The Curiosity On Mars Thread.

Turtwig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFvNhsWMU0c

I've actually asked a DJ friend of mine to sneak that into the leaving cert celebrations tonight.
(Probably not going to happen though. )

Wibbs

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

I have stopped been interested in these missions because its fairly obvious to anyone with a thinking brain. We only get half the story and told some of it. Cameras are so advanced today/ imagine what the military has, and yet the images so far are ok but not great. Till i get to Mars and that is likely never. I will keep an openmind how dead Mars is. Weren't they meant to be looking for signs of life ( Methane was found) yet are looking at rocks. Boring.

Conspiracy forum thataway

Cheerful Spring

Wibbs wrote: »

Conspiracy forum thataway

Why is it a conspiracy? Are you a technologist?

There should be a new forum called the 'Gullible'

Hotblack Desiato

Jawgap wrote: »

May be of interest......

Nice! Surprised that the Viking missions got no write-up.
The Soviet/Russian failure rate on Mars missions is astonishingly bad yet they had much success with the moon and Venus.

Logical_Bear

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

I have stopped been interested in these missions because its fairly obvious to anyone with a thinking brain. We only get half the story and told some of it. Cameras are so advanced today/ imagine what the military has, and yet the images so far are ok but not great. Till i get to Mars and that is likely never. I will keep an openmind how dead Mars is. Weren't they meant to be looking for signs of life ( Methane was found) yet are looking at rocks. Boring.

:rolleyes::rolleyes:
I hate using rolly eyes but sometimes they realy are necessary

Mountainsandh

Jawgap wrote: »

May be of interest......"Invaders from Earth" - a graphic summarising Mars missions to date

great thanks

Jawgap

Cheerful Spring wrote: »

I have stopped been interested in these missions because its fairly obvious to anyone with a thinking brain. We only get half the story and told some of it. Cameras are so advanced today/ imagine what the military has, and yet the images so far are ok but not great. Till i get to Mars and that is likely never. I will keep an openmind how dead Mars is. Weren't they meant to be looking for signs of life ( Methane was found) yet are looking at rocks. Boring.

If anything NASA have been guilty of doing the complete opposite - over egging the discoveries, making bold claims before all the science is in and going for the cheap headline at the expense of the truth of a discovery.

It's summed up neatly in "The Right Stuff" - the test pilots are sitting in Pancho's with Yeager having broken the sound barrier and a reporter askes them if they know what makes their planes fly - when one of them starts to answer, he cuts them off - "Funding, makes your birds fly - no bucks, no Buck Rogers."

NACA which went on to become NASA got that - it's all about PR. they need to be on the front pages so Congress give them the money - to do that they need to have 'loss leaders' that look good but dollar-for-dollar deliver poor science value.

That's why they did Mercury, Gemini and Apollo when scientifically they could have done more on the moon with an unmanned programme. In fact, I think there was fairly strong movement within NASA in the early 1960s to forget about the moon (leave it to be explored by an unmanned programmed) and focus on Mars for a crewed expedition -the politics of the time though meant they had to go to the moon though.

Even today, look at how they are protraying Curiosity - like it's somehow sentient with a personality - it's a lot more difficult for a prgramme to be killed off if the rover is 'cute.':)

Turtwig

Heads up!

Members of the team are currently doing a Reddit AMA (AUA). Some very interesting questions so far. XD

Turtwig

Someone on this thread, or somewhere else on boards was asking if there was going to be sound.

WHY NO MICROPHONE???

We took a microphone on the Phoenix Mars Lander, and we turned it on but essentially heard nothing (white noise) so it was never released. We don't really need it for any experiments.
We do have the landing signal sound as it sounded from one of the orbiters.

Thank you.

The Scratcher

irishgeo wrote: »

Looks like a police car with the camera going?

I think this is the answer...

2 stroke

Six 25 kilo balast weights transported all the way to mars. Have these realy got no instruments of any kind?

namloc1980

2 stroke wrote: »

Six 25 kilo balast weights transported all the way to mars. Have these realy got no instruments of any kind?

No just hunks of tungsten. But they did play a vital role in ensuring curiosity landed accurately and in a safe location.

shedweller

namloc1980 wrote: »

No just hunks of tungsten. But they did play a vital role in ensuring curiosity landed accurately and in a safe location.

And boy did it land accurately; damn near the centre of its ellipse, which was already tiny compared to previous landings.

It is a pity though, that there wasn't something more useful that could have gotten extra science for the same weight. Even an experimental flyer of some sort. Oh, im drooling at the thought of that thing flying around !:D

shedweller

There was a teleconference today at 13:30 EDT which was 18:30 GMT.
I have some pics from it, or rather, what they were talking about.

And the chemcams first target:



And the rock in question:

namloc1980

Higher res sequence of the heat shield falling away:





Also a blink animation of the heat shield impacting the surface:

Capt'n Midnight

2 stroke wrote: »

Six 25 kilo balast weights transported all the way to mars. Have these realy got no instruments of any kind?

same instruments the pair of 75Kg tungsten weights released at the top of the atmosphere had

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
The spacecraft flight system had a mass at launch of 3,893 kg (8,580 lb), consisting of an Earth-Mars fueled cruise stage (539 kg (1,190 lb)), the entry-descent-landing (EDL) system (2,401 kg (5,290 lb) + 390 kg (860 lb) of propellant)

300Kg of Ballast Curiosity rover has a mass of 899 kg (1,980 lb) including 80 kg (180 lb) of scientific instruments.

Pity they couldn't have snuck on a Beagle
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=2003-022C The lander package has a mass of 69 kg at launch but the actual lander is only 33.2 kg at touchdown.


and the skycrane ?
140.46kg of fuel remaining (out of 400kg to start) in descent stage as it flew away.


unrelated - wished they had got the hopper to Phobos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobos_program

Turtwig

Gleefully stolen, as ever, from YLYL.



