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Aug 23

Curiosity Mars descent gets 1080p video

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.

Aug 22

Curiosity becomes First roving machine on Mars

Posted in: Today's Chili

This afternoon the folks responsible for the NASA mission at their Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California announced that they’d begun to move forward on wheels. The Curiosity rover landed less than a month ago on the planet, it being another of NASA’s successful landings in what’s expected to be a long line of Mars explorations. The rover was announced today to have rolled forward about 15 feet before rotating its wheels 120 degrees and advancing another 8 feet in a new direction.

For the science fiction lovers amongst us there’s also the announcement made today that this mission’s managers have decided name the landing site “Bradbury Landing” in honor of the late writer. Ray Bradbury passed away this June and would have been 92 today, the day of this history next step in the NASA mission. Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters, made their intent clear today.

“We have truly extended our reach and touched another planet. Today would have been Ray Bradbury’s 92nd birthday, but he’s already reached immortality with the 100s of short stories he’s written and nearly 50 books. His books have truly inspired us. The Martian Chronicles have inspired our curiosity and opened our minds to the possibility of life on Mars. In his honor, we declared the place that Curiosity touched down to be forever known as Bradbury Landing.” – Meyer

Have a peek at the news conference given where the declaration was made and the team became the first in the universe to rove about the planet Mars.

Video streaming by Ustream

Inside that conference you’ll see old footage – also included below – of Ray Bradbury reciting his poem “If only we had been taller” at an event at Caltech on the eve of the craft Mariner 9 heading to Mars in 1971. This event is epic as well, with his words containing the power to launch our ships of the future – proof is all around us!

[via NASA]

Curiosity becomes First roving machine on Mars is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 21

NASA InSight mission approved: we’re heading back to Mars in 2016

Posted in: Today's Chili

This week the folks at NASA are detailing one of several proposals they’ve had prepared for future missions to heavenly bodies inside our solar system, the most exciting these being another mission to none other than Mars! This mission has been dubbed InSight and will be launching in March of 2016. The InSight mission is not set to study the surface of the Red Planet as their current mission is with the Curiosity rover, instead they’ll be studying the interior of the planet – getting down deep inside!

This Mars exploration mission has been approved by NASA and certainly springs forth from the success of the current mission that has the group exploring the planet as we speak. Head to our Curiosity collection to see the many fabulous moments in the past few weeks that surround NASA’s success in becoming, once again, the only group to have successfully landed and explored that particular rocky mass.

On the other hand, Amina Khan of the LA Times has spoken this week with scientists at NASA who claim that, “the decision to fund another Mars mission at JPL in La Cañada Flintridge had nothing to do with Curiosity’s successful landing in Gale Crater two weeks ago.” John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, spoke on the matter, saying that this InSight mission was decided upon well in advance of the August 5th landing. This was done so that no matter what the outcome of the first landing, the second mission would not be affected.

InSight is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. In the mission, researchers will be using a lander to find new information now how rocky planets such as Mars and Earth were formed. The lander will be burrowing as deep as 16 feet below the surface of the planet Mars and will be studying heat flowing underground as well as how Mars moons affect tidal forces on the planet.

This mission will cost $425-million and is part of the Discovery program, the same program that launched the first successful rover to Mars in 1997.

[via NASA]

NASA InSight mission approved: we’re heading back to Mars in 2016 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 14

New Mars photos add to 130 photo Curiosity panorama

Posted in: Today's Chili

The Curiosity rover sent to the planet Mars earlier this month has been snapping photos since it first set down upon the surface, creating now a 130 photo panorama of the crater in which it currently resides. Here we’re seeing some surprisingly sharp photos taken with the cameras which we learned about last week, each of them lovely in their own respect. As the Curiosity rover travels through the Gale Crater it will continue to create individual shots as well as a larger panorama – one at first, then more as it moves through its environment.

