# Mars rover says: 'good evening gale crater!'



## micropage7 (Aug 7, 2012)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover sent back its first high-resolution pictures from its new home inside Gale Crater, offering a stunning view of the towering Mount Sharp. The three-mile-high mound -- taller than any mountain in the continental United States -- is Curiosity's ultimate destination, a site that scientists believe may harbor evidence of habitats that could support life

The dark areas at the base of the mountain are sand dunes. Curiosity touched down at 1:32 am EDT Monday in the northern part of Gale Crater about 4 miles from Mount Sharp. "It's pretty spectacular," said deputy project scientist Joy Crisp.













http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-mars-rover-opportunity-mt-sharp-120806.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-curiosity-red-planet-photos-120816.html#mkcpgn=fbdsc8


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## H82LUZ73 (Aug 7, 2012)

The say it will start in a (day or two) taking HD Color pictures.Man I can not wait until then.Congrats to everyone involved at NASA.


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## de.das.dude (Aug 7, 2012)

Color pics ftw!


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## DarkOCean (Aug 7, 2012)

where are the aliens?


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## de.das.dude (Aug 7, 2012)

they got scared of the rover and ran away. or maybe they absorb light in visible spectrum and are hence invisible


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## Lionheart (Aug 7, 2012)

Amazing


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## lilhasselhoffer (Aug 7, 2012)

I can't stress how truly amazing this is.  Yet, I'm angry.  The Mars Rover gets third billing to an event where people show off how good they are at arbitrary sports competitions, and yet another shooting.  

I'm getting tired of how often truly great accomplishments are eclipsed by stupidity.


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## mlee49 (Aug 7, 2012)

Lets take a minute to recap:

We sent a remote controlled car 155 Billion miles away to take pictures on a different planet. 


HOW FREAKIN COOL IS THAT!!!!!


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## AlienIsGOD (Aug 7, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> where are the aliens?



im right here


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## NinkobEi (Aug 7, 2012)

lilhasselhoffer said:


> I can't stress how truly amazing this is.  Yet, I'm angry.  The Mars Rover gets third billing to an event where people show off how good they are at arbitrary sports competitions, and yet another shooting.
> 
> I'm getting tired of how often truly great accomplishments are eclipsed by stupidity.



I'd say the Olympics are in the upper-tier of human accomplishments. If you want to be really pissed off, go visit a mall. I was walking around and saw a booth selling T-shirts that said something like 'I like wandering around doing hood-rat stuff' for $30. There were like 30 different shirts with similar sayings. I don't want to live on this planet any more.


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## Frogger (Aug 7, 2012)

first color images   http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/index.html


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## NinkobEi (Aug 7, 2012)

Frogger said:


> first color images   http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/index.html



I think those were taken by the satellite. There simply too high up for Curiosity to have taken them.


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> I'd say the Olympics are in the upper-tier of human accomplishments. If you want to be really pissed off, go visit a mall. I was walking around and saw a booth selling T-shirts that said something like 'I like wandering around doing hood-rat stuff' for $30. There were like 30 different shirts with similar sayings. I don't want to live on this planet any more.



Hey man thats how I make my money. I'm the guy who makes those shirts! 

On a side note doesn't it suck they closed the bulk of NASA down for more useless spending? Look what can be done. RC car to Mars! Thats the kinda money I like to see wasted! Not some pet study to find out why grapes are round so some congressman's nephew who owns a grape farm can get rich.


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## Frogger (Aug 7, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> I think those were taken by the satellite. There simply too high up for Curiosity to have taken them.



first pic in the show     http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/PIA15691.html


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## Drone (Aug 7, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> Color pics ftw!



Well here you go:












It's a stop-motion video which shows 297 frames from Curiosity's descent. Much more interesting stuff.


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## Bow (Aug 7, 2012)

Just amazing!
I wonder if i can get a mars rover app for my phone?


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

If I were at NASA I would find the old rover and monster truck over it with the new one! GRAVE DIGGER STYLE!


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## copenhagen69 (Aug 7, 2012)

how can they tell the height of stuff from what the rover sends back?


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## HossHuge (Aug 7, 2012)

Just released picture.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

This gives an idea of how large the rover is:


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## HossHuge (Aug 7, 2012)

I've read that it is powered by a nuke but it is only going to last for ten years.  That doesn't seem right.

I hope the next place they go is Europa.


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> I've read that it is powered by a nuke but it is only going to last for ten years.  That doesn't seem right.
> 
> I hope the next place they go is Europa.



Its nuke powered and will only last 7 years AFAIK.


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## HossHuge (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Its nuke powered and will only last 7 years AFAIK.



From BBC



> Initially, the rover is funded for two Earth years of operations. But many expect this mission to roll and roll for perhaps a decade or more.








Why would they give it enough juice for 14 years but only fund it for two?


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> From BBC
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Cool man thanks! I honestly haven't read on it much but the local news here (I live very close to the Space Center) was saying it was 7 years tops. However I belive the BBC more.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

It has a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.  They don't use U-235 like BWR nuclear reactors use.

After 14 years, it won't generate enough power to continue to function.


All the work they need to accomplished for the mission to be considered a success likely must be done in two years.  If it lasts longer than that, it's icing on the cake.  If it lasts less, the mission will largely be a scientific failure.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory


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## W1zzard (Aug 7, 2012)

just to clarify, the power source is not a nuclear reactor in the sense of a commercial power plant.

curiosity uses the heat from (quickly decaying) radioactive stuff to generate electricity using thermocouples. there are no moving parts, no cooling loop, no material is consumed or exhaust.

it produces just 125 W


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> just to clarify, the power source is not a nuclear reactor in the sense of a commercial power plant.
> 
> curiosity uses the heat from (quickly decaying) radioactive stuff to generate electricity using thermocouples. there are no moving parts, no cooling loop, no material is consumed or exhaust.
> 
> it produces just 125 W



The flux capacitor powers the turbo nabulator Tesla engine to be precise. 


Anyway......I'm assuming Uranium or is that to slow a decay? I have read ZERO on this.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

It uses plutonium-238 which has a half-life of 87.7 years.  It loses 0.787% power output every year.

If your 125w figure is correct, everything I see says it will produce about 100w in 14 years.  100w is the minimum required to operate, apparently.


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## Drone (Aug 7, 2012)

> According to NASA, the images needed to be reduced by a factor of eight in order for them to be sent back to Earth quickly. Higher resolution images (1600 by 1200) will be beamed to Earth in the coming months.



Gotta wait ...


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

Yeah, because of the distance, they have to use low-bandwidth tranmission signals.  It will take a long time for them to send and they can probably only do that when it isn't sending information needed to operate it.

Black and white pictures take 1/3rd the bandwidth to transmit.


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## mlee49 (Aug 7, 2012)

Will the XBand comm transmit the Hi-RES shots or will it relay off the orbiting ones like the current pictures?

Just ripped this about the main camera(1 of 17 btw):



> Mast Camera (MastCam)
> 
> 
> The two cameras of the MastCamera system
> The MastCam, MAHLI, and MARDI cameras were developed by Malin Space Science Systems and they all share common design components, such as on-board electronic imaging processing boxes, 1600×1200 CCDs, and a RGB Bayer pattern filter.[40][41][42][43][44][45] The MastCam system provides multiple spectra and true color imaging with two cameras.[41] The cameras can take true color images at 1600×1200 pixels and up to 10 frames per second hardware-compressed, *high-definition video at 720p* (1280×720). One camera is the Medium Angle Camera (MAC), which has a 34 mm focal length, a 15-degree field of view, and can yield 22 cm/pixel scale at 1 km. The other camera is the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), which has a 100 mm focal length, a 5.1-degree field of view, and can yield 7.4 cm/pixel scale at 1 km.[41] Malin also developed a pair of Mastcams with zoom lenses,[46] but these were not included in the final design because of the time required to test the new hardware and the looming November 2011 launch date.[47] Each camera has 8 GB of flash memory, which is capable of storing over 5,500 raw images, and can apply real time lossless or JPEG compression.[41] The cameras have an autofocus capability that allows them to focus on objects from 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) to infinity.[44] In addition to the fixed RGGB Bayer pattern filter, each camera has an 8-position filter wheel. While the Bayer filter reduces visible light throughput, all three colors are mostly transparent at wavelengths longer than 700 nm, and have minimal effect on such infrared observations.[41] In comparison to the 1024×1024 black and white panoramic cameras used on the Mars Exploration Rover (MER), the MAC MastCam has 1.25× higher spatial resolution and the NAC MastCam has 3.67× higher spatial resolution.[44]


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It uses plutonium-238 which has a half-life of 87.7 years.  It loses 0.787% power output every year.
> 
> If your 125w figure is correct, everything I see says it will produce about 100w in 14 years.  100w is the minimum required to operate, apparently.



