was it the other way around?

The Insight mission will be run by the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. The mission's costs are capped at US$425 million, measured in 2010 dollars.

Johnson is currently working on another NASA Discovery project, the Messenger mission to Mercury.

That mission sent an orbiting spacecraft to the solar system's smallest planet, arriving last year. It took more than six years for Messenger to complete the 7.9-billion-kilometre journey.

Johnson has also studied quake activity in the moon using data originally gathered in the fabled Apollo missions

[wtpasc]

great topic guys, love that I can come here and get all the Curiosity tidbits.

May I add that I think NASA has done a superb job of keeping this in the media and public eye. I love the fact that I can still get pretty much daily updates on what is happening on Mars!