The landscape here is barren, of course, and red as the nickname the planet retains. Here you’ve got 79 images making up just part of the full 130 photo panorama stitched together by NASA and the camera aboard the rover. The rest of the images are currently headed back to Earth, the delay having to do with the data limit NASA is bound to – see the camera post linked above for more information. You’ll be able to see the full stitched image by clicking the preview here.

The full panorama was photographed back on August 9th in relatively quick succession. Each of the photos are being sent one after the other to NASA and the full image should be constructed by the end of the week. Meanwhile the rover continues its mission to study the planet with readings of the environment and samples of material from the atmosphere and surface.

Check out our Curiosity timeline below to see what else this lovely Mars rover has been up to in the short amount of time it’s been on the planet, and give a hand to NASA as they continue to make their way – and our way – into space!

[via NASA]

New Mars photos add to 130 photo Curiosity panorama is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 13

Obama sends NASA praise and promises continued support

Posted in: Today's Chili

This week President Barack Obama made a call from Air Force One to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California which not only praised their excellent work on the Curiosity rover landing on Mars, but promised them continued support as well. This call made it clear that, as Obama noted, NASA’s “incredible success” was just that, and deserving of the highest of praises. “It’s really mind-boggling what you’ve been able to accomplish, and being able to get that whole landing sequence to work the way you did is a testimony to your team.”

This call included a bit of humor as well, with Obama noting that he liked the “new” look of the team, pointing out flight engineer Bobak Ferdowski specifically. “I in the past thought about getting a Mohawk myself but my team keeps on discouraging me.” This engineer quickly gained meme status after the live feed of the team was shown earlier this month as the mission landed the Curiosity rover successfully. Obama continued with a few more notes on Ferdowski’s hair style.

“And now that he’s received marriage proposals and thousands of new Twitter followers, I think that I’m going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense. … It does sound like NASA has come a long way from the white shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and the pocket protectors. You guys are a little cooler than you used to be.” – President Obama

These comments were relayed by USA Today as the call came down earlier this morning. Obama also noted that he’d like to know as soon as possible if the team detects life on the planet. (Half-jokingly, of course.)

“If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away. I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that will go to the top of the list. Even if they’re just microbes, it will be pretty exciting” – President Obama

Obama made with the praise as well, according to Rueters, with terms like “incredible success” coming up regularly. The President also made it clear once again what the government expects from the NASA team, and what they’re hoping will happen in the future as well.

“Our expectation is that Curiosity is going to be telling us things that we did not know before and laying the groundwork for an even more audacious undertaking in the future, and that’s a human mission to the Red Planet.” – President Obama

Finally, Obama let it be known that he has “a personal commitment to protect these critical investments in science and technology.” This type of comment is especially pointed here near the 2012 election for President of the United States and now that NASA has initiated another successful mission.

Obama sends NASA praise and promises continued support is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 10

Humans on Mars in 12 years says Elon Musk

Posted in: Today's Chili

Right after the folks at NASA successfully landed their Curiosity rover on the red planet, entrepeneur and real-life Tony Stark made it clear that he’ll be there between 12 and 15 years from now. “We know it’s possible to get there,” he said, “You would be moving to Mars, so a round trip ticket, it has to be no more than half a million dollars, so roughly, a middle-class house in California, and at this point, I would say, I know it’s possible.” He let it be known via Nightline that he was confident “at this point” that it could be done, that people would be living on Mars sometime in the future, and that it’s our “life raft” for the future of the species.

Musk’s company SpaceX recently became the first 3rd party (non government-run) group to successfully dock with the International Space Station and is also currently working with NASA to send more ships to NASA equipment in the future. This next-generation space-race has SpaceX and a set of other interested parties looking to profit from the final frontier as fast as possible. With that and the news that we are, indeed, on Mars once again, made a situation in which Musk HAD to make a comment.

“I’m confident at this point that it can be done. I think we’ll be able to send, probably, the first people to Mars in roughly 12 to 15 years. That’s my estimate.” – Musk

The plan at the moment, should Musk’s initiative line up with the reality of tech in the day, is to colonize the planet and terraform for the future of humanity.

“Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian. We could make Mars like Earth…it’s more than our life raft, it’s like backing up the biosphere. … I think it would be the most difficult thing that humanity has ever tried to do.” – Musk

For those of you who are fans of the Entertainment part of this equation, a bit of trivia: Musk’s SpaceX research and design lab appears in Iron Man 2 as parts of Stark Industries. Musk appears in the film as well, speaking with Stark about the Merlin engines (real-life tech made by SpaceX) as well as electric jet. Everything is achievable through technology!

Check out the timeline below to see more Musk adventures as well – he’s going places and we’re going with him. For science!

Humans on Mars in 12 years says Elon Musk is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 10

Mars Curiosity photo size and cameras explained

Posted in: Today's Chili

If you were wondering why the photos coming back to us from NASA‘s Curiosity rover on Mars were so small, you certainly aren’t alone. As Curiosity’s camera project’s manager Mike Ravine explains to the Digital Photography Review, it’s not a matter of being able to put a more high quality camera aboard, it’s the data transfer. While your smartphone is capable of transferring gigabytes of memory a day if you really want it to, the Mars mission is limited to 250 megabits per day – that’s 31.25 megabytes (MB) and NASA certainly wasn’t about to dedicate that whole amount to photographs only.

The Curiosity rover is sending data to Earth in several ways, but only its UHF transmitter is able to push a large enough amount of data back to send images. The next issue was the fact that the same sensor had to work for four different cameras onboard: MAHLI, two Mastcams, and the camera set to capture the machine’s descent to the planet – MARDI. Each of these cameras were built around one single platform so that each of them would not have to be re-tested and qualified for the mission. This way of accomplishing NASA’s goals makes everything less expensive and more dependable in the end.

“We developed all four cameras around a common architecture so the choice of sensor was hedged across all of them. We wanted to be able to capture high frame rates, particularly with the descent camera. We also looked at a 4MP sensor but it would have run around half as fast. And the state of CMOS sensors wasn’t credible in 2004. They’re an interesting option now, but they weren’t then.” – Ravine

Ravine also explains that they were not able to get some of the equipment they’d hoped to be working with approved and on-board in time for the launch, including the 3D video cameras spoken about over a year ago with and by James Cameron.

“They were going to be 6.5-100mm zoom lenses, which would allow us to set them both to the same focal length for capturing stereo images. … We’re going to get some great mosaics with the focal lengths we’ve got, but we’re not going to get the wide-field cinematic moments or the 3D movies from Mars that Cameron wanted” – Ravine

Stay tuned as the Mars mission continues through the coming weeks and into the vast future of space! Check out our timeline below as well to keep up to date on all of Curiosity’s doings, drivings, and photography too!

Mars Curiosity photo size and cameras explained is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Aug 09

New Mars Photos from Curiosity bring 360 color panorama

Posted in: Today's Chili

The Curiosity rover sent to Mars this week by NASA has been collecting an ever-growing collection of photos from the Red Planet, the newest being the 360 degree panorama you see before you. This photo was taken with the vehicle’s highest-resolution navigation camera and is color-accurate to an unknown degree. We’re currently in the process of prodding NASA for their deep cover information on the cameras outside of what we already know – James Cameron is onboard!

In addition to the color photo you see above (and in larger “full size” format in the gallery below), you’ll be able to see some “3D” photos taken by the craft too. Head to this post from earlier this week to see photos taken with the vehicle’s dual camera setup and put on your red/green glasses for a thrill. Of course you know this means we’ll be seeing martians in three dimensions too – soon!

