I think those are still from the "fish eye" lens of the HAZCAMs. The top picture shows Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons, which rises 18,000 feet above Gale Crater, where Curiosity is landed.

Here's the general location of the landing site, just for reference:

http://i.space.com/images/i/14990/i0...jpg?1328135869

Here's a corrected shot of the above shot of Mount Sharp:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wi...ok-660x495.jpg

First color picture. Looks like Phoenix:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...43_946-710.jpg

Here's another shot of Gale Crater showing where Curiosity is located. The crater is ~96 miles wide.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...15686_full.jpg

I don't see that happening. Not unless we get another leader like Kennedy who is committed to it.

Yeah, considering that we can't even fly to the ISS right now, I don't see it happening either.

Might as well color correct the two awesome pics.

http://i.imgur.com/lujeY.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Fzz2Z.jpg

Depends. The first step was to test a landing scenario like this. The next step would to see if they can send something that can actually get back into the atmosphere and return.

Here's my take.

To reach Mars, it would require a voyage of months. Thus, the humans onboard would need living quarters capable of sustaining life (oxygen, water, food, waste disposal, exercise, communication, health care). Since you'd want a minimum of two travelers for redundancy and support, you'd need double the stuff. Now, most spacecraft are only designed for temporary living, but as technology increases and we turn "storage" into "sustainability", it's feasible. The spacecraft would have to have a seperate landing/return vehicle much like the moon trips did. And this ship would be so large and complex that it probably couldn't be built and launched in one piece from Earth; they'd probably have to launch it in stages and assemble it in space, like the ISS, and then when ready give it a "push" out of orbit either by external rockets brought into orbit or by the ship's engines which would be fueled by a transport rocket.

This all sounds very complex, but we've already done a lot of the footwork for this, not only in our space missions but in our undersea missions. What's a nuclear submarine, really, except the difference is that it functions in water and not in zero-gravity? The propulsion system would be a bit different but we're still talking about encapsulated and sustained life (and you hopefully wouldn't need the torpedoes and missiles in space... yet).

The **** we don't. At minimum, a couple arrays of phasers and at least a couple dozen photon torpedo tubes....

Well, I did say "yet". Step One for any phase of humanity has been, "How do we survive?" Step Two is, "How do we kill anyone we don't like?"

Not necessarily. One of the plans over the years had no intention of returning to Earth. It was always envisioned as a one-way trip.

Not to mention a couple of Type 66 Maser Cannons in case of a King Ghidorah encounter.

I think this would be the best idea, especially since you might ****ing die out there anyway.

It's not really the politicians fault. They are not going to sacrifice their careers for science. For a possibility.

It's on us. Look at these threads. There is always someone making a comment about it being wasted money. Until our society agains values science we cant expect politicians to make them.

How about we spend money on science instead of on government cheese, which is damn near half our federal budget? If we weren't paying people to be layabouts for decades, what might we have achieved?

Well that explains why we had the Lounge before we had DC.

Well, I meant landing on the surface and returning to the orbiting craft, but I did consider the one-way option. Problem is, to sustain life in space for months to get there, you already have to build a self sustaining ecosystem so you might as well come back... Unless they can manage to land it on the surface and turn it into stage one of a base.

NASA releases low-res video of Mars rover descent

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UcGMDXy-Y1I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — NASA's Curiosity rover has transmitted a low-resolution video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, giving earthlings a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.

As thumbnails of the video flashed on a big screen on Monday, scientists and engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion let out "oohs" and "aahs." The recording began with the protective heat shield falling away and ended with dust being kicked up as the rover was lowered by cables inside an ancient crater.
It was a sneak preview, since it'll take some time before full-resolution frames are beamed back depending on other priorities.

The full video "will just be exquisite," said Michael Malin, the chief scientist of the instrument.

NASA celebrated the precision landing of a rover on Mars and marveled over the mission's flurry of photographs — grainy, black-and-white images of Martian gravel, a mountain at sunset and, most exciting of all, the spacecraft's white-knuckle plunge through the red planet's atmosphere.

Curiosity, a roving laboratory the size of a compact car, landed right on target late Sunday after an eight-month, 352-million-mile journey. It parked its six wheels about four miles from its ultimate science destination — Mount Sharp, rising from the floor of Gale Crater near the equator.

Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs one ton, and the thin Martian atmosphere offers little friction to slow down a spacecraft. Curiosity had to go from 13,000 mph to zero in seven minutes, unfurling a parachute, then firing rockets to brake. In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered it to the ground at 2 mph.

At the end of what NASA called "seven minutes of terror," the vehicle settled into place almost perfectly flat in the crater it was aiming for.