Plutonium? Really? No cooling?


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## mlee49 (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Plutonium? Really? No cooling?



It is -200 to +86F over there, read the wiki homeboy


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

mlee49 said:


> It is -200 to +86F over there, read the wiki homeboy


86F ambient temp for Plutonium is high. If it was -200 consistently ok. But its not. The amount of Plutonium in that thing must be the size of a green pea. 

Maybe its partly depleted?


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## gopal (Aug 7, 2012)

I know it is immposible to get color pic of Mars from mars but B/W is not cool and i cannot see anything clear.


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## NdMk2o1o (Aug 7, 2012)

mlee49 said:


> 155 Billion miles away to take pictures on a different planet.



155 billion huh?


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> 86F ambient temp for Plutonium is high. If it was -200 consistently ok. But its not. The amount of Plutonium in that thing must be the size of a green pea.
> 
> Maybe its partly depleted?


It has 32 pellets about the size of a marshmellow each.  It operates on the heat produces by radioactive decay, not by a nuclear chain reaction like nuclear power plants do.




gopal said:


> I know it is immposible to get color pic of Mars from mars but B/W is not cool and i cannot see anything clear.


It has color cameras but it will take a long time for the photos to be sent.


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It has 32 pellets about the size of a marshmellow each.  It operates on the heat produces by radioactive decay, not by a nuclear chain reaction like nuclear power plants do.
> 
> 
> 
> It has color cameras but it will take a long time for the photos to be sent.



lol yeah I know. But "hot" plutonium produces a lot of heat. These things have to be slightly deleted.


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## gopal (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> lol yeah I know. But "*hot*" plutonium produces a *lot of heat*. These things have to be slightly deleted.



This thing is going to burn out MARS.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> lol yeah I know. But "hot" plutonium produces a lot of heat. These things have to be slightly deleted.


It likely has a cooling loop which redirects the heat to heatsinks on the rover if it is getting too hot.  Even if it doesn't, they've accounted for it in the design of the rover (likely allowing it to hit peak temperature and sustain it).


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

gopal said:


> This thing is going to burn out MARS.



Yes. Plutonium marshmallow's are going to burn out Mars.



FordGT90Concept said:


> It likely has a cooling loop which redirects the heat to heatsinks on the rover if it is getting too hot.



I would love to see that thing up close. Its days like this I wish I would have never dropped out of Aeronautical Engineering. By now I might have been involved in this thing. So cool.


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## W1zzard (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> lol yeah I know. But "hot" plutonium produces a lot of heat. These things have to be slightly deleted.



what are you talking about? hot is an arbitrary state of temperature, not a measure of energy or power. is your argument "a red hot piece of metal produces a lot of heat" ? 

do you mean "depleted" ? that's not the case. depleted means that the isotopes are stable or have extremely long lifetimes. in that case there would not be much heat for power generation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_Thermoelectric_Generator
good read


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 7, 2012)

Pu-238 can generate temps exceeding 1000C (1832F) on the surface depending on configuration.  That's "hot" by pretty much any definition. XD


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> Pu-238 can generate temps exceeding 1000C (1832F) on the surface depending on configuration.  That's "hot" by pretty much any definition. XD



This is what I mean. 

Not hot in radioactivity. I mean hotter then a frying pan.  So yeah they would have to be depleted some or passive cooling wouldn't work in 85F without cooling. You said there is no cooling loop or working parts so whatever plutonium they have in there has to be depleted. That and all they are getting is 125 W. Its depleted or they put the most inefficient generator in space on it.

Thats all I'm saying.

Pu2o gets hot as hell. In space its no big deal. In 85F it can become and issue. There HAS to be something cooling it.


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## W1zzard (Aug 7, 2012)

i meant cooling loop in the context of a nuclear reactor (water, pumps, cooling towers)

the heat output on the mars probe is 2000 W, from 4.8 kilograms of Pu-238. the thermocouples are super-inefficient, they generate around 100 W. some secondary heat is used to keep other subsystems warm during night/winter/space.






the assembly has white fins on the outside to dissipate extra heat



> Pu2o gets hot as hell


any heat source that can not remove enough heat will get infinitely hot
Just like every 2000W heater, as long as you have 2000 W of cooling, its temperature will not increase. if you remove more than 2000W it will cool down, if you remove less it will heat up.

actually i'm not sure if it's easier to cool in space or on mars. in space you can only radiate it away. on mars you have cooling effects from the (thin) atmosphere, but you lose some radiative cooling potential because you have the ground at higher temperature than space


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## digibucc (Aug 7, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> Why would they give it enough juice for 14 years but only fund it for two?



it's all bureaucracy, it's easier to get money earmarked for a project with a short specific lifespan and defined goals. BUT, IF, within that project they can find ways to make it more effective, last longer, and generally be cooler - they take it. however the initial mission stays the same, because that's what was agreed upon and what they are paid for.

look at it like this, after 2 years mission accomplished. anything we learn after that is just gravy


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## Norton (Aug 7, 2012)

*RTG info*



W1zzard said:


> what are you talking about? hot is an arbitrary state of temperature, not a measure of energy or power. is your argument "a red hot piece of metal produces a lot of heat" ?
> 
> do you mean "depleted" ? that's not the case. depleted means that the isotopes are stable or have extremely long lifetimes. in that case there would not be much heat for power generation.
> 
> ...



Excellent read 

IIRC the Plutonium fuel source used for the RTG on this rover was the backup/spare unit for the Cassini probe.... just can't remember where I read it atm....*See Edit*

*EDIT- The spare RTG from Cassini was used for the New Horizons probe that's on its way to Pluto..... I knew it went somewhere 
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens#Plutonium_power_source


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 7, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> i meant cooling loop in the context of a nuclear reactor (water, pumps, cooling towers)
> 
> the heat output on the mars probe is 2000 W, from 4.8 kilograms of Pu-238. the thermocouples are super-inefficient, they generate around 100 W. some secondary heat is used to keep other subsystems warm during night/winter/space.
> 
> ...



I agree cooling in space has its advantages as well as disadvantages. If Mars was sub zero all the time then with the thin atmosphere it would cool better then space AFAIK. Problem is when it goes above 20F is when a "passive" cooling system becomes an issue. This is why we only have a few of these kinda (very similar) generators in Alaska........north Alaska and I believe they have a reserve cooling system for emergency's but don't quote me on that. No matter what its an engineering feat to keep that cool and working on an alien planet. Space is one thing. The temperature is "fixed" for the most part. The variables of a planet is a WHOLE different story. Very cool tech.


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## Norton (Aug 7, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I agree cooling in space has its advantages as well as disadvantages. If Mars was sub zero all the time then with the thin atmosphere it would cool better then space AFAIK. Problem is when it goes above 20F is when a "passive" cooling system becomes an issue. This is why we only have a few of these kinda (very similar) generators in Alaska........north Alaska and I believe they have a reserve cooling system for emergency's but don't quote me on that. No matter what its an engineering feat to keep that cool and working on an alien planet. Space is one thing. The temperature is "fixed" for the most part. The variables of a planet is a WHOLE different story. Very cool tech.



