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Author Topic: The Curiosity Mars Landing  (Read 11240 times)

Offline harv

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The Curiosity Mars Landing
« on: August 05, 2012, 05:19:18 PM »
Blimey, we're nearly there. Just 13 hours and 20 minutes away (at the time of posting) from the most complex landing in space exploration history. I really can't see it being successful myself, too many things have a chance to go wrong.

Full details of the mission can be found in theHorizon: Mission To Mars programme here.

If they do manage to do it I wonder what they'll find..? Indications of life supporting elements such as water, organic life itself..? Aliens.?!!?!? :o

Edit: I voted for the Skycrane going tits up! :o :P
« Last Edit: August 05, 2012, 05:24:41 PM by harv »
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2012, 06:32:53 PM »
Christ on a fucking bike, they managed to do it!!!!!! :o

What an amazing feat of engineering. Outstanding. :o

Watched it live on Xbox Live this morning, about bloody time us lot in Europe actually got something worthwhile for our Live subscriptions. Very nerve wracking, still can't believe they managed it. And getting a few pictures right at the end was icing on the cake. 2 64x64 images and 2 256x256 images as far as I remember. A shame that they're black and white though, although I guess they have bandwidth constraints to deal with.

They managed to slow the thing down from 13,000ish mph to 0 mph in the space of 7 minutes or so. :o

Can't wait for them to get that lab on board working, going to be very interesting to see what they find out from samples taken. 8)

Edit: Bloody hell, just read that it can travel at 4cm/second which is also pretty stunning considering the mass of the thing.

Am I the only one here excited by all this..? :-\ ??? :(

If they find a bloody great big red artifact I'm hiding under my bed lol :P
« Last Edit: August 06, 2012, 11:11:19 PM by harv »
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Offline Late

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2012, 08:14:57 AM »
Quote from: harv on August 06, 2012, 06:32:53 PM
Am I the only one here excited by all this..? :-\ ??? :(

Seems that way.

Not interested in the slightest, personally.
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Offline styles

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2012, 09:05:22 AM »
This got past my radar due to my current bout of Olympic fever.

Its all rather impressive but a bit like the LHC it seems a massive amount of expenditure for  relatively little for the common man.

My main issue in life is the cost of diesel. Fix that please.
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Offline jman

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2012, 09:42:08 AM »
If you put the cost of the LHC and Mars Rover landing together.. your still nowhere near the official expenditure of the London Olympics...  ;D  I know its comparing apples and oranges and not saying I disagree with the staging of the olympics.. but I totally disagree on the comment made about the ratio of value to money when it comes to these discovery programmes.. Im all for them.

I've been quite impressed by the Mars Rover mission so far.. I reckon we'll colonize Mars in the future, but none of us lot will be around to see that.. you'll probably see a manned mission to mars in about 2-3 decades time though.
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2012, 12:40:26 PM »
Yup, it's a shame that something this cool has been overshadowed by the Olympics. They might even find completely new elements there. Still worried about alien intervention though :o

I'm also wondering if they're going to pull the rover that got stuck in the sand a while back out. I read a few days ago that the nuclear power supply is going to power it for at least 14 years so there's plenty of time.
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Offline ancelotti

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2012, 08:03:22 PM »
Watched the Horizon special on this and found it interesting. Especially how because it takes 14 minutes to send a signal to the craft, all its decisions in the landing stage were autonomous! That blood red river they examined was amazing too.

Some of the pictures they've released look cool - http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/62136000/jpg/_62136932_nla_397681372edr_f0020000aut_04096m_.jpg

I'm just waiting for the conspiracy theorists to pop up and claim it's all being staged on some desert.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2012, 08:05:23 PM by ancelotti »
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2012, 09:22:20 PM »
There's also a low res video filmed by the Orbiter satellite showing the parachute opening. There'll be a higher res one beamed over in a few days.

I still can't believe they managed to do it, has to be the most amazing piece of engineering in history so far. Unbelievable.
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Offline Dragontao

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2012, 11:48:00 PM »
Quote from: jman on August 07, 2012, 09:42:08 AM
If you put the cost of the LHC and Mars Rover landing together.. your still nowhere near the official expenditure of the London Olympics...  ;D  I know its comparing apples and oranges and not saying I disagree with the staging of the olympics.. but I totally disagree on the comment made about the ratio of value to money when it comes to these discovery programmes.. Im all for them.

Well we occasionally agree on something then lol.

Very interested in it, just not been around much in the past few days.
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2012, 11:52:34 PM »
I'm just waiting for the thing to discover a Red Marker :o

There may be trouble aheeeaaad... :P
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Offline Late

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #10 on: August 09, 2012, 09:24:43 AM »
There's nothing there...


It's only vaguely interesting in a "first step toward something good" kind of way, but to me it's a completely disinteresting step. When we start sending people to Mars or develop faster than light travel wake me up.
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Offline ancelotti

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #11 on: August 15, 2012, 02:18:24 AM »
A couple of interesting pics:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/sci_environment/12/mars_panorama/img/mars_976.gif

The 5,500m/18,000ft mountain the Curiosity rover is going to examine:

http://spaceindustrynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/mtsharp-color-corrected.jpg

Apparently it's going to take about a year for it to get there!
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #12 on: August 15, 2012, 02:55:13 AM »
Yup, it moves at a speed of 4cm per second as far as I remember. I also remember reading something about the nuclear power source lasting at least 16 years. Just hoping that us landing a bloody great big radioactive rover on the planet isn't going to upset the Martians too much. We could be looking at a War of The Worlds..!!!

The chances of anything coming from Mars is a million to one...
But still they come!!!

Bah Bah Baaaah!!!
Der der derrrr
Der der derrrr!!!

 :o
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Offline harv

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Re: The Curiosity Mars Landing
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2012, 11:20:50 PM »
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