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The Curiosity On Mars Thread.
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Commander, some nice pics there. You lucky lucky......fecker!
I saw this earlier today. Curiosity got to use MAHLI at night, which was something i was wondering was possible. They got a nice pic too:
Some of the spiel to go with it:This image of a Martian rock illuminated by white-light LEDs (light emitting diodes) is part of the first set of nighttime images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. MAHLI took the images on Jan. 22, 2012 (PST), after dark on the 165th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars.
This rock target in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater is called "Sayunei." The image covers an area about 1.3 inches by 1 inch (3.4 by 2.5 centimeters). The illumination came from one of MAHLI's two groups of white LED pairs. This allowed surface features to cast shadows and provide textural detail.
White-light LED illumination was also used for a nighttime image of MAHLI's calibration target, shown at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16713.html .
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Also, they took one in ultraviolet light to see if any minerals that flouresce were present:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130124.html
Now if they do some night time long exposures like this:
I swear i might wet myself!:D0 -
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ballyturtles wrote: »Oh sorry I must have missed your other post. I take it they didn't shown you Maggie in action then? Although I havn't seen it in the flesh (well, metal) I did see a scale of the rover next to various familiar objects and I was surprised that they managed to land something that big 100 million miles from home!
It was lashing rain out, so they didn't bring her out. The mast that you can see with what looks like a head is about 9/10 foot off the ground.
It has the same wheel base as a VW Beetle. I asked if that was by accident or by design and they all laughed.
Here's a pic for scale. It's just off the web. Looks like it was taken in the Mars Yard.
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Where Curiosity, Voyager, Cassini etc talk back to via an array of dishes & satellites. The room is kept fairly dim, so if there's an emergency light flashing it will be much more noticeable on the banks of screens they monitor.
The second pic is a stream of the data coming back in real time from each of those programs. Voyager was transmitting back when we were there, which was amazing to think. Voyager is that far away now, they have to slow the transmission rate down on the onboard data recorder. In the next year or so they wont be able to slow the tape any further without it stopping, so Voyager will become a real time only transmission, so if it sees something, and we aren't in a position to receive the transmission we'll miss it.
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130128.htmlNASA's Mars rover Curiosity has placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.
The rover carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars yesterday (Jan. 27). The tests enable engineers to check whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions for what would result from the commanded motions.
The next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill. At Curiosity's work site in Gale Crater, air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight. Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin.
This should be fun!0 -
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No new updates on any drilling activities but i saw a tweet on the nasa site that mentioned them considering doing some night time photography.
:)
As a (very) part time photographer i am really excited about this!
MAHLI took some pics after the arm test:
That hole in the centre was made by the drill bit pressing into the ground.
This drill bit!
You can see the dust receptacle under the drill housing with the six allen bolts on it. (They could have just welded that and saved some weight but sure who am i to judge!)
I got the impression the dust would be collected as it drilled but it turns out it is temporarily collected in the drill box then tipped into the scoop and then analysed. Here's hoping for no blockages!0 -
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^^^^^^^^
You asked before or after i mentioned this? If it's after i asked then that's some dedication! Fair play.:)
If it's before i asked then you had a very comprehensive conversation with them!
Are you still in contact with the people at JPL?
Anyway, here's a closeup of the mark made by the drill bit.
Preparatory Test for First Rock Drilling by Mars Rover Curiosity
The bit in the rotary-percussion drill of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity left its mark in a target patch of rock called "John Klein" during a test on the rover's 176th Martian day, or sol (Feb. 2, 2013), in preparation for the first drilling of a rock by the rover.
The Sol 176 test, called the "drill on rock checkout," used only the hammering or percussive action of the drill, not rotary action.
This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's arm was taken with the camera positioned about 4 inches (10 centimeters) off the ground. It shows an area of John Klein about 3 inches (7.7 centimeters) wide. The length of the gray divot cut by the drill bit is about two-thirds of an inch (1.7 centimeters).
Another preparatory test, called "mini drill," will precede the full drilling. The mini drill test will use both the rotary and percussive actions of the drill to generate a ring of rock powder around a hole. This will allow evaluating the appearance of these drill tailings, to see if they are behaving as dry powder suitable for processing by the rover's sample handling mechanisms.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QqfifH3-rk
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