The rovers RTG was active in our atmosphere and didn't overheat. It did run hot enough that it needed to have a large safety cage around it.

See pic/caption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MMRTG_for_the_MSL.jpg

On Mars it's not an issue... no reason to protect it from people and the cooling system would run better on Mars than Earth.

It will be fine as long as no Martians burn their tentacles on it- then there will be an inter-planetary lawsuit for Judge Judy to preside over


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## Drone (Aug 8, 2012)

Here's a couple of images from Curiosity. NASA released them today


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## Hilux SSRG (Aug 8, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> just to clarify, the power source is not a nuclear reactor in the sense of a commercial power plant.



W1zzard, you seem to know a good bit about this topic.  Out of curiosity, where did NASA get the plutonium? Spent nuclear fuel rods?


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## mlee49 (Aug 8, 2012)

Here's a nice documentary about the entire project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJxmuSrqn0k&feature=player_embedded


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 8, 2012)

Hilux SSRG said:


> W1zzard, you seem to know a good bit about this topic.  Out of curiosity, where did NASA get the plutonium? Spent nuclear fuel rods?


Department of Energy.  DoE likely bought it from Russia.  DoE is trying to secure funding from Congress to manufacture Pu-238 in the USA again but their requests have been denied three years in a row.

The most efficient way to get pure Pu-238 is by bombarding U-238 (most common form of uranium on Earth) with deuterons.


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## Drone (Aug 8, 2012)

*Now you can explore a new giant mosaic of Gale Crater, landing site for NASA's Curiosity rover, built mostly using THEMIS images taken before the landing. Use your browser to zoom around the mosaic, which shows details as small as 60 feet across.*

You can do this at: http://jmars.mars.asu.edu/maps/gale/gale.html

This page also includes a link to download a .PNG copy of the whole image. (325 MB filesize, 56K users beware rofl )

And a couple of new images here
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2692914&postcount=50


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 8, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> Just released picture.
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/120806/Capture206.jpg



"This makes me very angry, very angry indeed."


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## Mindweaver (Aug 8, 2012)

We should have sent the asimo robot up with the rover!


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## W1zzard (Aug 8, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> The most efficient way to get pure Pu-238 is by bombarding U-238 (most common form of uranium on Earth) with deuterons.



Plutonium can not be mined on earth because it has all decayed due to its relatively short half-life compared to the age of the solar system.

Pu is created as waste product in most nuclear reactors, and can then be separated relatively easy (chemistry). In contrast separating U-235 from U-238 is extremely complicated because both are identical to chemistry, so physics is needed, usually by exploiting the slightly different atomic weight.

Producing Pu was the main reason why the US built nuclear reactors during WW2.


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## DannibusX (Aug 8, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> From BBC
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Spirit and Opportunity were funded for a 90 day mission back in 2003.  They lost contact with Spirit in 2010 and Opportunity is still rolling around checking shit out to this very day.

If they meet their goal of 2 years, then the mission can be touted as a success, if the mission lasts longer then they will get the funding to extend it.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 8, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> Plutonium can not be mined on earth because it has all decayed due to its relatively short half-life compared to the age of the solar system.


Um, Pu-238 has a relatively short half-life (87.7 years) but some varients of plutonium, like Pu-244, have a half-life of 80 million years meaning it can be found in nature in trace amounts.




W1zzard said:


> Pu is created as waste product in most nuclear reactors, and can then be separated relatively easy (chemistry). In contrast separating U-235 from U-238 is extremely complicated because both are identical to chemistry, so physics is needed, usually by exploiting the slightly different atomic weight.


No, it cannot.  By weight, Pu-238 only makes up between 1-2% of spent nuclear fuel.  It is also combined with all the other by products of nuclear fission which compose of varying levels of elements from zinc and up.  Spent nuclear fuel is a hodgepodge of elements and very radioactive/dangerous.

Separating U-235 from U-238 is simple, but expensive, using centrifuges.  The heavier U-238 ends up on the outside of the centrifuge and the lighter U-235 ends up on the inside.  This is why so many countries have been able to get significant enough quantities of U-235 to do something with it--it just takes money and a little ingenuity.




W1zzard said:


> Producing Pu was the main reason why the US built nuclear reactors during WW2.


Hanford B Reactor created Pu-239 that was used in the "Trinty" atomic test and "Fat Man" atomic bomb.  It created Pu-239 by bombarding U-238 with neutrons.


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## micropage7 (Aug 9, 2012)

another from curiosity





http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/panorama-curiosity-mars/


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## XNine (Aug 9, 2012)

What I found most impressive (not that the entire venture isn't, but...) was the landing/deployment sequence this rover had to accomplish in order to safely land.  Prior to this, it was essentially a giant marshmallow falling to the ground and rolling to a stop.  This was so amazingly designed and executed.  I wish they would do an actual real life demo of the deployment on earth so we could truly appreciate it.


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## Drone (Aug 9, 2012)

XNine said:


> ... was the landing/deployment sequence this rover had to accomplish in order to safely land.


Martian gravity is 38% of that on Earth and the atmospheric density is 1% of that on Earth, therefore so-called "landing" is much easier there than here. Plus no problems with overheating.


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 9, 2012)

Not to mention the cost of accelerating a large object to tens of thousands of miles per hour.  Just watch their computer simulation of the landing.  That's the closest you're going to get.


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 9, 2012)

Some unfortunate news from the Mars Rover Curiosity.

In it's effort to find signs of life on the red planet, it actually landed on a Martian cat.


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## Drone (Aug 9, 2012)

This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars.

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/1-marsroversen.jpg


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## Irony (Aug 10, 2012)

Drone said:


> This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars.
> 
> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/1-marsroversen.jpg



I almost said "what mods are you using?" 

Too much skyrim...


I think it's pretty awesome they have rovers on mars; and they finally made one big enough to do something with. They've all been rather small before, but this one's SUVish. Go four-wheelin on mars.


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## evulmunk33 (Aug 10, 2012)

do you guys know if there are plans for curiosity to drive by the rocketsled and parachute etc and take pics? that would be awesome haha 

would make sense for nasa to inspect the parts maybe?

PS: im surprised nasa uses passive cooling WITHOUT HEATPIPES on their nuclear battery
ts ts ts... im sure our guys here at CM would have been more than happy to help them out with that... 
could have helped them to reduce the size and weight of the cooling array a lot...


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## FordGT90Concept (Aug 10, 2012)

I think it is too far away.  Curiosity is heading the other way to find signs of life.  It could go there once it accomplishes its primary mission.

I'm sure NASA has footage of the various components after they were detached/discarded so they can improve upon it in future craft.


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## Drone (Aug 10, 2012)

Irony said:


> and they finally made one big enough to do something with



Next step is sending Doom space marines. UAC where are you ...


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## VulkanBros (Aug 10, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Hey man thats how I make my money. I'm the guy who makes those shirts!
> 
> On a side note doesn't it suck they closed the bulk of NASA down for more useless spending? Look what can be done. RC car to Mars! Thats the kinda money I like to see wasted! Not some pet study to find out why grapes are round so some congressman's nephew who owns a grape farm can get rich.



Then you know this site: http://shotdeadinthehead.com/

They have an awful collection


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## Drone (Aug 11, 2012)

New image:






The blast marks can be seen in the middle of the image.


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## Hayder_Master (Aug 11, 2012)

nice now i feel better, cuz i found new place better than my country time to move in


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## gopal (Aug 11, 2012)

The last image is better then the others


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## Irony (Aug 11, 2012)

Drone said:


> New image:
> 
> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/curiosityima.jpg
> 
> The blast marks can be seen in the middle of the image.



Thats a pretty awesome shot.


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## Drone (Aug 11, 2012)

Actually now I'm waiting for some video game about this. Maybe a simulator or something. I think that'd be a good idea.


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## ShiBDiB (Aug 12, 2012)

Found this crazy



> The iPhone 4S has four times the processing power of Curiosity, which packs a mere 200MHz CPU, and a measly 2GB of SSD storage.


