This isn’t even a joke! Serious musician Will.i.am is premiering a new song tomorrow. On Mars. Broadcast through the Curiosity rover. And the name of said song, which also just for the record is not actually a joke, is “Reach for the Stars.” More »
Right after Curiosity’s success, NASA has announced a new Mars mission called InSight. It will be a spacecraft designed to get deep under the surface of Mars and find some its hidden secrets. It will launch in 2014. More »
I guess you could rank this partnership as inevitable – NASA and Rovio teaming up to bring a one-off, special Curiosity-themed episode within the universe of Angry Birds Space itself. If you must know, this particular episode will deliver another 20 levels of pig popping goodness, although the landscape will be that of the dry, arid soil of Mars. Flinging your birds through a zero gravity environment might get old for some of us, which is why Rovio decided to help keep things slightly fresher with a few bonuses introduced, including a chance for bird flinging gamers to learn more about Curiosity’s adventure on Mars as well as its purpose of existence (apart from exploring new worlds, which is a very broad definition).
It does not matter if you are an Android or iOS gamer, you will be able to enjoy the new chapter right after you perform an update, and Rovio also has plans for a full blown assault on the Red Planet when fall arrives. What next, Angry Birds Saturn?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NASA reveals mission to study Mars’ core, NASA plans Curiosity’s path using gaming technology,
It was almost as inevitable as gravity, really. Rovio has teamed up with NASA to offer a special, Curiosity-themed episode inside Angry Birds Space. The trek has the avians scouring 20 levels of the Martian landscape with a few bonuses thrown in for good measure. Just like your favorite childhood breakfast cereal, there’s even a token healthy ingredient — in this case, a chance for gamers to learn about Curiosity’s exploration whenever they’re not busy smashing pigs. Android and iOS users can dip into the new chapter right after they update, but that’s not even the full extent of Rovio’s plans. If the environs of Gale Crater are too limiting, you’ll be glad to hear that the game developer is teasing a full-scale Red Planet variant for the fall.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets
Rovio takes Angry Birds Space for a spin with NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover, teases Red Planet for fall (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Aug 2012 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What you’re about to see is a collection of photos taken by NASA and constructed into a video with extremely high definition by a fellow by the name of Daniel Luke Fitch. This guy is a visual effects producer for Altitude-FX that simply did what noone else took the time to do – took all the photographs that NASA’s Mars mission had sent back at full resolution while it was landing and turned them into one massive video. The video runs at 15 frames per second, that being just about 3 times the speed of the actual landing according to the space between photos from NASA.
What you’re going to find here is that if you’re afraid of heights, you’re going to hurl basically right away – that much is true. Otherwise there’s one astonishing bit of film magic going on here straight from the most awesome modern space mission we’ve ever had the pleasure of living through. The entire movie is just 50 seconds, but it’s the best 50 seconds you’ll spend on a YouTube video all day, guaranteed.
The real drop took around 7 minutes – that’s “Seven Minutes of Terror” for those of you that’ve been following NASA’s presentation of the whole mission from start to finish. You can also see NASA’s 3D rendering video of the landing below – it’s terrifying!
Also have a peek at our Curiosity collection with no less than a massive offering of stories and updates regarding this mission from start to – right where we are now. This mission has been a total success thus far and will certainly lead NASA into the future on a wave of hand claps and science love for some time to come.
Curiosity Mars descent gets 1080p video is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The success of the Mars Curiosity rover continues. As this image just released buy NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows, Curiosity is now moving without any problem whatsoever. More »
You can’t win ’em all. Such is the case with the Curiosity rover, anyway, as diagnostics have revealed that its wind sensors have sustained damage. NASA engineers aren’t fully sure what caused this minor setback to the otherwise successful landing, but hypothesize that stones might’ve been kicked up during the rocket-powered landing, which then struck the sensor’s wiring. Fortunately, there’s already someone on the job, as Javier Gomez-Elvira is investigating the damage with the intent of restoring the lost functionality. Another NASA scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, believes the issue is rather minor: “It degrades our ability to detect wind speed and direction when the wind is blowing from a particular direction, but we think we can work around that.”
The broken instrument was initially discovered as part of NASA’s routine power-cycling of all instrumentation, so as to determine an overall bill of health for the rover. Now that Curiosity has earned its battle scars, it can hold its head high during its journey to Glenelg and Mount Sharp.
Filed under: Science
Curiosity rover flaunts its battle scar, wind sensor is bruised (but not broken) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ufologists are running amok after ‘discovering flying saucers’ in the last images from Mars Curiosity. It hasn’t been the first time and it will not be the last—the guys with the tinfoil hats are scrutinizing every single image uploaded by the rover. More »
Image courtesy of NASA
Mars has been a large subject of interest in the science community for years now. Many hope that eventually we’ll send a space shuttle there and set up some sort of space station. NASA’s most recent project was Curiosity, which landed just two weeks ago. Curiosity is NASA’s largest Mars rover to date and its two year mission is to discover if the planet was ever able to support life, even if it is in the microbial form. Today, Nasa announced its plans for a mission in 2016 to study Mars’ core.
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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Curiosity rover on Mars receives software update, NASA’s Mars rover: Curiosity almost complete,
With the excitement surrounding Curiosity starting to recede a little, NASA has announced that it has selected a new Discovery mission for 2016. Named InSight, this new mission will look to give us a better understanding of the formation of terrestrial planets by cracking the surface of Mars. Two of the things NASA scientists hope to discover through InSight is whether Mars has a solid or liquid core, and why it doesn’t have tectonic plates like we have here on Earth.
Finding the answers to these questions will help scientists better understand the differences between Earth and Mars, which in turn will provide a better understanding of how terrestrial planets evolve. In order to be selected at the 12th mission in the Discovery Program, InSight had to beat out 27 other proposed missions. After asking for proposals in June 2010, NASA had narrowed it down to just three by May 2011: InSight, a mission to a comet in our solar system, and a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. These three missions were given funding for “preliminary design studies and analyses” with InSight eventually coming out on top.
The mission will be led by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s W. Bruce Banerdt, but the US isn’t going it alone on this mission to Mars. The international community will play an integral role in the success of InSight, with the German Aerospace Center and France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) each providing special instruments for the mission. CNES is working with an international consortium to contruct a tool for measuring seismic waves under the planet’s surface, while the German Aerospace Center will be including a tool for measuring heat flow from the interior of the planet. An “onboard geodetic instrument” is coming from JPL, which will determine the planet’s rotation axis, as are two cameras and a robotic arm used for monitoring and deploying the instruments InSight will use.
InSight has a budget that’s capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars, but those who proposed InSight have already proven that the mission can stay under its budget cap. InSight is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars in September 2016, carrying out its two-year mission afterward. This all leads up to an eventual manned mission to the red planet, so it’s easy to see why NASA scientists are so interested in Mars when we’ve got an entire solar system to explore. Stay tuned for more information on InSight, and be sure to check out our story timeline below for a line-up of posts on NASA’s Curiosity!
NASA’s InSight Mars mission kicks off in 2016 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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