'Seven minutes of terror,' no margin for error: NASA's Curiosity Rover to Mars 08.06

[i.b.nora]

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/mars-curiosity-rover-operational.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

Mars Curiosity Rover Is One Day Away From Becoming Fully Operational

"NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover had spent 37 Martian days (“sols”) on the Red Planet as of Wednesday and was one day away from becoming fully operational, NASA scientists said in a press conference back on Earth.

That’s because despite sending back incredible views of the Martian surface and its own car-sized form, the Curiosity rover was only undergoing preliminary checks during that entire five-week period.

Now, it’s poised to conclude those activities and have scientists clear all of its 10 instruments to begin their work on Mars — analyzing the Martian geology, chemistry and air for signs that the Red Planet ever had conditions conducive to supporting life at any point in its history."

Much more...

 

[i.b.nora]

Mars Soil Similar To Volcanic Sand On Hawaii's Mauna Kea, NASA Curiosity Rover Finds
10/30/12 05:15 PM ET EDT Associated Press

"PASADENA, Calif. -- Scientists say the Martian soil at the rover Curiosity's landing site contains minerals similar to what's found on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.

The finding released Tuesday is the latest step in trying to better understand whether the environment could have been hospitable to microbial life."

More...

 

[wishuwerehere]

NASA Rover Finds Clues to Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20121102.html

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's car-sized rover, Curiosity, has taken significant steps toward understanding how Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere.

Learning what happened to the Martian atmosphere will help scientists assess whether the planet ever was habitable. The present atmosphere of Mars is 100 times thinner than Earth's.

A set of instruments aboard the rover has ingested and analyzed samples of the atmosphere collected near the "Rocknest" site in Gale Crater where the rover is stopped for research. Findings from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments suggest that loss of a fraction of the atmosphere, resulting from a physical process favoring retention of heavier isotopes of certain elements, has been a significant factor in the evolution of the planet. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights.

More at link.

 

[wfgodot]

Mars Curiosity rover team set to announce 'major discovery' on surface of Red Planet that 'will be one for the history books' (Daily Mail)

• Rover team make finding with instrument designed to identity signs of life
• 'Earthshaking' discovery will be fully announced early next month

the story at the link above

 

[Steely Dan]

Mars Curiosity rover team set to announce 'major discovery' on surface of Red Planet that 'will be one for the history books' (Daily Mail)

the story at the link above

From this picture at the link. It appears they found footprints. :giggle:

 

[wfgodot]

Mars Mystery: Here's What We Know (informationweek.com)

 

[wishuwerehere]

Curiosity at 'Grandma's House' for Holidays

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is on extended auto-pilot for the holidays, surveying site known as "Grandma’s House."

With most of its ground control team taking time off this week, Curiosity was loaded up with operating instructions for 11 days, NASA said in a video update posted on its website.

More at link.

 

[wfgodot]

Curiosity at 'Grandma's House' for Holidays
More at link.

Great! All my tax dollars and Curiosity gets to spend Christmas cackling and rolling a blunt!

 

[Steely Dan]

Mars Mystery: Here's What We Know (informationweek.com)

So is this the big news?

http://news.discovery.com/space/curiosity-hints-at-mars-organics-perchlorate-121203.html

Rover Finds Whiff of Possible Organics on Mars

 

[Steely Dan]

http://www.space.com/18758-mars-rover-curiosity-discovery-hype-misunderstanding.html


Mars Rover Discovery Hype a Big Misunderstanding
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 04 December 2012 Time: 01:01 PM ET

... Rumors begin flying around the Internet that SAM had perhaps detected complex organic compounds — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — on the Red Planet.

What Curiosity found

SAM's actual findings, which were revealed Monday (Dec. 3) in a press conference here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, are intriguing but fall a bit short of the fevered speculation. SAM has detected simple, chlorinated organics — chemicals containing carbon and at least one chlorine atom — but it's unclear if the carbon within them is native to Mars or whether it hitched a ride from Earth, researchers said....

 

[wfgodot]

Curiosity evidently brought its own supply of skunk. Now sitting up there at Grandma's House, listening to dub reggae, livin' the life.

 

[Steely Dan]

Great! All my tax dollars and Curiosity gets to spend Christmas cackling and rolling a blunt!

BBM

Porky Smokes A Blunt - YouTube

 

[wfgodot]

This is on C.'s iPod as it sets there smiling out at the vast expanses of a quiet red planet, fourth stone from the sun.
Jacob Miller & Augustus Pablo - Baby I Love You So DUB - YouTube

 

[Steely Dan]

This is on C.'s iPod as it sets there smiling out at the vast expanses of a quiet red planet.
Jacob Miller & Augustus Pablo - Baby I Love You So DUB - YouTube

I forgot about that. :doh:

 

[wishuwerehere]

This is on C.'s iPod as it sets there smiling out at the vast expanses of a quiet red planet, fourth stone from the sun.
Jacob Miller & Augustus Pablo - Baby I Love You So DUB - YouTube

Excellent choice.

 

[Dr.Fessel]

Mars Curiosity Rover takes no prisoners as it runs over Martian Man Dog. Not photo shopped.

From NASA

http://www.space.com/19057-mars-rover-curiosity-self-portrait-photo.html

 

[Nova]

I find this era of robot-exploration so interesting, I see no reason why we need to send human beings to inhospitable places such as Mars (or any of the other planets in our solar system).

 

[Steely Dan]

Mars Curiosity Rover takes no prisoners as it runs over Martian Man Dog. Not photo shopped.

From NASA

http://www.space.com/19057-mars-rover-curiosity-self-portrait-photo.html

That's like a see what ya want to see photo. JMO

 

[wishuwerehere]

Thawing 'Dry Ice' Drives Groovy Action on Mars

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20130124.html

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures the springtime thaw of seasonal carbon dioxide ice on Mars."

"Transient grooves form on dunes when gas trapped under the ice blanket finds an escape point and whooshes out, carrying out sand with it. The expelled sand forms dark fans or streaks on top of the ice layer at first, but this evidence disappears with the seasonal ice, and summer winds erase most of the grooves in the dunes before the next winter. The grooves are smaller features than the gullies that earlier research linked to carbon-dioxide sublimation on steeper dune slopes."

"It's an amazingly dynamic process," said Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson. She is lead author of the first of the three new reports. "We had this old paradigm that all the action on Mars was billions of years ago. Thanks to the ability to monitor changes with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the new paradigms is that Mars has many active processes today."

Much more at link, along with video.

 

[i.b.nora]

@MarsCuriosity
Curiosity Rover
I was sent to Mars to find evidence of past habitable environments. Achievement unlocked! [info & images] http://t.co/2dtUS982Lm
March 12, 2013 6:30 pm


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/life-on-mars-evidence-nasa-curiosity_n_2861505.html

Life On Mars Evidence? NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Essential Ingredients In Ancient Rock Sample
The Huffington Post | By Ryan Grenoble
Posted: 03/12/2013 1:55 pm EDT

At a press conference Tuesday, scientists revealed NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered signs that ancient Mars had the essential elements necessary for supporting life.

A rock sample analyzed by Curiosity in February contained sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and carbon, critical building blocks for a living organism. An ancient streambed, analyzed in September, also contained minerals likely to have formed in the presence of "relatively fresh water," according to a written statement from NASA.

"We have characterized a very ancient, but strangely new 'gray Mars' where conditions once were favorable for life," said John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., in the statement. "Curiosity is on a mission of discovery and exploration, and as a team we feel there are many more exciting discoveries ahead of us in the months and years to come."

More...