"We have ended one phase of the mission much to our enjoyment," mission manager Mike Watkins said. "But another part has just begun."

The nuclear-powered Curiosity will dig into the Martian surface to analyze what's there and hunt for some of the molecular building blocks of life, including carbon.
It won't start moving for a couple of weeks, because all the systems on the $2.5 billion rover have to be checked out. Color photos and panoramas will start coming in the next few days.

But first NASA had to use tiny cameras designed to spot hazards in front of Curiosity's wheels. So early images of gravel and shadows abounded. The pictures were fuzzy, but scientists were delighted.

The photos show "a new Mars we have never seen before," Watkins said. "So every one of those pictures is the most beautiful picture I have ever seen."
In one of the photos from the close-to-the-ground hazard cameras, if you squinted and looked the right way, you could see "a silhouette of Mount Sharp in the setting sun," said an excited John Grotzinger, chief mission scientist from the California Institute of Technology.

A high-resolution camera on the orbiting 7-year-old Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, flying 211 miles directly above the plummeting Curiosity, snapped a photo of the rover dangling from its parachute about a minute from touchdown. The parachute's design can be made out in the photo.

"It's just mind-boggling to me," said Miguel San Martin, chief engineer for the landing team.

Curiosity is the heaviest piece of machinery NASA has landed on Mars, and the success gave the space agency confidence that it can unload equipment that astronauts may need in a future manned trip to the red planet.
The landing technique was hatched in 1999 in the wake of devastating back-to-back Mars spacecraft losses. Back then, engineers had no clue how to land super-heavy spacecraft. They brainstormed different possibilities, consulting Apollo-era engineers and pilots of heavy-lift helicopters.

"I think its engineering at its finest. What engineers do is they make the impossible possible," said former NASA chief technologist Bobby Braun. "This thing is elegant. People say it looks crazy. Each system was designed for a very specific function."
Because of budget constraints, NASA canceled its joint U.S.-European missions to Mars, scheduled for 2016 and 2018.

"When's the next lander on Mars? The answer to that is nobody knows," Bolden said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

But if Curiosity finds something interesting, he said, it could spur the public and Congress to provide more money for more Martian exploration. No matter what, he said, Curiosity's mission will help NASA as it tries to send astronauts to Mars by the mid-2030s.
___

Well, honestly, since there's really no frame of reference in the shot it's kinda boring.

I think it would be great if someday, they could land a craft somewhere near an existing camera (set up in a previous mission obviously) so we could see that sucker coming in. It'd be awesome footage.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

Scene of a Martian Landing

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image about 24 hours after landing. The large, reduced-scale image points out the strewn hardware: 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. Relatively dark areas in all four spots are from disturbances of the bright dust on Mars, revealing the darker material below the surface dust.

Around the rover, this disturbance was from the sky crane thrusters, and forms a bilaterally symmetrical pattern. The darkened radial jets from the sky crane are downrange from the point of oblique impact, much like the oblique impacts of asteroids. In fact, they make an arrow pointing to Curiosity.

This image was acquired from a special 41-degree roll of MRO, larger than the normal 30-degree limit. It rolled towards the west and towards the sun, which increases visible scattering by atmospheric dust as well as the amount of atmosphere the orbiter has to look through, thereby reducing the contrast of surface features. Future images will show the hardware in greater detail. Our view is tilted about 45 degrees from the surface (more than the 41-degree roll due to planetary curvature), like a view out of an airplane window. Tilt the images 90 degrees clockwise to see the surface better from this perspective. The views are primarily of the shadowed side of the rover and other objects.

The image scale is 39 centimeters (15.3 inches) per pixel.

Complete HiRISE image products are available at: http://uahirise.org/releases/msl-descent.php.

That's really cool. I'd like to know the distances between them all.

These are pretty raw images at present. When the hype settles, they will start putting scales on the images.

I've been so busy since I stayed up for the landing and haven't been able to check NASA's site. Thanks for posting Planet "Mars" Man :D

Meh,... Only because of the Iranian dude in a mohawk.

;)

Hey Donger, according to NASA's website, there is going to be a longer and more detailed video of the landing. Just FYI.

Always happy to help out a fellow space freak. :D

Yep, I know. Bandwidth limitations and priorities.

LOL....

http://twitter.com/SarcasticRover

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
Every where I turn, this stupid crater looks like Spectacle Rock in Legend of Zelda. Just want to go home.

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
Is the PRIME DIRECTIVE "Don't interfere with alien life" or "Murder alien life with a laser"? Asking for a friend. JK DO A SCIENCE!

