I’m going to interview Adam Steltzner in 30 minutes. You probably know his unmistakable rocker face from the past few days: he’s the lead engineer of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover entry, descent and landing phase. More »
A lot of people are wondering why the first color image from the Mars Curiosity Rover looks so murky. Or why the black and white pictures look so low-resolution and out of focus in some areas. Calm yourselves. They will look absolutely amazing soon, perfect and in high-def. More »
After the successful landing of NASA’s heaviest piece of machinery on the red planet to date, the Curiosity Rover has sent back its first few images of the dusty planet, and if you can just squint your eyes a little bit, you might be able to check out the natives of Barsoom, and some say, a speck that could very well be John Carter leaping through the air. What Curiosity revealed was a rust-tinged, pebbly landscape, with the famous Mars crater rim being somewhere in the distance. The image was taken thanks to a camera which was located at the end of its robotic arm.
Approximately 300 or so low-quality thumbnails were sent back to Earth on Monday, and NASA has taken the trouble to process them into a short video. It would be great if there were High Definition photos shot from so far away, but I guess we will have to make do with what we have at the moment. Now all we need to do is land a man on Mars, and watch the potential of a whole new world open up to mankind.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NASA’s Mars rover: Curiosity almost complete, No 3D Rover camera from NASA,
If you follow space and science at all, or watch the news, undoubtedly you would’ve heard by now that NASA was successful in putting the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars yesterday. NASA has released a cool photograph of the Curiosity rover taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The photograph was taken as Curiosity was still attached to its parachute is descending through the atmosphere of Mars.
The photograph, which you see above, was taken at an angle by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Since the photo was snapped at an angle relative to the surface of the planet, the intended landing zone near Mt. Sharp doesn’t appear directly below the Rover. You can tell from the photo that the parachute was open and performing exactly as NASA scientists intended.
It’s amazing that the photograph, taken from orbit, clearly shows the massive hole in the center of the parachute and the darker band around the parachute. You can’t see the wires connecting the Curiosity and its sky crane to the parachute in this image. When the MRO snapped this picture, it was 211 miles away from Curiosity.
Shooting a robot millions of miles from Earth and landing it on another planet is incredibly impressive and all, but it wasn’t a just an aeronautical physics experiment. We went there to collect data. Now we’ve got some: the first color images from Mars Curiosity. More »
NASA’s Curiosity rover hasn’t even been on Mars a full 24 hours, and already the science world is reaping the benefits. Nerds, too, actually. The shot above is the first high(ish) resolution photo shown to the public from its cameras, depicting a shadow of its top, a peculiar Martian landscape and the three-mile Mount Sharp. Just beyond the break, you’ll find video footage of the intense descent onto Mars’ surface. It’s a low-res stop-motion affair displaying 297 frames as it found its way from space to a foreign land. Trust us — it’s worth the 1:03 time investment.
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NASA’s Curiosity captures awe-inspiring shot of Mount Sharp, uploads video of descent upon Mars originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Aug 2012 20:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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This video covers the last two and a half minutes of Curiosity’s descent from her point of view. It’s made of 297 frames captured during the landing. You can see the thermal shield being jettisoned and the wheel of the rover as it’s being dropped by the skycrane. More »
The Curiosity landed safely on Mars today, marking a historic day for space exploration. But did you catch the rover in the background of today’s Google doodle? We didn’t either until a tipster pointed it out to us. More »
Here you have it. It’s not the super-HD panoramic image that everyone is eagerly awaiting for, but this is the first high(ish) resolution image of the 3-mile-high Aeolis Mons, commonly known as Mount Sharp. More »
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