NASA photographs split second when Curiosity enters Mars airspace

Fox news ^ | August 6, 2012 | Foxnews

[Vince Ferrer]

Thanks to a remarkable combination of engineering and mathematics, a NASA satellite in orbit around Mars was able to capture this picture of the split second when Curiosity fell from the skies to its successful landing on the surface of the red planet.

[SuziQ]

ROTFL! I actually liked District 9, even though it was, as I told our son when we left the theater, a real splat-fest. It was a very interesting, and in the end, a poignant story.

[buffaloguy]

Wow!!! Amazing!!!

[Bernard Marx]

Ceres? Sirius I could go for.

[af_vet_rr]

Thanks to a remarkable combination of engineering and mathematics

Two subjects which most liberals try to avoid. If they had their way, kids would grow up and only go into liberal arts programs in college.

[af_vet_rr]

I honestly didn’t think NASA could pull it off anymore. I’m so pleased to be wrong.

NASA has been pretty successful when it comes to Mars over the past few projects. And I note that they just awarded SpaceX the contract to haul people/cargo the Space Station, freeing up NASA resources for more important things.

There are some incredibly talented people there. It's a shame the libs are doing everything they can to kill off exploration. Wouldn't want to inspire kids or make the USA look good or anything.

[af_vet_rr]

JPL’s known for some pretty hair brained ideas, that have a tenancy to not only be thinking outside the box, but actually work as well. Am I surprised that the skycrane worked? No. Or the parachute? No.

The first time I heard about the whole thing, I thought they were nuts. Then I heard about the reasoning behind the sky crane and it made a lot of sense. They need to explain their reasoning a little more clearly here and there.

And to their credit, they held back and added an extra year or two of testing, realizing their limits.

[af_vet_rr]

Politicians tend to stay away from the unmanned programs which is my theory for why they do so well.

Interesting theory. Would explain a lot. Astronauts make great photo ops. Robots...not so much.

[Moonman62]

Astronauts make great photo ops.

Some politicians got joyrides at our expense, too.

[kingu]

What I love about JPL, is the accidental discoveries. When one of their positioning devices failed to work as expected, they had a bit of a problem.. They couldn’t measure how far the rover had traveled. What the heck could they do now? It’s not like they could send the rover out to get a tape measure!

Then someone look at the mockup of the rover, which they were using to try to figure out a solution, and they pointed to the wheel, where the bolt holes were in the tread that held the rover to it’s delivery system. “Can’t we just measure that?”

Every couple of feet, the rover makes a very distinctive diamond shape on the dust of Mars. The bolt hole in the metal ‘tire’ that is on the Mars rover Spirit and Opportunity was the perfect measuring device, and they had all the pictures they needed to measure not only the exact distance that the rovers traveled, but also a standard comparison - a ruler, if you will, for measuring anything with the rover’s cameras.

So when Curiosity was being planned, they scrapped the existing ‘unmarred’ tires and instead placed a mark in the tread, so that they could use the footprint of Curiosity to make measurements. And being geeks, they didn’t just put in an unnecessary bolt hole, but instead, three lines of dots and bars - Where ever Curiosity goes on Mars, it leaves a Morris Code footprint stating ‘JPL’.

[MHGinTN]

Great story! I love it ... geekery is so cool!