Lucky bastard that martian.

Mountainsandh

Nasa just had the "we're Nasa and we know it" clip on their Live TV
And here was me hoping for serious updates

Have to catch up, was on a dongle last week and couldn't watch the updates.

shedweller

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Nasa just had the "we're Nasa and we know it" clip on their Live TV
And here was me hoping for serious updates

Have to catch up, was on a dongle last week and couldn't watch the updates.

Bit short on the updates alright. The pics i posted earlier were from a teleconference but i think it was audio only. I believe they will be testing the steering next week followed by a short drive forward and back. They dont take chances!

The first place they will visit is a place called Glenelg, which is a mere 400 metres "up the road"!

Here is an excerpt from the nasa website: (bleedin phone wont let me put it in a quote box thingy)

PASADENA, Calif. -- The scientists and engineers of NASA's Curiosity rover mission have selected the first driving destination for their one-ton, six-wheeled mobile Mars laboratory. The target area, named Glenelg, is a natural intersection of three kinds of terrain. The choice was described by Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology during a media teleconference on Aug. 17.
"With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive," Grotzinger said. "We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration."
The trek to Glenelg will send the rover 1,300 feet (400 meters) east-southeast of its landing site. One of the three types of terrain intersecting at Glenelg is layered bedrock, which is attractive as the first drilling target.
"We're about ready to load our new destination into our GPS and head out onto the open road," Grotzinger said. "Our challenge is there is no GPS on Mars, so we have a roomful of rover-driver engineers providing our turn-by-turn navigation for us."
Prior to the rover's trip to Glenelg, the team in charge of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, is planning to give their mast-mounted, rock-zapping laser and telescope combination a thorough checkout. On Saturday night, Aug. 18, ChemCam is expected to "zap" its first rock in the name of planetary science. It will be the first time such a powerful laser has been used on the surface of another world.
"Rock N165 looks like your typical Mars rock, about three inches wide. It's about 10 feet away," said Roger Wiens, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "We are going to hit it with 14 millijoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds. It is not only going to be an excellent test of our system, it should be pretty cool too."

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One thing i did notice was that Glenelg is part way towards the heatshield. But i dont think they will go there as it would take Curiosity too far off course. At the speeds the rover does i'd find it hard to even go to Glenelg!

2 stroke

Just used google images to look at glenelg, interesting place http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Glenelg_sunset.jpg

JupiterKid

Amazing high resolution sequence of MARDI images showing the landing of Curiosity on Mars. Amazing stuff!!:D:)

Wibbs

Love that JK. I particularly like when the sky cranes rockets blast the surface. Well kick up light dust, no craters involved. The "Faked Moon landing" nuts people should have a look as they always claim the LEM should have blasted a huge hole on landing...

Duggys Housemate

Lol. The shadows were all wrong at the end. Fake.

shedweller

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Lol. The shadows were all wrong at the end. Fake.

Go on......

Duggys Housemate

A weak joke on the moon landings conspiracy theories. That's all.

Turtwig

You know we did once land on Mars so we invented the moon landings to cover it up.

Here's the secret video evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw

Encrypted Pigeon

Quick question about the skycrane, did they ever do a test of the rocket firing stage? I've seen videos of the drop tests from the skycrane but nothing about the rockets, was it all based on simulations?

shedweller

Taken from nasa:

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Rover's Laser Instrument Zaps First Martian Rock

'Coronation' Rock on Mars
This mosaic image with a close-up inset, taken prior to the test, shows the rock chosen as the first target for NASA's Curiosity rover to zap with its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument.

PASADENA, Calif. – Today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."
The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.

The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.

"We got a great spectrum of Coronation -- lots of signal," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. "Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it's payoff time!"

ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark at each of the 30 pulses. The goal of this initial use of the laser on Mars was to serve as target practice for characterizing the instrument, but the activity 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. The spectrometers record intensity at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.

"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 of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. "It's so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years."

The technique used by ChemCam, called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, has been used to determine composition of targets in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, and has had experimental applications in environmental monitoring and cancer detection. Today's investigation of Coronation is the first use of the technique in interplanetary exploration.

Curiosity landed on Mars two weeks ago, beginning a two-year mission using 10 instruments to assess whether a carefully chosen study area inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

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Less signal to noise ratio? What could be causing that, i wonder? Less atmosphere? Less electromagnetic radiation from human gadgets rattling away in the background?
There is more solar radiation reaching mars due to its weak magnetosphere so it cant really be that can it? That would cause more, not less electromagnetic noise. But i may be way off on that.

slade_x

Sintel wrote: »

Quick question about the skycrane, did they ever do a test of the rocket firing stage? I've seen videos of the drop tests from the skycrane but nothing about the rockets, was it all based on simulations?

You can't test a rocket, no more than you can test a firework.

You can test a model/design but every rocket that fires is expended and unreusable, so the first time the actual rockets used on the skycrane fired was on mars.

The hydrazine type rockets used called "MLE" (Mars Lander Engine) were derived from the viking missions apparently

Encrypted Pigeon

slade_x wrote: »

You can't test a rocket, no more than you can test a firework.

You can test a model/design but every rocket that fires is expended and unreusable, so the first time the actual rockets used on the skycrane fired was on mars.

The hydrazine type rockets used called "MLE" (Mars Lander Engine) were derived from the viking missions apparently

Thanks for that, but what I guess im really asking was how did they design/test/know that the powered descent stage would work? Like I said I've seen the drop test but not a test on the powered descent, I imagine it would be impossible to test on earth with the different environments, so would it have been based entirely on simulations (and a bit of luck)?