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## micropage7 (Aug 13, 2012)

another image from mars (sorry i forgot where i find it)


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## natr0n (Aug 13, 2012)

First color Image of landscape

giant sized


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## gopal (Aug 13, 2012)

Now they look better in color


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## Drone (Aug 13, 2012)

A good map of previous missions


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 13, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/120812/0003ML0000125000E1_DXXX.jpg
> another image from mars (sorry i forgot where i find it)



Cool pic.  Now when are we going to see those wheels moving?


----------



## bbmarley (Aug 13, 2012)

no words to describe this


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Aug 13, 2012)

natr0n said:


> http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674081main_PIA15691-43_1024-768.jpg
> 
> First color Image of landscape
> 
> giant sized



Looks like Navada.


----------



## natr0n (Aug 13, 2012)

I bet you nasa wont admit this


----------



## natr0n (Aug 13, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Looks like Navada.



some nasa "space" pics have been taken there.


----------



## Dos101 (Aug 13, 2012)

natr0n said:


> I bet you nasa wont admit this



You mean the plume from the crash site of the sky crane?


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Aug 13, 2012)

Yeah and here we go.


----------



## natr0n (Aug 13, 2012)

Someone had to.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Aug 13, 2012)

Maybe we can keep the conversion on science? 

Expect the occasional funny joke that is.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Aug 13, 2012)

PopcornMachine said:


> Maybe we can keep the conversion on science?
> 
> Expect the occasional funny joke that is.



I agree fully. I was just saying the first shot looks like Nevada.....or Nevada looks like Mars. Who knows.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Aug 13, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I agree fully. I was just saying the first shot looks like Nevada.....or Nevada looks like Mars. Who knows.



It does look a lot like a lot of the earth.  And it should.

I think it's wonderful.  So much to see and learn.  

No need to go searching for baseless conspiracies.


----------



## Steevo (Aug 13, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I agree fully. I was just saying the first shot looks like Nevada.....or Nevada looks like Mars. Who knows.



When we discover the guido's there building casinos..........and tanning.....and duckface


----------



## Irony (Aug 14, 2012)

Steevo said:


> When we discover the guido's there building casinos..........and tanning.....and duckface



Guido's don't exist silly. It's a Romulan ore mine


----------



## Drone (Aug 16, 2012)

http://www.360cities.net/image/spir...edded_hotspot&utm_source=embed#0.00,0.00,76.1

full 360 view plus new image


----------



## repman244 (Aug 16, 2012)

ShiBDiB said:


> Found this crazy



This is even more crazy:



> The RAD750 is a radiation-hardened single board computer manufactured by BAE Systems Electronic Solutions. The successor of the RAD6000, the RAD750 is for use in high radiation environments such as experienced on board satellites and spacecraft. The RAD750 was released in 2001, with the first units launched into space in 2005.
> 
> The CPU has 10.4 million transistors, nearly an order of magnitude more than the RAD6000 (which had 1.1 million). It is manufactured using either 250 or 150 nm photolithography and has a die area of 130 mm² It has a core clock of 110 to 200 MHz and can process at 266 MIPS or more. The CPU can include an extended L2 cache to improve performance. The CPU itself can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 rads (2,000 to 10,000 gray), temperature ranges between –55 °C and 125 °C and requires 5 watts of power. The standard RAD750 single-board system (CPU and motherboard) can withstand 100,000 rads (1,000 gray), temperature ranges between –55 °C and 70 °C and requires 10 watts of power.
> 
> ...



Specs:


> Rad-tolerant RAD750 specifications
> Technology
> – 0.25 μm radiation-hardened bulk CMOS
> Speed
> ...








Nice article to read: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-5...ugged-curiositys-computer-was-built-for-mars/


----------



## HossHuge (Aug 16, 2012)

Drone said:


> http://www.360cities.net/image/spir...edded_hotspot&utm_source=embed#0.00,0.00,76.1
> 
> full 360 view plus new image
> 
> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/a360degreest.jpg



WTF?  How did they get that photo?  If the rover didn't take it, what or who did?


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## H82LUZ73 (Aug 16, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> WTF?  How did they get that photo?  If the rover didn't take it, what or who did?



Telescopic beam with 360 cameras??? That rotate up down to over look the rover, I think NASA learned from the last one that got stuck, With this they can see what is up and how to fix it if it ever does get stuck.


----------



## HossHuge (Aug 16, 2012)

H82LUZ73 said:


> Telescopic beam with 360 cameras??? That rotate up down to over look the rover, I think NASA learned from the last one that got stuck, With this they can see what is up and how to fix it if it ever does get stuck.



But where's the beam?  There is nothing protruding from the rover.


----------



## gopal (Aug 16, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> But where's the beam?  There is nothing protruding from the rover.



i have the same question


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 16, 2012)

ShiBDiB said:


> Found this crazy


I'm sure it has a lot more dedicated co-processors (like for image processing and communication) that can be powered down than the iPhone. 

Keep in mind that most of the power is used for moving.




micropage7 said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/120812/0003ML0000125000E1_DXXX.jpg
> another image from mars (sorry i forgot where i find it)


That looks so Earth-like. 




HossHuge said:


> WTF?  How did they get that photo?  If the rover didn't take it, what or who did?


The camera is likely positioned so it can't take a picture of the armature holding it.


----------



## Irony (Aug 16, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> But where's the beam?  There is nothing protruding from the rover.



We can't see a shadow from it either because the picture conveniently cuts off there; lol. It does look a bit hard to believe though. You don't see any part of an arm coming from the rover.


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 17, 2012)

Obviously the super secret biotic alien crossbreed they sent up with the rover took the picture.

Could just be an effect of 360 panorama imaging, but the first answer is more fun.

Thanks for the cool link Drone.


----------



## micropage7 (Aug 17, 2012)

*Curiosity’s Latest High-Res Photo Looks Like Earth*












Just a small piece of a larger panoramic mosaic taken last week, the photo looks southeast to the base of the 3-mile-high mountain, which sits in the center of Gale crater. Immediately in front of the rover is the gravelly surface upon which it landed followed by two sand fields separated by a darker region. The first sand patch is about 1.5 miles away while the second is about 2 miles. Because it is a panoramic mosaic, the picture gives a skewed and foreshortened perspective.

Approximately 5 miles away is the base of Mount Sharp, pockmarked with buttes and mesas that are each about the height a several-story building. JPL’s scientists working on Curiosity have noted several times how much this landscape looks like similar areas in the southwestern United States. Curiosity will explore these areas for signs of habitability and help determine the history of water on the Red Planet.

The colors in this image are not what a human standing on Mars would see — the presence of dust in the atmosphere would make the scene appear much redder. Instead, the pictures have been white-balanced to show how it would appear under typical Earth lighting conditions. This will help the Earth-centered geologists who are trained to recognize features based on how they look using more familiar light.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/curiosity-sharp-base/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/curiosity-color-panorama/


----------



## gopal (Aug 17, 2012)

Wait a sec is that...is that water? in the post #103 first pic?
If yes then means there is oxygen also


----------



## micropage7 (Aug 17, 2012)

gopal said:


> Wait a sec is that...is that water? in the post #103 first pic?
> If yes then means there is oxygen also



it looks not, the dark thing on the background looks like small stone


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## Drone (Aug 17, 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zervvVw2dnU&feature=player_embedded

Relive historic moments. Good video.


----------



## Irony (Aug 17, 2012)

gopal said:


> Wait a sec is that...is that water? in the post #103 first pic?
> If yes then means there is oxygen also



They say its dark gravel.


----------



## micropage7 (Aug 18, 2012)

*What Is Curiosity? Everything You Need To Know About NASA’s Mars Rover*




Ever since 1969, space explorations has been so repetitive; it’s just rocket after rocket to launch a new satellite or fix some parts on the International Space Station. Where has the sense of real adventure gone? Space is such a vast frontier and we have yet to really discover what’s on that strange red planet so close to our humble home. Now there is a new scout to re-kindle our desire to roam the wild outer worlds.




