Hasta La Gadget!

A group of students from the University of Leicester has announced that they have debunked the premise of the Bruce Willis flick Armageddon. If you’re a fan of science fiction, you might recall the 1998 movie where Bruce Willis and his band of well drilling experts were sent the surface of an asteroid on a path to hit the earth. They used a nuclear weapon to split the asteroid in half so it passed harmlessly by the Earth.

The students at the University devised a formula to find the total amount of kinetic energy needed to divert the volume of the asteroid pieces as described in the movie. The students assumed that the clearance radius was the radius of the earth plus 400 miles. The students also calculated and the velocity of the asteroid, and the distance the asteroid in the film was from the earth when it was blown up. Using information from the movie and a formula the students whipped up, they arrived at a conclusion of whether or not using a bomb would have worked in real life.

The students determined that it would take 800 trillion terajoules of energy to split the asteroid in two with both chunks clearing the planet. However, the students say that the largest bomb ever detonated on earth, which was a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb dubbed Big Ivan detonated by the Soviet Union, lacked the power needed. The problem is that Big Ivan only produced 418,000 terajoules.

The students also note that for such an explosion to work, assuming a bomb large enough, the explosion would have needed to be set off virtually as soon as the asteroid in the film was detected. Interestingly, a group of scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory used in a supercomputer model back in March of this year to study how effective a nuclear bomb would be at destroying an asteroid on collision course with Earth. While this team of scientists didn’t use specifications from the movie, they did determine that a one megaton nuclear weapon would be able to divert an asteroid measuring 1650 feet long.

[via NetworkWorld]

Students find that no bomb is powerful enough to destroy “Armageddon” asteroid is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The gradual unfurling of NASA‘s Curiosity rover continues, with the head of the Martian explorer ‘bot now fully deployed and taking photos, albeit not at final quality. The Rover itself – or its tweeting human representative on Earth – announced the successful erection with a new photo from one of the Navcams mounted on the head, which will eventually be used to snap 3D imagery for navigation and control. However, there’s far more pixels incoming.

Also on Curiosity’s head is a pair of “MastCam” cameras. Each shoots 1600 x 1200 stills and 720p HD video at up to 10fps, in true color rather than the black & white of the NavCams. One of the MastCams is for narrow-angle photography, with a 100mm focal length, 5.1-degree field of view, and the ability to show 7.4 cm/pixel scale at 1km, while the other, medium angle camera has a 34mm focal length, 15-degree field of view, and 22 cm/pixel scale at 1km.

However, the MastCams aren’t expected to be deployed until roughly a week after Curiosity’s landing. That’s down to a combination of dust in the environment and progressive testing; only earlier today did the rover whip off its Hazcam dust covers and send back some unblinkered 3D shots of the Martian terrain.

If you’re wondering about the QR-code style glyph in the bottom of the image, that’s apparently part of the calibration process for Curiosity’s head. Today NASA is also due to establish direct communications with the rover, using its high-gain antenna.

Curiosity gets curious: Rover lifts head and looks around Mars is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NASA’s Curiosity rover continues to send back images from Mars, including 3D shots that show the intimidating terrain, as the robotic explorer continues to ramp up to full functionality. The new photos use the multiple Hazcam cameras mounted at Curiosity’s extremities, pairing multiple fames to give a red/blue anaglyph 3D shot; meanwhile, NASA has also released a video that shows exactly where the landing site fits into the overall context of Mars.

Photo quality has been steadily improving as the dust thrown up during the rover’s landing settles back down, and as Curiosity cautiously opens its lens-caps. These protective covers, applied to shield the cameras during the landing, are transparent but were unsurprisingly coated with a layer of grime.

Now that they’re being removed, however, the monochrome Hazcams are showing their full abilities. The cameras aren’t primarily intended for photo gathering – once Curiosity’s main systems are up and running they’ll be used for navigation and safely positioning the robotic arm – but for now they’re giving previously-unseen perspectives of the Martian landscape.

Curiosity 3D Mars gallery:

As for the landing video, NASA used incremental photos from the two orbiters to piece together where the  lander – and other elements of the payload, including the Skycrane and the heat shield – actually came down on Mars. The space agency had narrowed its target window so as to better position Curiosity for immediate exploration.

“The movie begins with a global image from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, then switches to views from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. As we zoom closer and closer into Gale Crater, the components of Curiosity’s landing system come into view: The heat shield was the first piece to hit the ground, followed by the back shell attached to the parachute, then the rover itself touched down, and finally, after cables were cut, the sky crane flew away to the northwest and crashed” NASA

Full system functionality isn’t expected for a further week or so, with the main head of the rover not yet unpacked; at that point, the higher resolution, color cameras will be deployed, also capable of capturing 720p HD video. On Tuesday, NASA engineers instructed the raising of the mast and continued testing the high-gain antenna

NASA’s Curiosity beams back 3D photos of Mars is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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