The Curiosity On Mars Thread.

namloc1980

Cleaned up version of one of the descent images:



By the way the dark patches are Martian sand dunes.

shedweller

Nice pic! Re: the aerial view of the area with all parts of the craft. I'm slightly puzzled as to which direction msl landed in. If it came from the top left towards bottom right then wind carried the chute and backshell to its right. While the descent stage diverted back in the direction it came in. But if msl came from the bottom left towards top right then wind carried the shield to its right (and not the chute due to being lower when released??)and the descent stage diverted left.

I do remember playing around with eyes on the solar system and msl did come from the top left, when viewed from above gale crater. If the post landing aerial view has north at top then surface or near surface winds carried the chute and backshell in a southerly direction after release to end up in a southwesterly direction from msl itself.

refusetolose

Mast deploy successful

refusetolose

news briefing at 6

bogman

Some stunning images taken my Curiosity being shown on the Nasa TV news briefing

bogman

Images are hotting up

Jawgap

Hi-Res stuff coming through......



"color full-resolution image showing the heat shield obtained during descent to the surface. The image was obtained by the Mars Descent Imager instrument known as MARDI and shows the 15-foot (4.5-meter) diameter heat shield when it was about 50 feet (16 meters) from the spacecraft.

This image shows the inside surface of the heat shield, with its protective multi-layered insulation. The bright patches are calibration targets for MARDI. Also seen in this image is the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) hardware attached to the inside surface.

At this range, the image has a spatial scale of 0.4 inches (1 cm) per pixel. It is the 36th MARDI image, obtained about three seconds after heat shield separation and about two and one-half minutes before touchdown. The original image from MARDI has been geometrically corrected to look flat."

refusetolose

moving image of ballasts landing site

shizz

refusetolose wrote: »

moving image of ballasts landing site

This photo doesn't really match the other one they released though? Can anyone explain the difference?

Jawgap

Time for the 3-D glasses......

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/PIA16004.html

CiDeRmAn

First time poster, long time interest in astronautics, space exploration etc....
Just thought this picture was relevant at this time.
Please mod, feel free to delete....

A beautiful view of the Milky Way from the surface of Mars...

shedweller

shizz wrote: »

This photo doesn't really match the other one they released though? Can anyone explain the difference?

Taken from a different angle maybe?

Anyway, RAD measurements:
Quite high dosage and nearly as high as the cruise dose. We need to learn how to manage that kind of radiation if we are to send people through space.

Rubecula

Those photos are really clear, Excellent stuff.

shizz

shedweller wrote: »

Taken from a different angle maybe?

but there is more blotches and they aren't in the same orientation.

EDIT: never mind, this caption clears it up http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4351

shedweller wrote: »

Anyway, RAD measurements:
Quite high dosage and nearly as high as the cruise dose. We need to learn how to manage that kind of radiation if we are to send people through space.

As the graph says arbitrary units, its hard to know from looking at it if they are lethal doses.

Cork boy 55

shedweller wrote: »

....

Anyway, RAD measurements:
Quite high dosage and nearly as high as the cruise dose. We need to learn how to manage that kind of radiation if we are to send people through space.

Can you explain more?
What is the cruise dose?
What level is safe for man?
Is this the first time we got RAD readings from surface of mars?

Mountainsandh

Thanks for the pics everyone, it's great to have all the pics here for future reference, I'm a bit lost on the NASA website tbh, and find it hard to locate things when I fancy another look. This is quicker.
Amazing pics again today, that heatshield !

shizz

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Thanks for the pics everyone, it's great to have all the pics here for future reference, I'm a bit lost on the NASA website tbh, and find it hard to locate things when I fancy another look. This is quicker.
Amazing pics again today, that heatshield !

Pics are uploaded here

They also have a section for raw unprocessed images straight from curiosity itself.

Mountainsandh

added to favourites great thanks, somehow I couldn't just sort out the Curiosity ones.

jaykay74

Nasa also has a great Android app which is updated constantly with new images, videos etc.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.nasa&hl=en

shedweller

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

shedweller wrote: »

....

Anyway, RAD measurements:
Quite high dosage and nearly as high as the cruise dose. We need to learn how to manage that kind of radiation if we are to send people through space.

Can you explain more?
What is the cruise dose?
What level is safe for man?
Is this the first time we got RAD readings from surface of mars?

I read somewhere on the nasa site that the radiation experienced on the journey to mars would add a significant amount to the lifetime dose allowed. So the dotted line on the above graph represents this. The graphs wavy line from the surface is not too far from this trip average, which is a bit of a concern for future manned flights to mars.

Jawgap

shizz wrote: »

but there is more blotches and they aren't in the same orientation.

EDIT: never mind, this caption clears it up http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4351



As the graph says arbitrary units, its hard to know from looking at it if they are lethal doses.

shedweller wrote: »

Taken from a different angle maybe?