Curiosity is definitely not the first machine to land on Mars or even to survive and communicate back to the homebase. That title belongs to the Sojourner rover riding on the Mars Pathfinder; it landed on July 4th, 1997 and lost connection on September 27th of the same year. The Spirit rover landed right after the New Year of 2004 on January 4th and roamed almost 5 miles of the Mars landscape until its wheels got stuck in the sand on January 26th 6 years later; it stayed active there for another two months before communication was lost permanently. The Spirit had a companion on the red planet, the Opportunity, that has stayed active and rolling even today




Landing on Mars is not really an exact science, so trying to assume what the conditions will be like and how to handle them is a huge consideration in designing the capsule containing the precious rover cargo. While the diagram above looks like a simple float down through the atmosphere, the container is trying to slow down from 13,000 miles per hour to zero in order to land safely and not be burned up in the process


http://www.gizmocrazed.com/2012/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nasas-mars-rover


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 18, 2012)

Irony said:


> They say its dark gravel.


It looks like singed rock and/or rock dense in carbon (e.g. charcoal).  I hope they took the rover to it to sample it.


----------



## H82LUZ73 (Aug 20, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> It looks like singed rock and/or rock dense in carbon (e.g. charcoal).  I hope they took the rover to it to sample it.



Yep They shot it with the lasers.Turns out is similar to what we call coal,Like the stuff around train tracks.


----------



## Drone (Aug 20, 2012)

^ yes here it is


----------



## H82LUZ73 (Aug 20, 2012)

HossHuge said:


> But where's the beam?  There is nothing protruding from the rover.



See the beam when you click the link,That first pic does not Show,The beam can go out and up then go horizontal(Think of the robot arm on Discovery).Like the fist pic and the shadows are cut off.If you Play around in the link It will show the top of the beam.This is from the solar array camera`s.








t


----------



## Drone (Aug 21, 2012)

*Heat Shield*. Haven't seen this picture before.

http://www7.pcmag.com/media/images/296959-heat-shield-separation.jpg


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Aug 21, 2012)

H82LUZ73 said:


> Yep They shot it with the lasers.Turns out is similar to what we call coal,Like the stuff around train tracks.


Coal is predominently made of carbon.  It probably isn't as pure.  Strange that it is on the surface like that.  Could have been from a meteorite that exploded above the surface.


----------



## Irony (Aug 21, 2012)

Drone said:


> *Heat Shield*. Haven't seen this picture before.
> 
> http://www7.pcmag.com/media/images/296959-heat-shield-separation.jpg



That's actually when it separated? That's pretty cool


----------



## Mussels (Aug 21, 2012)

subbed for the pics that you guys are spitting out


surprised how much it looked like earth, but the white balance explains that (pity we dont have any comparisons with 'natural' mars light)


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## johnnyfiive (Aug 21, 2012)

It's crazy how it just looks like typical gravel with red and charcoal color. This is some awesome stuff. That one picture with the close up of the tread and the ground is awesome.


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 21, 2012)

Wish I could pee there. Seriously. I would be the first man to mark his territory on Mars. You could plant all the flags you wanted after that. Mars would be mine.


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## Irony (Aug 21, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Wish I could pee there. Seriously. I would be the first man to mark his territory on Mars. You could plant all the flags you wanted after that. Mars would be mine.



So I'm not the only one. Heh heh heh


----------



## Drone (Aug 23, 2012)

Curiosity Landing. First *HD* video


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## HammerON (Aug 23, 2012)

Love this thread


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## AphexDreamer (Aug 23, 2012)

Same here. My jaw dropped when I saw the pics and slightly raised when I read they were tweaked. Still I don't even see any dust in either pics so that is odd unless the white balance removes the dust too.


----------



## HossHuge (Aug 23, 2012)

That sucker was movin! Those retro rockets must be quite strong.


----------



## Flibolito (Aug 23, 2012)

hammeron said:


> love this thread



+1


----------



## Jetster (Aug 23, 2012)

I know this is nuts


----------



## Drone (Aug 23, 2012)

Another "new" Hi-res video 

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=18895&media_id=150964561


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## ViperXTR (Aug 23, 2012)

i want to see the natural non-white balanced shots D:


----------



## PopcornMachine (Aug 23, 2012)

Drone said:


> Curiosity Landing. First *HD* video





Drone said:


> Another "new" Hi-res video
> 
> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=18895&media_id=150964561



Thanks guys.  Amazing videos.


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## Drone (Aug 25, 2012)

This picture was captured by _Spirit_ in *2005*.







Yes it's *old* but I just wanted to post it here. The sun looks smaller because Mars is further from the sun. Now with Curiosity I hope we get much more interesting vistas.


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 25, 2012)

Lot's of cool pics here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2012/08/curiosity-rover-takes-first-sh.html


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## Drone (Aug 28, 2012)

New shots:


----------



## Irony (Aug 28, 2012)

That first one is really amazing


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## Drone (Aug 29, 2012)

New image






It's Mount Sharp, a mountain inside Gale Crater, where the rover landed.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Aug 29, 2012)

Let's get this rover blazing some trails!


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## Jetster (Aug 29, 2012)

Yes, I need a new desktop photo


----------



## Drone (Aug 29, 2012)

Images are taken from http://www.extremetech.com


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## D007 (Aug 29, 2012)

Idk why, but the op Pics don't seem all that HD.. Great to hear it's making progress though. 
Some of these other pictures are amazing.
Those descent videos are in no other words.. Breathtaking..


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 2, 2012)

This 360-degree panorama was released Aug 27 2012.
It includes the highest part of Mount Sharp which is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the rover.
The colors on this panorama are enchanced to give the same colors as it would have under lights on earth.
http://www.panoramas.dk/mars/curiosity-first-color-360.html

This is the latest panorama released by NASA July 2012. It was assembled from 817 images taken between Dec. 21, 2011, and May 8, 2012, while Opportunity was stationed on an outcrop informally named 'Greeley Haven'. on a segment of the rim of ancient Endeavour Crater.

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


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## Drone (Sep 6, 2012)

Visible from space: Curiosity tire tracks on Mars






Heh, that dude is always busy.


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## Irony (Sep 7, 2012)

Awesome


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## Drone (Sep 11, 2012)

Curiosity is a camwhore lol. New self-shot!


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## Irony (Sep 12, 2012)

Coolz. Have there been any pics yet that arent white balanced, just natural mars colors?


I'm a little confused at the wheel design, why does it have the holes in the tread?


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## dank1983man420 (Sep 12, 2012)

I wonder if they have some sort of night cameras on the rover to possibly take some pics of the moons if they are even visible through all of that dust.  It would be cool to see pics of the moons from the surface.

Edit:    Nevermind ,  I guess they are too small and move too quick for any cool images.  Found this one taken from the spirit rover


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## Delta6326 (Sep 12, 2012)

I want to be the first person to go to mars and ride the rover like a bull.


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## micropage7 (Sep 13, 2012)

*Curiosity Close-Ups: The Rover’s Detailed Photoshoot of Itself*











The purpose of this exercise isn’t to wait idly around but rather to do a detailed investigation of all its various high-tech instruments, in particular the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which sits at the end of Curiosity’s arm. MAHLI is capable of taking extremely close-up images, resolving down to about 15 microns, or half the diameter of a human hair. The camera has been combing the rover with its high-magnification powers, calibrating and giving it a good once-over.

For those anxious for the rover to get somewhere, the wait is almost over. By Friday, this testing and characterization phase of Curiosity’s mission will be done. Then “the plan is to drive, drive, drive,” said the rover’s mission manager, Jennifer Trosper, during a NASA press conference on Sept. 12. Curiosity will soon reach an area known as Glenelg, where it will conduct its first major science experiments, and then find a sandy location in Gale crater to practice its scooping and analysis.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/curiosity-close-ups/


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## Solaris17 (Sep 13, 2012)

no duck face their is hope after all.


