Mars Rover Curiosity Lands successfully!! LIVE THREAD

Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) ^ | 5 Aug 2012 | JPL

[hattend]

Landing at 10:30PM Pacific...yes, this is early so all the aviation, space, astronomy and science pingers can "get 'er done".

[dragnet2]

Yup, we’ll be going over the incredible data from HST for many years to come.

BTW, Opportunity was to last about 90 days after landing in 2004.

3000+ days later and thousands of images, and traveling about 24 miles....And it’s still in operation.

[JRandomFreeper]

Does anyone know the lat/long of the center of the landing ellipse?

/johnny

[hattend]

From the JPL website:

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For comparison, the Mars Phoenix Lander had a landing ellipse the size of Gale Crater, but the Mars rover Curiosity will land within a small area inside of Gale.

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If you know where Gale Crater is, there you go.

[hattend]

Gale Crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain (which is informally named "Mount Sharp" to pay tribute to geologist Robert P. Sharp) rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle! Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Curiosity will land somewhere within a landing ellipse that is approximately 4 miles wide and 12 miles long (7 kilometers by 20 kilometers). The landing ellipse is about 14,400 feet (4,400 meters) below Martian "sea level" (defined as the average elevation around the equator). The expected near-surface atmospheric temperatures at the Gale Crater landing site during Curiosity's primary mission (1 Martian year or 687 Earth days) are from - 130 F to 32 F (-90 C to 0 C). http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/timeline/prelaunch/landingsiteselection/aboutgalecrater/

[djf]

Wiki says the two rovers sent back over 250,000 images.

And AFAIK there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of hi-res images taken from the various orbiters. And many of those, I suspect, have never really been studied in any detail.

People will call me a fruit-loop, but I think the goal of this mission is to announce they found life.

Because I’m pretty convinced by the history of things that they ALREADY found it and have been trying to figure out a way to tell us.

Cripes, there’s probably 50 species of lichens on Earth that would do perfectly well up there.

[hattend]

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/timeline/prelaunch/landingsiteselection/aboutgalecrater/

Location:
4.5 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude

Diameter:
96 miles (154 kilometers)

Elevation:
14,400 feet (4,400 meters) below Martian “sea level”

Temperature Range:
From - 130 F to 32 F (-90 C to 0 C)

Landing Ellipse:
4 miles wide and 12 miles long (7 kilometers by 20 kilometers)

Crater mound height:
3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the crater floor

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And for FReeper BIGLOOK:

Local time at landing:
Approximately 3 p.m. Mars local time

[Textide]

We can make Mars the club Gitmo for the rest of the century. Bring your own Oxygen

[JRandomFreeper]

Actually, I found it. 4.5 S, 137.4 E.

I've got a Java ap that shows the sunclock orthographic image of the face of Mars. Looks like the landing site is right at the terminator now, and the sun should be rising on it soon.

/johnny

[Larry Lucido]

LOL!

(We can name the next one “Satisfaction.”)

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

I’d like to see them make a lander that operates like the car in the animated movie “Heavy Metal.”

[SamAdams76]

Hopefully this is a successful mission to Mars that will lead to a manned landing someday, or at the least, a canine landing.

Back in 1957 or thereabouts, when Eisenhower was president and Elvis Presley was still hip and not yet the washed up caricature of himself he would later become, the Russians went ahead and sent a puppy dog up into space.

I believe Laika the Space Dog was the name of this pup and this canine became a national hero (in the old Soviet Union) inspiring a myriad of postage stamps and monuments that are even today still scattered across that very large landmass, populated by vodka-drinking peoples.

Well a canine mission to Mars would certainly add a lot of excitement to a mission like this. I know they are doing something rather spectacular today with this landing but let's face it, most people aren't paying attention - or even aware that we are landing a spacecraft on Mars today.

In order to gin up the human interest factor, you have to put some flesh and bones into that spacecraft and while it is perhaps a bit too risky for humans to journey to Mars at this time, let's make it a dog.

Imagine having our very own space-dog, prancing about on the surface of Mars? That would get a lot of people, especially women, interested in the mission.

[dragnet2]

People will call me a fruit-loop, but I think the goal of this mission is to announce they found life. Because I’m pretty convinced by the history of things that they ALREADY found it and have been trying to figure out a way to tell us.

We'll see.

One of my favorite shots of Curiosity.

Mars Rover Curiosity, Front View

This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011. The location is inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

[hattend]

I think a Mars Dog would live about as long as Leika did when the oxygen ran out. Until we terraform Mars and get a denser atmosphere, live things will need a spacesuit.

BTW: Is Leika still up there or has that spacecraft long since burned up on reentry? Anybody know?

[JRandomFreeper]

Thanks. I converted 137.4E to 222.6W because the Java program wants input in that format. Can anyone confirm that I got my sums correct? I am, after all, just a cook.

/johnny

[dragnet2]

BTW most of you are already aware, but for those who aren’t, the tread pattern on the wheels seen in #52, spell out, “JPL” in Morse code, which will be left as tracks on the Martian surface.

Crossing fingers.

[hattend]

Nice! That thing is huge!

[brityank]

Good Luck, Curiosity! Wonder if it will be on Network TV as I only have basic cable.

Agree, great good luck indeed!

Here's the direct link for NASA's Streaming TV for your PC. They also have links on the right allowing streaming for iOS and Android - so no one gets left out!       ;^)

[hattend]

I did not know that.

Too bad there isn’t a “USA” tread.

[hattend]

Thanks for the link!

[dragnet2]

Hope you don't mind as it's a bit early yet prior to landing, but this is one of my favorite images of the Martian surface.

Clouds above the rim of "Endurance Crater" in this image from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. These clouds occur in a region of strong vertical shear. The cloud particles (ice in this martian case) fall out, and get dragged along away from the location where they originally condensed, forming characteristic streamers. Opportunity took this picture with its navigation camera during the rover's 269th martian day (Oct. 26, 2004). (NASA/JPL)