Anyway, RAD measurements:
Quite high dosage and nearly as high as the cruise dose. We need to learn how to manage that kind of radiation if we are to send people through space.

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

Can you explain more?
What is the cruise dose?
What level is safe for man?
Is this the first time we got RAD readings from surface of mars?

Ionising radiation, dealing with it and managing crew exposure will be one of the great challenges to be overcome on any manned mission to Mars.

I'd say the 'cruise dose' is the amount of radiation incurred during the transit through space from earth to Mars. I'm not sure what units they are using but it may be rads or grays - these are used to represent the amount of energy deposited by the particles.

Rads are the traditional unit so they may be regarded as arbitrary - grays are the SI unit.

The dose a person would get depends on a range of factors such as their body mass, orientation towards the radiation, clothing etc. The instruments are unshielded so they are experiencing the "raw" radiation - no doubt a crewed ship would be well shielded and would have a heavily shielded area within which the crew could shelter during the heaviest radiation events.

Dose is measured in Sieverts (Sv) and a fatal dose is about 4–5 Sv and the average background dose in Ireland is about 4 mSv - you can estimate your exposure here

The other critical issue for a mission to Mars is that Mars, unlike earth, has no magnetosphere so if the crew are to remain on the surface for an extended period any modules etc will need to be heavily shielded. Apollo faced a similar challenge but they weren't up for nearly as long as any Mars mission will need to be.

Most if not all space ships and probes carry some form of radiation monitoring instrumentation.

I'll take a stab and suggest that they are measuring in Rads (if they are using grays then the levels are extreme - 1 gray = 100 rads) - if they are then the levels are very high compared to what we'd experience on earth - 400 rads would be enough to make you seriously ill.

During Chernobyl residents were exposed to between 100 and 1000 rads - so you could say that flying to Mars is the radiation equivalent of pitching your tent outside Chernobyl while the disaster was unfolding

Tallon

Just seen the panorama there... I am actually really excited by this now

ThatDrGuy

Radiation shielding also increases the amount of mass of a mission which means much more fuel is needed to move it to mars and land it and take it off again and get it home. More fuel also has more mass and also is more difficult to accelerate. I read a report a while back that the apollo astronauts used to see stars when they closed their eyes - high energy particles whizzing through the ship and exciting the photoreceptors in their eyes.

shizz

Sky crane thrusters expose bedrock

refusetolose

expectationlost

oh i was wondering what those splotches were

doing some googling last night, trying to figure out how long ago mars may have had water, hundreds of millions of years? i would like to see a timeline, or the solar system, earth and mars and what point each got water, and earth developed plants, and mars lost its protective magnetosphere and lost its liquid water

jkforde

Tallon wrote: »

Just seen the panorama there... I am actually really excited by this now

if you like that you should check out http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home - some of the panoramas from MER rovers Spirit (RIP) and Opportunity are fantastic, esp. with some 3D yokes! :eek:

jkforde

and FYI

Mars24 - http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/

very handy java app (not the mobile kind!) to have running to keep a check on local Mars time (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mars_time)

Mountainsandh

expectationlost wrote: »

oh i was wondering what those splotches were

doing some googling last night, trying to figure out how long ago mars may have had water, hundreds of millions of years? i would like to see a timeline, or the solar system, earth and mars and what point each got water, and earth developed plants, and mars lost its protective magnetosphere and lost its liquid water

I was checking out one of the links kindly shared above, and found this :

Although neither Phoenix nor Spirit still send data to Earth, scientific
findings from both missions continue as researchers analyze the wealth of data
from the two. A recent report based on inspection of Martian soil particles
with microscopes on Phoenix concluded that the soil has experienced very little
interaction with liquid water over the past 600 million years or more (see http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_3-2-2012-10-26-2).

this is the page with the paragraph http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20120208a.html

I'd love a "universe timeline" sort of thing too, I'm sure it's there somewhere.


edit : oh, and just found this, no idea of the validity http://rpmedia.ask.com/ts?u=/wikipedia/commons/3/33/History_of_water_on_Mars.jpeg

expectationlost

here are some links
complicated
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v479/n7371/fig_tab/nature10582_F4.html

click slideshow
http://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/mars-climate-modeling-group/past.html ooh mars stills has water ice clouds

basic comaparable timeline http://astro.physics.uiowa.edu/~srs/2952_04/Locus13_04.htm

so mars was active for say the first 25% of its existance till it cooled down, it had water 2 billions years before life and earth, and active volcanoes up to 100 million years ago http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/May11/Mars_volc_timeline.html

and continuing volcanoes borke possibly broke open underground vaults of water which explain the last valleys
that third link may a bit old so 600 million years ago it would atleast overlap with water on earth.