----------



## Drone (Sep 13, 2012)

Hello, Wall-E. How're you doin?


----------



## nt300 (Sep 14, 2012)

It looks like there breathable environment on Mars.


----------



## D007 (Sep 14, 2012)

New super close up of curiosity!  



Spoiler









While I am being funny, look at Micros pictures above and tell me that one doesn't look like J5's face...
I  it..


----------



## Irony (Sep 14, 2012)

D007 said:


> New super close up of curiosity!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Lol, I thought of that too


----------



## Mussels (Sep 15, 2012)

nt300 said:


> It looks like there breathable environment on Mars.



by humans?


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 16, 2012)

From the moment the rover hits the Martian atmosphere it will start taking data. Studded in 14 locations around the probe’s heat shield are devices known as the Mars Science Laboratory Entry Descent and Landing Instrument (MEDLI). This equipment will provide information about Mars’ atmosphere and the dynamics of the rover’s descent, analyzing Curiosity’s trip to the surface and providing information helpful in designing future Mars missions.

Additionally, a special camera, the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) will be watching the view as the ground rushes up at Curiosity. By taking high-resolution color video during the probe’s landing sequence, MARDI will provide an overview of the landscape during descent and allow geologists back on Earth to determine exactly where Curiosity lands.

Possibly the coolest Curiosity instrument is the ChemCam, which uses a laser beam to shoot rocks (and maybe a Martian or two) in order to vaporize a small sample. A spectrograph will then analyze the vapor, determining the composition and chemistry of the rocks. Situated on Curiosity’s head, ChemCam can shoot up to 23 feet and should provide unprecedented detail about minerals on the Martian surface.

The Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument will look at various minerals on the Martian surface. Specific minerals form in the presence or in the absence of water, revealing the history of an area and helping scientists to understand whether or not liquid existed there. Curiosity will drill into rocks to obtain samples for CheMin, pulverizing the material and transporting it into the instrument’s chamber. CheMin will then bombard the sample with X-rays to determine its composition.

The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) will be Curiosity’s weatherman, providing data about daily atmospheric pressure, wind speed, humidity, ultraviolet radiation, and air temperature. REMS will sit on Curiosity’s neck and also help assess long-term seasonal variation in Mars’ climate.

The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) sits the end of Curiosity’s arm, allowing the rover to place it right up against rocks and soil. It will then shoot X-rays and alpha particles (essentially Helium nuclei) at the materials to identify how they formed.

The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) is one of the most important instruments and the reason that Curiosity can be called a mobile laboratory. Taking up more than half of the rover’s body, SAM contains equipment found in top-notch labs on Earth: a mass spectrometer to separate materials and identify elements, a gas chromatograph to vaporize soil and rocks and analyze them, and a laser spectrometer to measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life. SAM will also look for organic compounds and methane, which may indicate life past or present on Mars.

The other experiment important in Curiosity’s search for Martian habitability is the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument, which will look for water in or under the Martian surface. Water, both liquid and frozen, absorbs neutrons differently than other materials. DAN will be able to detect layers of water up to six feet below the surface and be sensitive to water content as low as one-tenth of a percent in Martian minerals.

Curiosity has plenty of eyes to take in the view on the ground. Perched atop its head is the MastCam, two cameras capable of taking color images and video, as well as stitching pictures together into larger panoramas. One of these two cameras has a high-resolution lens, allowing Curiosity to study the distant landscape in detail.

The Mars Hand Lens Images (MAHLI) instrument will provide close-up views of rocks and soil samples near the rover. MAHLI sits at the end of Curiosity’s long, flexible arm, and can image details down to about 12.5 micrometers, roughly half the diameter of a human hair. The instrument will also be able to see in ultraviolet light, which will come in handy during night exploration and funky psychedelic parties.

Rounding out Curiosity’s cameras are the hazard-avoidance Hazcams and navigation Navcams. The Hazcams will watch underneath the rover to prevent it from crashing into any large objects while the Navcams will be mounted on the rover’s mast to help it steer. Both camera sets will be capable of taking stereoscopic 3D images.

Future Mars missions may rely on data from the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD). The first instrument that Curiosity fires up when it lands on Mars, RAD will measure radiation at the Martian surface, determining how plausible it is that microbes exist there. One of RAD’s main selling points is its ability to assess how safe or dangerous the Martian surface would be to future human explorers, calculating the radiation dose future astronauts may receive

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/instruments-mars-rover/


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 18, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Captures Martian Eclipse*






NASA’s Curiosity rover snapped an elegant sequence of images showing Mars’ moon, Phobos, passing in front of the sun on Sept. 13. Because the tiny moon moves so fast through the Martian sky, the alien eclipse lasted only a few seconds.

The images were taken with Curiosity’s MastCams, which were positioned to watch Phobos zoom in front of the sun.

In contrast to its blazing glory in Earth’s daytime skies, the sun is a tiny dime-sized circle as seen from Mars. Phobos is even smaller and can never completely engulf the sun, merely taking a nibble in this animation. Our moon, on the other hand, happens to be just the right size and distance away from Earth that when it passes in front of the sun, it completely blocks out its light.

Phobos is really more of an asteroid than a moon — the small potato-shaped object is only 16 miles across at its widest. Because it travels around Mars in a speedy 7.6 hours, it has a high probability of aligning with the sun, and eclipses like this happen somewhere on Mars almost any day of the year. Most landers on Mars have captured at least one Phobos transit. From space, satellites have captured images of Phobos’ shadow racing across the Martian surface.

Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is farther from the planet and obscures even less of the sun when it eclipses

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/mars-rover-eclipse/


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 22, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Prepares to Shoot Mars Rock With Laser and X-Rays*






You’re looking at the next rock that NASA’s Curiosity rover will shoot with its powerful laser and X-ray spectrometer as part of its first close-up science investigation on Mars.

The rover has gone about 950 feet from its landing site, roughly halfway to its first target area, Glenelg. During its drive, Curiosity has been looking for a rock to use its ChemCam and APXS instruments on in tandem. ChemCam is the laser shooter on the top of the rover while the APXS is a spectrometer sitting at the end of Curiosity’s arm that bombards a target with X-rays. Both instruments determine a material’s composition but over different scales — ChemCam looks at a very small 0.04-inch area while APXS has a wider 0.6-inch range.

The instruments will be trained on the pyramid-shaped rock seen in the image above, which has been nicknamed Jake Matijevic after a recently deceased engineer who worked on every NASA rover. The rock appears to be basaltic and fairly uniform. In addition to learning about the lonely-looking rock, differences between the measurements from the two instruments will help calibrate them for future use, said Caltech geologist John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist, during a NASA press conference today.

“Not to mention it’s just a cool-looking rock,” he said.

Once at Glenelg, Curiosity will have its first truly interesting geology investigation because the area is full of a light-colored material that has a high thermal inertia, meaning it retains heat well. This is somewhat contradictory since bright materials tend to be porous and don’t hold heat well while rocks that do hold heat are often darker lava flows. Satellites have noticed the rocks giving off heat at night but this will be the first time that scientists have an opportunity to explore the strange material from the ground.






The above image, taken with the rover’s MastCam, shows a close-up view of Glenelg, which has already yielded surprises. In addition to the strange, light-colored bands, Curiosity is seeing some thin black bands that appear to be interbedded within the brighter material. Orbiters hadn’t noticed the dark bands, so scientists are eager to explore them further.

Finally, Curiosity has been watching the skies. During the last few days, it captured a series of images (below) as one of Mars’ moons, Phobos, passed in front of the sun. This alien eclipse, in addition to looking cool, could produce some serious scientific information about the Martian interior. Because the tiny moon tugs gravitationally on Mars’ surface, it deforms the planet slightly as it swings overhead. Scientists are hoping that Curiosity will capture some detailed measurements of eclipses, which will put constraints on models of Mars’ interior structure

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/curiosity-rover-rocks/


----------



## Irony (Sep 23, 2012)

Cool.


