Hasta La Gadget!

When Curiosity made its famous Mars landing this past summer, it started its very important mission to study the mysterious red planet to discover a number of things, including if we could one day treat Mars as a second home.

Today, NASA is announcing another important mission that includes you, your smartphone and Foursquare as you can add an exclusive Curiosity Explorer badge to your collection when you like NASA on Foursquare and check into a planetarium, science museum or NASA visitor center. Just don’t plan on becoming the mayor of Mars any time soon as we believe Curiosity has got dibs on that achievement for a long, long time.

If you’re one of those people who believes they don’t need no stinkin’ badges, then you’re extremely mistaken as a Curiosity Explorer badge will certainly get you the attention you’ve been craving from all the Big Bang Theory-watching honeys at work. If not, then at least you’ll have a neat badge that’s… out of this world!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Twitter Roach Is Some Gross Tech, Steve Jobs’s Yacht Captured In Video,

The internet is awash with news that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected carbon compounds on Mars. Some people may have you believe that the news suggests there’s life on Mars—but don’t get too excited just yet. More »

NASA‘s teased data “for the history books” from the Curiosity Mars rover has all been a huge misunderstanding, the space agency now says, with the reference apparently encompassing the mission as a whole – not a specific finding. Anticipation was built earlier this month when principal investigator John Grotzinger told NPR that “this data is gonna be one for the history books” and that “it’s looking really good”; his comments were interpreted as specific to a set of soil sample results Curiosity’s onboard labs had just beamed back to Earth, but NASA says it was all a case of confusion.

In fact, Grotzinger’s statement had been intended to encompass the Curiosity mission as a whole, NASA clarified to Mashable, not to hint that the sample had contained evidence of organic compounds. Adding to the mix-up was the fact that the project lead voiced his enthusiasm just after discussing the first set of Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) results had come in, but refused to detail them as they still needed to be checked over.

NASA tweeted out an attempt to calm expectations from the official Curiosity account, but the story had already caught the imagination and – following the identification of an ancient seabed – an organic discovery seemed all too possible.

“What did I discover on Mars? That rumors spread fast online. My team considers this whole mission “one for the history books”” CuriosityRover Twitter account, November 12, 2012

According to Veronica McGregor, NASA’s news and social media manager, the NPR team simply happened to be around at the right time to see some very excited scientists at work. “The short story is NPR was there when the first soil results were hitting the ground and the team was ecstatic to see data” she told Slate.

“Could they analyze that data on the fly and give an accurate result?” McGregor continued. “No. In fact, they’ve spent a good part of two weeks sorting through the data in order to reach conclusions based on solid science.”

The results of that solid science will be shared at a press conference on December 3 at the American Geophysical Union meeting, an event that has been on the calendar since before Curiosity reached the red planet. And, while it’s possible that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could have some groundbreaking news from Curiosity, with a two year mission planned, we may have to wait a little longer to see Mars give up some of its secrets.

Curiosity’s whole Mars mission is “history books” worthy clarifies NASA is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome to Tuesday evening everyone! Today we found out that shipping times for the iPhone 5 have gone down to two weeks, which should be good news for those who have been waiting to get their hands on one. HP announced that Autonomy’s “serious accounting improprieties” have left it with a whopping $8.8 billion bill, while afterward insiders were saying that HP never wanted to close on the Autonomy deal in the first place.

We had a lot of talk about Black Friday deals and sales today, with Apple kicking off its Black Friday festivities at midnight on November 23. Xbox Live has plenty of deals for you to take advantage of as well, while we heard that Steam will be kicking off its autumn sale tomorrow. T-Mobile strengthened its 4G network in a number of markets today, while the 2013 Nissan Leaf was revealed in Japan. A new survey is saying that kids want Apple products most for Christmas, with new rumors tipping the Galaxy S IV for a February 2013 launch.

A snazzy looking white Nexus 4 has popped up on TalkTalk, while Lenovo unveiled the new ThinkPad Carbon Touch today. The FTC may not have enough evidence to hit Google with an antitrust lawsuit, and Razer has released its new Death Adder 2013 gaming mouse. Reggie Fils-Aime is saying that the Wii U has a long way to go, while Nintendo says that more Wii U stock is on the way, with the US as a priority. Skype 3.0 has landed on Android, and today was the 27th birthday of Windows 1.0 (they grow up so fast).

RIM’s stock took a jump after an analyst predicted that BlackBerry 10 has a 20 to 30 percent chance of success, and Nokia released HERE Maps for iOS. Sony pushed update 2.0 for the PlayStation Vita out the door today, while Gearbox released Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage for Borderlands 2. Finally tonight, we’ll end with a couple of interesting stories from NASA: it turns out that the Mars Curiosity Rover has discovered something big that NASA isn’t telling us, while scientists have snapped a picture of the Super-Jupiter planet Kappa Andromedae b. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, enjoy the rest of your night everyone!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: November 20, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Welcome back to Mars, ladies and gentlemen, as the NASA Curiosity mission continues its epic journey across the planet’s surface with a news note that they have found radiation levels totally safe for human beings. This finding is entirely encouraging for the future of Mars exploration as far as actually sending human beings there goes, and certainly doesn’t send a negative mark back on the possibility of us living there someday. Of course if you’re a fan of the original Total Recall, you don’t care one way or another simply for the safety of your eyeballs, but still.

Of special note here is the fact that this is the very first time radiation has been measured from the surface of another planet – besides Earth, that is. This is done with the rover’s RAD, or Radiation Assessment Detector, and has shown the radiation levels on the ground as rather similar to what the astronauts on the International Space Station experience daily. RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute’s Boulder, Colorado branch noted the findings as encouraging.

“We see a definite pattern related to the daily thermal tides of the atmosphere. The atmosphere provides a level of shielding, and so charged-particle radiation is less when the atmosphere is thicker. Overall, Mars’ atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the flight to Mars.” – Hassler

NASA has also added that the overall goal for this mission is to use 10 instruments on Curiosity “to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes.” This mission has been followed by tech blogs, science publications, and everywhere in-between simply because of the rarity of a Mars mission of this magnitude. We’ve seen tiny findings that mean little to us average citizens as well as lovely photos taken from the surface, perfectly suitable for wallpapers for your smartphone.

Above: The header image in this article shows five scoopfulls of material from what NASA describes as a patch of dusty sand called “Rocknest.” This set of five “bite-marks” shows how little NASA needs to analyze the surface – each mark is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

Have a peek at the timeline below of just a small sample of the goings-on around the Curiosity mission and consider the implications of the impact this NASA action is having on the future of space exploration. We’re hoping that science will prevail, allowing here more funding for NASA so that we can continue to expand our space-loving minds through the rest of our lifetimes and beyond – make it happen, public!

[via NASA]

Curiosity Mars rover finds radiation levels safe for humankind is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.