Hasta La Gadget!

We all know the line, but what about the story behind it? Neil Armstrong was always keen on telling folks that he’d thought up the historical words after landing on the moon, but before the walk. That is to say, relatively off-the-cuff. A new documentary tells a slightly different story. More »

NASA’s Curiosity rover has set mountain climbing as its New Year’s Resolution, with the intrepid space explorer headed up a Martian peak  for its 2013 challenge. The nine-month trek – punctuated with pitstops for drilling and sample analysis – will see Curiosity clamber up the 3 mile high Mount Sharp at the center of the Gale Crater it landed near, further hunting evidence that the red planet might once have supported microbial life. Before that, however, Curiosity couldn’t resist snapping another self-portrait – with the mountain clearly visible in the background.

Originally, the Mount Sharp expedition was expected to have begun before 2012 is through; however, mission chief scientist John Grotzinger told the AP, delays were introduced in the latter half of the year. At full speed, the rover is capable of around 90 meters per hour, though a more typical rate is a third of that.

Under automatic navigation, that pace drops again to more like 200m per day, given the challenges of roaming the foreign terrain. However, NASA is likely to manually drive Curiosity to make effective use of time, as well as to help refine the systems. A software update is already planned before the mountain trek starts in mid-February.

Ahead of the climb, Curiosity will spend a month or so hunting the so-called “perfect” rock to take samples from, a lengthy process of selection, core extraction, and testing in its bank of onboard labs. Grotzinger, a geologist, has said the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in charge of the rover project has “promised everybody that we’re going to go slowly” despite the eagerness to tackle Mount Sharp.

Curiosity identified water, chlorine, sulfur, and other chemicals in recent tests, as well as other evidence that water had flowed on the Martian surface at one point in time. Next up on the checklist are the sort of chemicals that would be required for microbes to flourish, and which the JPL team believe are likely to be in the multiple strata of the mountain, assuming they’re present at all.

As for the self-portrait, the image is in fact made up of more than fifty smaller shots, taken by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager on the end of the primary robotic arm. By panning the arm around the body of the rover, Curiosity could fire off enough images – over the course of a day – that the JPL team could stitch together into a panoramic shot, a process explained in the video below.

Curiosity plays peekaboo: New self-shot before 9-month mountain climb is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA’s Curiosity rover may be getting us close-up to Mars, but the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe has a far more macro perspective as it beams back the first shots to be received at the new Malargüe space tracking station. Powered up earlier this month, the ultra-sensitive radio antenna funneled back shots from the Mars Express’ Visual Monitoring Camera showing the red planet from over 6,000 miles away.

Mars Express was launched back in 2003, and was intended to deliver the Beagle 2 rover to the surface of the planet. That part of the mission failed; however, the orbiter section has continued to take high-resolution shots of Mars and has seen its operation extended until 2014.

The ESA Malargüe station stands forty meters tall, with the antenna section along weighing in at 610 tonnes and able to track ongoing missions at both Mars and Venus. It will also be used for radio science experiments, such as trying to identify the different types of matter transmissions pass through.

It is located 1500m high in Argentinia, and features a 20 kW amplifier to send instructions all the way to Jupiter and beyond. In contrast, a typical cellphone has a 125 milliwatt amplifier. The dish was able to receive the Mars Express’ photos sent from 327 million kilometres away in just over 18 minutes.

Routine service of the antenna will begin early in 2013.

[via NBC News]

Mars Express christens new space antenna with red planet pics is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Russia’s protracted attempts at replacing the aging space warhorse that is Soyuz may finally bear fruit. RSC Energia has announced that it has finished the design of a prototype spacecraft under the country’s Prospective Piloted Transport System — the equivalent of the Orion program. The as-yet unnamed craft is expected to be ready for testing by 2017, and unlike the current model, will be fully reusable. It’s been designed not only as a taxi to take cosmonauts (and the odd multi-billionaire) to the International Space Station, but also ferry crews to the moon. That is, of course, assuming that Elon Musk doesn’t get there first and make the moon his summer home.

Filed under: Transportation, Science, Alt

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Via: Moon Daily

Source: Ria Novosti

Welcome to Wednesday evening everyone! We’re back from a brief holiday break and there was plenty of news waiting for us when we returned, so let’s jump into the Wrap-Up. Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi found herself with a semi-private photo being shared publicly today, which brought up some debate about Facebook’s privacy policy. Samsung is expected to ship 500 million smartphones in 2013, while we saw a leaked image of a white BlackBerry X10 handset with a QWERTY keyboard. Instagram is facing a class action lawsuit over the controversial changes to its Terms of Service, despite the fact that it has tried to ease users’ minds since the new Terms were announced.

We heard that Windows Blue may still use the controversial Metro UI design, while Mark Cuban spilled the beans on his gadget collection in an AMA on Reddit. Samsung is seeking a ban on Ericsson products here in the US, and the Panasonic P-02E 1080p Android smartphone showed up at the FCC. The expensive yacht that was built for Steve Jobs has been released from the impound lot, and we learned that Netflix will be introducing new social features next year.

Samsung will apparently be showing off a Smart TV UI refresh at CES 2013, and Google has extended free domestic Gmail calls in the US and Canada for another year. Rockstar released a collection of new Grand Theft Auto V screenshots, and we heard that the Samsung Galaxy S III might soon be heading to T-Mobile with LTE functionality. NVIDIA TegraZone landed on Windows RT today, and we heard how loud it is on the International Space Station thanks a new audio clip containing the station’s ambient noise.

Apple has a patent on file for a new kind of curved glass, while Microsoft announced that it will soon be opening six new store locations. The POP charger has been given approval by Apple, which means the project is a go once again, and Google said that it plans to take 90% of Microsoft Office’s audience for itself. Toyota will be paying out $1.1 billion in settlements for cases relating to the floor mat issues with the 2010 Lexus RX, and iPad mini yield problems are starting to look better. Netflix’s Christmas Eve outage was blamed on problems with Amazon’s Web Services, and finally tonight we have a review of the Adorama Flashpoint 500C LED camera light for you to have a look at. That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, we hope you enjoy the rest of your night folks!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: December 26, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.