We’ve seen NASA‘s Mars Curiosity rover bore into Martian rock with a small drill multiple times, but the robot has just taken things to the next level: lasers. Specifically, the rover got to bore a small hole into Martian rock by blasting it with a laser repeatedly, causing a hole a few millimeters in diameter,
Mars rover Curiosity has doubtlessly been doing a whole lot of important science up there on the red planet, but it’s also been sending back a ton of pictures to keep us simpler, non-scientist folks amused by all the pretty colors red. But what kind of cameras does that thing have anyways? JPL explains.
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Fabled (and Fable) game designer Peter Molyneux has long been a visionary in the gaming world, and his most recent effort, the Kickstarted title known as Godus, has piqued our Curiosity. However, as a veteran of the console world, we jumped at the chance to get his take on next-gen along with an update on his own projects.
Surprisingly, Molyneux wasn’t particularly enthused with the new generation of consoles. Part of the problem, as he sees it, is that consoles are still too focused on the living room, while our digital lives are much more mobile — which is why, in part, Godus is being built for laptops and phones first. “I wanted them [the consoles] to shock and surprise me” with new ways to integrate with mobile devices, he says, but the current mobile features feel like a “bolt-on” rather than an integral part of gameplay. Aside from all the next-gen talk, we got an update on the man who removed Curiosity’s final block (he’s just beginning to enjoy the fruits of godhood), and got his thoughts on Oculus Rift (spoiler: he’s a fan). While words describing an interview are good, an actual interview is better — this one awaits you after the break.
Scientists already had an inkling that water helped form the landscape on Mars, but they’re now ready to confirm that claim. In a report written for Science, researchers state that the smooth, rounded shape of the Red Planet’s pebbles and the way they overlap is identical to the gravel formation found in Earth’s rivers. They appear to be too large to be blown by wind, and their varied shades indicate they were transported from various locations — telltale signs of a former stream. “For decades, we have speculated and hypothesized that the surface of Mars was carved by water, but this is the first time where you can see the remnants of stream flow with what are absolutely tell-tale signs,” said Rebecca Williams to the BBC. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of water on Mars, but the idea of a Martian river does make us wonder if Marvin had a favorite fishing hole.
While we’ve learned that radiation levels on Mars are safe for humans, actually getting there in the first place remains a problem. Recent results from Curiosity‘s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) reveal that exposure even while safely ensconced inside a protected spacecraft is dangerously high. Explorers would be bombarded with 466 milliSieverts of high-energy galactic cosmic rays and solar particles during the 253-day transit and the same coming back, with total levels that could exceed NASA’s career radiation limit for astronauts. “In terms of accumulated dose, it’s like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days,” said Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) who’s the lead author of the findings. A manned Mars voyage isn’t completely out of the question, but it does mean better shielding is necessary before such a trip — much less a future colony — becomes a reality.
Filed under: Robots, Science, Alt
Source: NASA
After seven months of cooperative tapping, Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity experiment is finally over: the cube is open. As Molyneux’s studio, 22Cans, teased the game’s last layer over Twitter, players descended upon it, chipping away the last million cubelets in a matter of minutes. “We have a winner,” the game’s creator wrote on the social network. “They should get a message now.” 22Cans is currently trying to validate the player who tapped away the final block. After the final block disappeared, so did the cube, presumably to be opened privately by the winner. So, what was inside the box? We may never know — but if you just happened to win, fill us in, would you?
Update: The winner asked Molyneux to share the winner video with the community. Their prize? Godhood, according to 22Cans. The winner will be featured as a deity in the company’s next game, Goddess, and will able to “decide on the rules that the game is played by.” The winner will get a share of the revenue generated by the title. Check out the full video for yourself after the break.
Source: 22Cans
Source: YouTube
It’s been a few months since NASA‘s Curiosity rover drilled into Mars’ rocky surface for the first time, but the little rover that could has bored into the red planet for the second time, collecting a healthy amount of Mars dirt along the way to be analyzed by the rover in the next few days.
Curiosity drilled a 2.6-inch-deep hole into a rock named “Cumberland” yesterday, and the resulting powdered dust from the drilling will be analyzed by the rover’s on-board instruments, where it will run a series of tests to see if there are any matches with the dust sample from the first drilling at “John Klein,” which is the name of the rock that Curiosity drilled into first.
The first drilling is said to include evidence that there was once life on Mars, but NASA wants to confirm those findings by drilling a second hole in a different location. We’re not sure when we’ll hear the results from the second drilling, but it took a couple of weeks for Curiosity to start analyzing the dirt sample from the first drilled hole.
In between these two drillings, Curiosity experienced a bit of a hiccup while in the middle of duty. One of its on-board computers crashed, leaving it up to the backup computer to do some work. However, it still delayed experiments for a couple of weeks, and NASA scientists had to apply a few software patches to the main computer to get it in working order again.
Eventually, though, the rover found that there was once possibly life on Mars. Scientists identified some key components in the rock samples that are critical to sustain life, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. Even the rocks themselves showed signs that particles in the rocks were formed by water. This second drilling hopes to confirm that, but we’ll be waiting a few days, and maybe even a few weeks before we hear results from NASA.
VIA: Space.com
Curiosity rover bores into Mars for second time is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
March was an eventful month for NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, which experienced a variety of issues and delays, some due to problems with the rover itself and others due to conditions outside of anyone’s control. Those issues have been resolved, but now starting today a communication moratorium has gone into effect, and Curiosity will be on its own, perhaps taking the most exotic vacation ever, until May 1.
This has been planned for some time now, and is due to planetary alignment called the Mars solar conjunction in which the Sun plants itself between our blue marble and Mars. Said NASA recently about the situation: “The moratorium is a precaution against possible interference by the sun corrupting a command sent to the rover.” The other rover and orbiters will also go without orders for awhile, but not as long.
While this is the perfect opportunity for Curiosity to get some R&R time after traveling across space and successfully completing missions, it seems the rover will still be busy with its tasks, doing science work alone with its onboard equipment until communications resume and orders are given. Commands were sent before the moratorium went into effect.
In case you missed it, the Curiosity rover suffered an issue with one of its on-board computers last month, prompting it to switch to its secondary computer and safe mode. This set off a series of minor issues, including a software error that put it back into safe mode for a bit. A couple software patches were applied, and all is well, but the rover experienced further downtime after being put into safe mode again as a precaution against a solar flare.
[via Space]
Curiosity rover communication moratorium in effect until May 1 is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
There’s been no shortage of Mars pictures since Curiosity landed. We’ve got Martian mountains, rover selfies, the works. But thanks to a little image stitching by a clever dude back here on Earth, now we have Mars Street View, kind of. More »
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