NASA releases Greely Panorama video from Mars

I really love it NASA releases new photos and video taken by various spacecraft, and rovers on the surface of other planets. I mentioned last week that the Mars rover Opportunity had taken a bunch of new photos that NASA had released. Today comes a new video from the surface of Mars taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

The full circle scene was pieced together into one seamless panoramic view by combining 817 images taken by Opportunity’s Pancam. The panoramic photos were shot while Opportunity sat waiting out the Martian winter. Opportunity sat still for four months during the winter.

Opportunity was conducting some sort of work while sitting still, presumably other than taking these photos. It’s interesting that the solar panels in some of the early scenes appear to have a very thick coating of Martian dust. Ultimately, Opportunity will be unable to gather enough power from the sun to sustain itself if the dust on the panels becomes too thick.

[via Telegraph]


NASA releases Greely Panorama video from Mars is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity’s precarious Mars landing explained (video)

NASA's Seven Minutes of Terror Curiosity's precarious Mars landing explained video

Edited and scored with the dramatic tension of a summer blockbuster trailer, NASA’s put together a gripping short clip that dresses down Curiosity’s mission to Mars for the layman. The “car-sized” rover, set to touchdown on August 5th of this year at 10:31PM PDT, is currently journeying towards the Red Planet on a suicide mission of sorts, with the success of its make it or break it EDL (enter, descent, landing) wracking the nerves of our Space Agency’s greatest minds in advance. Their cause for concern? A period of radio silence, dubbed the “seven minutes of terror” for the amount of time it takes a signal to reach Earth, during which the craft will have already either smashed disastrously into the Martian landscape or nestled perfectly down from the ascend phase on a 21ft long tether. The logistics involved are so numerous and prone to error — slowing the craft from 13,000 mph to 0 mph and then deploying, detaching and avoiding collision with the supersonic parachute for starters — that it’s a wonder the government ever signed off on the project. If it all does come off without a hitch, however, the ladies and gents down at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory certainly deserve several thousand bottles of the finest bubbly taxpayers’ money can buy. Click on past the break to gape at the sequence of engineering feats required to make this landing on terra incognita.

Continue reading NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity’s precarious Mars landing explained (video)

NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity’s precarious Mars landing explained (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNASA  | Email this | Comments