Thus far all we’re seeing is a bunch of rocks save for the machinery above and below the camera’s vision. The metal and plastic you see is actually part of the Curiosity rover, of course, and the cameras are able to look down further to make sure the rover is all there should a space monster come to take a swipe of it. While you’re at it, have a peek at the landing video NASA has provided of the beast heading towards the planet from earlier this week:

“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

Then have a look at a collection of relatively high resolution shots coming from the machine this week. NASA will continue to provide us all with shots such as these as they explore the crater in which they’re sitting right this minute on Mars for all of the months that they’ll be there. Stay tuned as this space program continues to blast its way into the future. Stay steady!

Aug 06

First Mars photos projected back from Curiosity Rover

Posted in: Today's Chili

Less than an hour ago, NASA accomplished a new feat of engineering supremacy with the landing of the Curiosity Rover to the surface of Mars – and the first photos from that craft have been sent back to Earth already. As it was revealed about and around the landing sequence for this craft, the delay between the tech on the planet now and us here at home on Earth is about 14 minutes. What we’re seeing now are photos taken from the Curiosity River and projected back to our planet in less than a half hour – fresh as we’ve ever seen them!

What you’re seeing are some rather dusty images straight from the Curiosity Rover as it’s touched down on the planet Mars. These are the first bits of data we’ll be receiving from the planet that’ll be able to be made sense of by the masses. For all information regarding new forms of life, little green men, and signs of water, we’ll have to wait a bit longer.

You’re seeing shadows of the rover as it sits on the surface of Mars as well as images of its wheels. There are only a few small images at the moment, but more are certainly on the way from NASA very soon. The reason the view right now is so very dusty is that the area surrounding the craft is essentially one massive cloud of debris blown up by the landing sequence. Subsequent shots of the surface of the planet will be clearer – we hope!

Have a peek here at these rather tiny images and stick around as much more lovely versions and future shots appear. And have a toast for NASA – we’ve just lived through history!

[via Mars]

Aug 05

NASA Mars Rover Curiosity makes a perfect landing

Posted in: Today's Chili

Over the past few weeks we’ve been watching NASA’s work with their newest Mars Rover to make its way to the red planet. Three hundred and fifty million miles away from Earth, Curiosity landed on the planet after having worked through the sequence outlined by the group over the past few weeks. This mission was launched on the 26th of November, 2011, and has make its landing here on the 5th of August, 2012 with flying colors.

The entire sequence of events went exactly as planned as NASA live-streamed the entire event via their own set of feeds pushed through USTREAM. Of course one of the most interesting subjects surrounding this whole event was the delay between when the ship nears the atmosphere and when the actual rover touches down on the planet. Three ships have moved toward, past, and/or into Mars, those being named MRO, Odyssey, and MSL. The MSL unit is the one that contained Curiosity, and both Odyssey and MRO were sent to collect information about the landing of MSL’s payload – again, Curiosity.

Heartbeat Tones, as they’re called, let the crew know that all was well, and inside the “7 Minutes of Terror” tensions were high. Of course no matter how well prepared a crew such as this could have been, tensions would have been through the roof. Months of preparation and millions of dollars were already in the project and all there was to do inside the last set of minutes was wait.

“We have venting” – cruise Stage Separation – five minutes to entry – all was going well, it seemed.

And for 7 full minutes there was barely a sound save for the brief reports – then it happened. “We are processing data from the Odyssey. We have a connection but we don’t have any data yet. There we go.”

At this point the rover had already landed – in fact it’d landed right at the moment when NASA started to receive signals that the ship had entered the atmosphere. The vehicle flew down toward the surface of the planet at mach 2 – “parachute deployed” – “we are decelerating – 150 meters per second.”

Needless to say, the cheers got louder and more joyous each announcement of a plateau. “We are in powered flight. 500 meters from planet. Stand by for skycrane. 40 meters altitude. Skycrane has started. Expecting final cut shortly.” Each announcement became more exciting.

And then there was an explosion of cheers – it’d worked! Touchdown!

All was well, the Curiosity Rover had landed successfully. Joy for all and the work could start once again. Now we all get to have a peek at the red planet once again. Have a look at our timeline of this event and stick around SlashGear for big findings from the rover for some time to come.