----------



## Drone (Sep 23, 2012)

Another self-shot, Curiosity's belly lol






Taken from space.com Best Space Pictures of the Week - Sept. 22, 2012 

http://www.space.com/17722-best-space-pictures-week-september-22-2012.html


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 23, 2012)

Drone said:


> Another self-shot, Curiosity's belly lol
> 
> http://i.space.com/images/i/21499/original/mars-rover-curiosity-belly-panorama-full.jpg
> 
> ...



nice found, its like Curiosity has a lot of documentation or mars surface


----------



## Super XP (Sep 23, 2012)

Very interesting indead. Now all they have to do is build a Mars base.
Anyhow, we already had in the past Anti-Gravity Propulsion ships that took people to outer space. It's in the history books. Now we are doing it all over again in a different way.








> Ancient flying craft
> 
> Many of the ancient libraries, such as the library at Alexandria and the vast libraries of ancient China were destroyed many centuries ago. Fortunately, however, ancient writings have survived. Compelling temple carvings at Abydos and Karnak (See: Mystery at Abydos), and ancient texts from India and Tibet, chronicle a bygone era when powered flight was highly advanced and even commonplace. They speak of a long-lost civilisation that was more advanced than our own. It was not a civilisation that existed three thousand years ago, but much further back in time; a civilisation that was suddenly wiped from the face of the Earth.


----------



## HossHuge (Sep 23, 2012)

Drone said:


> Another self-shot, Curiosity's belly lol
> 
> http://i.space.com/images/i/21499/original/mars-rover-curiosity-belly-panorama-full.jpg
> 
> ...



Is that probe vain?


----------



## Mindweaver (Sep 23, 2012)

The biggest question I guess would be, "*Could they not have took picture of the robot before they sent it to space?*". I guess on a desert like planet with dirt, and rock the robot is the star... But I'd still rather see pictures of Mars.. Not the D@mn robot... hehehe


----------



## Drone (Sep 28, 2012)

Mindweaver said:
			
		

> But I'd still rather see pictures of Mars.. Not the D@mn robot... hehehe





New pictures of the surface


----------



## DannibusX (Sep 28, 2012)

nt300 said:


> It looks like there breathable environment on Mars.



If you mean "Mars has an atmosphere" then, yes, you are correct.

Might take the body a couple of minutes to adjust to the 95% concentration of CO2 though.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Sep 28, 2012)

DannibusX said:


> If you mean "Mars has an atmosphere" then, yes, you are correct.
> 
> Might take the body a couple of minutes to adjust to the 95% concentration of CO2 though.



Well if global alarmists are to be believed we should be able pollute Mars with oxygen if we plant enough trees there in a couple hundred years. Problem is water.

Man destroys Earth with Co2. Man destroys Mars with Oxygen. U mad bro?

Humans: Natures Trolls.


----------



## 3870x2 (Sep 28, 2012)

Super XP said:


> Very interesting indead. Now all they have to do is build a Mars base.
> Anyhow, we already had in the past Anti-Gravity Propulsion ships that took people to outer space. It's in the history books. Now we are doing it all over again in a different way.
> 
> http://www.2atoms.com/images/weird/ancient/plane/hiero_planes.jpg



¿what?


----------



## PopcornMachine (Sep 28, 2012)

3870x2 said:


> ¿what?



Yeah, and the hieroglyphs go on to say that AMD's surpior IGP will drive intel out of business and AMD and NIVIDIA users will live together in peace and harmony.


----------



## 3870x2 (Sep 28, 2012)

PopcornMachine said:


> Yeah, and the hieroglyphs go on to say that AMD's surpior IGP will drive intel out of business and AMD and NIVIDIA users will live together in peace and harmony.



And so the prophecy hath beheld.  Many a fortnight hath intel quandered fortunes.  We shall cast them down, deep into the bowels of hell.


----------



## largon (Oct 1, 2012)

Super XP said:


> [crazy stuff]



For Super XP's sake I hope he doesn't take that stuff for real.


----------



## 3870x2 (Oct 1, 2012)

largon said:


> For Super XP's sake I hope he doesn't take that stuff for real.



I have never understood those ancient heiroglyphics that depict advanced civilizations.  If they are advanced, why would they still be writing on stone with heiroglyphics.


----------



## Drone (Oct 1, 2012)

3870x2 said:


> If they are advanced, why would they still be writing on stone with heiroglyphics.


Maybe because those stones last longer than hard/solid drives.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 1, 2012)

Drone said:


> Maybe because those stones last longer than hard/solid drives.



Stupidity seems to out last everything.


----------



## Drone (Oct 1, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Stupidity seems to out last everything.


You store your data in that?


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 1, 2012)

Drone said:


> You store your data in that?



I store my faith in man in stupidity. 

Just saying if there was such an advanced civilization in the past they didn't do a very good job leaving any records.Just saying if there was such an advanced civilization in the past they didn't do a very good job leaving any records or trace. We can find dinosaur dung but no trace of a super race?


----------



## Drone (Oct 1, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Just saying if there was such an advanced civilization in the past they didn't do a very good job leaving any records or trace. We can find dinosaur dung but no trace of a super race?



Fair enough. However, maybe they just didn't wish to be found.


----------



## 3870x2 (Oct 1, 2012)

Drone said:


> Fair enough. However, maybe they just didn't wish to be found.



Maybe the dinosarus were the advanced race.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 1, 2012)

Drone said:


> Fair enough. However, maybe they just didn't wish to be found.



But our poo slinging ancestors knew enough to carve rocks about them? Sorry but I think these stories are just ancient 4chan stone carvings. Trolls are timeless ya know?


----------



## Drone (Oct 1, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> But our poo slinging ancestors knew enough to carve rocks about them? Sorry but I think these stories are just ancient 4chan stone carvings. Trolls are timeless ya know?



I didn't talk about those carvings. I just said that maybe someone advanced visited Earth before. There was some theory that something must be hidden in human DNA. Some % of it is junk, some scientists believe that maybe that junk keeps the secrets of the universe lol. Maybe they're trolling but maybe that trolling has a reason.

Just found this:



> About 80% of the nucleotide bases in the human genome may be transcribed, but transcription does not necessarily imply function.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Oct 1, 2012)

Drone said:


> Fair enough. However, maybe they just didn't wish to be found.



Elvis didn't wish to be found.  Makes perfect _sense_.

Wish we were talking about what is actually being learned on Mars instead of "it makes sense to me without proof, so it must be true" stuff.

I guess they need to pick up the exploration.  People are getting bored or something.


----------



## Irony (Oct 2, 2012)

Drone said:


> I didn't talk about those carvings. I just said that maybe someone advanced visited Earth before. There was some theory that something must be hidden in human DNA. Some % of it is junk, some scientists believe that maybe that junk keeps the secrets of the universe lol. Maybe they're trolling but maybe that trolling has a reason.
> 
> Just found this:



Found this a while back. Good read about the junk dna theory. 

http://m.guardiannews.com/science/2012/sep/05/genes-genome-junk-dna-encode?cat=science&type=article


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 10, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Identifies Mysterious Bright Object as Plastic*











NASA’s Curiosity rover took time out of its busy scooping and vibrating schedule on Oct. 9 to inspect a mysterious bright object that it spotted in the sand near its wheels the day before. Engineers have identified the bright bit as “shred of plastic material, likely benign.”

“Yeah so last night was crazy. When we spotted the object near the rover, we had to quickly come up with a totally new plan,” tweeted Keri Bean, a meteorologist on the rover team, on Oct. 8.

Curiosity had to take a break in its intended schedule of analyzing the Martian soil in order to make sure that the fallen object was not going to interfere with sampling activities. A close-up photo (below) taken with the probe’s Remote Micro-Imager of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) showed that the object was probably a piece of plastic, though it has still not been definitively identified. Engineers will take more pictures of the rover’s surroundings over the coming days to make sure there are no other potential contaminants. NASA will probably have further news about the object during a press conference on Oct. 11.