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
I'm just gonna do a science on this dirt here… Science done! It's made of dirt! WIN FOR SCIENCE! Why did you all abandon me?

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
LET'S ALL DO A SCIENCE!! It's like sports for your mind - only no one appreciates you and maybe you get a chemical burn!

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
I sent back 5MB of data to Earth today… it was an MP3 of "Bust a Move" by Young MC. LOL THEY HATE THAT SONG!

SarcasticRover ‏@SarcasticRover
If they'd let Michael Bay design me like I wanted, I'd have a robot penis and spinners. And everyone on this planet would recognize!

Can't wait to see that one, so ****ing awesome!:drool:

How 'bout color?...:harumph:

It's red.

I know, I should have used the spoiler tag.

Nice. :D

Colors mean things.

I know, I know, complex stuff for a science thread...

Actually they have the scale there. You would have to take the pixels size of the image and multiply it out to find the scale

Looks like the image is 1300 feet by 981 if the image hasn't been resized since NASA put it up.

EDIT: looks like original image scale was larger so 3,067 feet by 1825 feet. Smaller than I would have guessed.

ROFLROFLROFLROFL

You know, I don't remember the other robotic landers sent to Mar bitching this much...

I've watched programs on Discovery/Science channels recently that have done in depth scenarios on this. Fascinating stuff.

BTW, I believe they're thinking a crew of 5-6 would be about right.

I understand that completely. I have these arguments with my wife.

Ohhh yeah they did. Spirit in particular was one whiny little bitch....

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mar...ate-mars,2072/

This is bullcrap. If there were a vote on a mission to Mars, it would be supported overwhelmingly. Everybody loves NASA.

You can't be serious.....

:spock:

I am.

Then you're poorly educated on the matter.

This isn't the exact one I was talking about, but it's pretty cool and interesting.

Part 1:
http://youtu.be/O7ZGXXyFQGg

Part 2:
http://youtu.be/v1gN0OFnerg

And this show is really cool!

Alien Planet:
http://youtu.be/BNLfNe12BKE

Q but OK.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

ROFL

'OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLSHIT ORDERS.'

Probably my favorite...

Heat shield dropping away.

Amazing still from a video that's coming.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...a16021-946.jpg

That is amazing.

I just got a Mars boner.

I will definitely be fapping to that video when it's out.

I'd like to know the speed of their connection/lag to the mars modem.

2Mbps down and 256kbps up.

I guess I don't understand why we couldn't get stuff faster...unless they're using most of the bandwidth for data they need?

Guess this Mars panorama is old, but I hadn't seen it.

http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/greeley-haven.html

Curiosity can TX/RX directly with Earth, but only at 32 kbps. Most of the data is going to be sent from Curiosity via repeating through either Odyssey or MRO, as they have much more powerful transmitters. Neither is geo-synched with Curiosity, so they can only talk to her when they get LOS.

Ah, I see. Very interesting stuff.

Wholly shit, they can shoot an great old fashion western there!

Heh. I guess there's already something of a mystery at hand. Curiosity took this picture right after landing, apparently:

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/49...okout/mars.jpg

That smudge right at the horizon isn't in another picture taken two hours later. The geeks are speculating that Curiosity amazingly might have taken that picture right when the sky crane smacked into the surface of Mars (as it was designed to do).

That's way cool. However, it does show embarrassing evidence that the rover is doing doughnuts instead of working.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/84656044@N03/7752297984/" title="mckayla_curiosity by robsona, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7124/7752297984_c149682e66.jpg" width="450" height="450" alt="mckayla_curiosity"></a>

Rover has sent the first panorama.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1761973.html

Great, they are going to upgrade the software on Curiosity's computer. Twenty bucks says it craps out.

While neat, that isn't 360. This is:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...-full_full.jpg

This one should be titled: "Beating the crap out of Mars"

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/6...16015_full.gif

Have they tried turning it off and then turning it back on?

Red Screen of Death.

I can just hear it now:

CLT-ALT-DEL.

Seven minutes of terror waiting for the reboot. :D

BTW, I think there's a NatGeo tonight about Curiosity. I think it's an old show, pre-launch, but I'm DVRing it anyway just to see what this bitch looked like in the months leading up to the successful deployment.

Sure it didn't land in MOAB?

Blue screen of death.

Well holy shit. Mars in super ****ing HD.

HUGE PIC

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia1...aller-full.jpg

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-ima...000E1_DXXX.jpg

That looks like my driveway.


Mars is very Earthlike.

Very cool

If someone told me that was in Egypt or in southern Utah, I would totally believe them.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure that this is a caveman's cutting tool.

Is that an empty ziploc bag on the right of the pic, RM?