Similar loose screws and bits have been shed by previous rovers, including the Mars Phoenix Lander and the Opportunity rover.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/curiosity-bright-plastic/


----------



## NinkobEi (Oct 10, 2012)

inb4 "its obvious this piece of plastic came from a mars civilization far more advanced than our own" posts


----------



## 3870x2 (Oct 10, 2012)

It turned out to be a piece of the rover.

It kinda worries me that pieces are falling off of the rovers randomly.


----------



## Irony (Oct 10, 2012)

It mentioned screws falling off to. It'd be a bummer to fly 33 milion miles and then not be able to move because you lost a lug nut


----------



## D007 (Oct 10, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I store my faith in man in stupidity.
> 
> Just saying if there was such an advanced civilization in the past they didn't do a very good job leaving any records.Just saying if there was such an advanced civilization in the past they didn't do a very good job leaving any records or trace. We can find dinosaur dung but no trace of a super race?



If they were "super" advanced, They would of made sure the human race had no chance of finding them. Who'd want us destroying their world like we do to ours? Not to mention polluting any sense of honor and loyalty that might exist in their culture and replacing it with monetary obligations and Romney care..


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 10, 2012)

D007 said:


> If they were "super" advanced, They would of made sure the human race had no chance of finding them. Who'd want us destroying their world like we do to ours? Not to mention polluting any sense of honor and loyalty that might exist in their culture and replacing it with monetary obligations and Romney care..



I just figured they died out because they were all dependent on a massive food dispenser and when it broke no body knew how to take care of themselves.


----------



## Irony (Oct 10, 2012)

They ran out of soylant green after they moved underground and wiped the surface clean of all signs of civilization


----------



## Drone (Oct 11, 2012)

scoopin'


----------



## Mussels (Oct 11, 2012)

thats a nice clean image there. wish we could see it before NASA adjusted the color tones.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 11, 2012)

Drone said:


> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/workresumesw.jpg
> 
> scoopin'



Just wanna say thanks Drone for all the images you find.  I check here everyday.


----------



## Phusius (Oct 11, 2012)

I think Drone is secretly on the Space Station, look at those specs, sounds like a government computer to me.


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 12, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Finds Rock Type That’s Never Been Seen on Mars*





_The rock named Jake Matijevic that Curiosity explored for several days on Mars. Red dots indicate areas where the rover shot the rock with laser blasts while purple circles indicate areas investigated with X-rays beams._

After shooting it with lasers and X-rays, NASA’s Curiosity rover has determined that a rock nicknamed “Jake Matijevic” is of a variety that no other rover has ever spotted on Mars.

The rock, a highly fractionated alkalic rock type, is relatively well known to geologists because it is common in rift zones on Earth and island chains such as the Hawaiian Islands.

“This is a rock type which had not been seen before” by previous Mars rovers including Spirit and Opportunity, said Roger Weins, principle investigator for Curiosity’s ChemCam instrument, during a NASA press conference Oct. 11. It forms under relatively high pressure and often in the presence of water. While Curiosity is mostly focused on sedimentary rocks that could indicate the presence of past conditions for life, Matijevic is an igneous rock that likely formed about 5 miles under the Martian surface.

The rover had been investigating Matijevic mostly as an early test of the instruments on its arm, such as the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), which bombards a sample with X-rays to determine its chemical composition. Curiosity also used its ChemCam instrument to shoot the rock with more than 400 laser blasts, vaporizing microscopic amounts and then analyzing the resulting dust and plasma. This investigation showed that the rock contained a lot of elements such as silicon, aluminium, sodium, and potassium.

“This was surprising because it differed from the composition from what we know of rocks on Mars,” said Edward Stolper, Curiosity science team co-investigator, during the conference.


Scientists think this rock formed in the interior of Mars when magma moved up through cooler rock. As the magma cooled, elements including nickel, iron, and magnesium crystallized out of it first, leaving behind a material rich in silicon, aluminum, sodium, and potassium, as well as a higher fraction of dissolved water. Though the rock was unusual, the Curiosity team was careful to point out that it was just one isolated sample and not to extrapolate too much about early Martian geology based on it.

Engineers also discussed the case of the mysterious plastic object that Curiosity had spotted several days ago while scooping bits of Martian soil. They concluded that it is likely a bit of bonding material that fell off the rover or a piece of tubing that came off the descent stage and was recently blown off the probe. In either case, “it’s completely inconsequential to the rover’s function” and no further pieces have been seen, said engineer Chris Roumeliotis, the lead turret rover planner. Curiosity is continuing to go through its Martian dust rinse and repeat cycle to clean out its sample delivery instrument of any left-over contaminants from Earth.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/curiosity-strange-matijevic/


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 12, 2012)

Nasa Engineer 1: Ohhh look a rock! I wonder what its made out of?

Nasa Engineer 2: Dunno! Could be made out of anything!

Nasa Engineer 3: We should shoot it with 400 lasers to find out!

Nasa Engineer 4: What if its explosive?

Nasa Engineer 1, 2, 3: Shut da F#@K UP noob. We are blastin this bitch with 400 lasers!

Mars Rover: IMMA FIRIN MA LAZA!


----------



## 3870x2 (Oct 12, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Nasa Engineer 1: Ohhh look a rock! I wonder what its made out of?
> 
> Nasa Engineer 2: Dunno! Could be made out of anything!
> 
> ...



Unfortunately the rover didn not come with the ability to poke it with a stick.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Oct 12, 2012)

Frau Farbissina: "Laser ON!"


----------



## Drone (Oct 12, 2012)

> The rock named Jake Matijevic


 ha, it has a name!


----------



## Irony (Oct 12, 2012)

I seem to remember already talking about this rock a couple weeks ago, when they first named it after the dead engineer...

Edit: found an article: 





> Jake Matijevic, a mathematician-turned-rover-engineer who played an important role in the design of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL, dubbed "Curiosity"), now appears in Wikipedia as "Jake Matijevic (rock)." Jake passed away just days after Curiosity's landing in August. With his understated manner, I can imagine his small smile on seeing he's now more famous as a rock on Mars than as an engineer.




Here's a link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-j-clancey/mars-rover-jake-matijevic_b_1923627.html


----------



## Drone (Oct 12, 2012)

^ Yeah, I see. Found two pics of that rock:











Edit:

And here's a scuffmark NASA's Curiosity made in a windblown ripple of Martian sand with its wheel






If I didn't know it's Martian I'd never guess. Lol it looks like our regular rocks and pebble.


----------



## Drone (Oct 16, 2012)

Still scoopin'. Bigger pics this time


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 19, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Finds More Strange, Bright Objects in Martian Soil*






NASA’s Curiosity rover took three scoops from a small Martian sand dune and found several bright particles in the soil. Scientists think these are unrelated to the odd bright object that Curiosity saw last week, which turned out to be plastic that fell from the probe, and are probably indigenous Martian mineral flecks.

Curiosity has sat for several weeks at an area called Rocknest, where its job has been to sample the Martian soil, practicing using its scoop and analysis instruments. The plan was to take three scoops and send the sand through the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) tool to clean it of any material that may have hitchhiked from Earth.

The first scoop was interrupted by the aforementioned bright plastic litter but, after determining that it was benign, engineers proceeded with their schedule. In the second scoop, “we began to see some bright flecks in the scoop areas,” said geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, Curiosity’s project scientist, during a NASA press conference on Oct. 18.


After last week’s plastic encounter, Curiosity’s science team worried the new particles might be man-made. Since they turned up in scoop holes, however, the granules must have been buried in the subsurface. They likely came from larger minerals that broke down. They might also represent the product of some geological soil process that generates a bright but unknown mineral.

“The science team started calling them schmutz,” said Grotzinger. “We can’t rule out that they’re something man-made but we don’t think that they are.”

In coming weeks, Curiosity will position its high-resolution ChemCam to get a close-up look at the schmutz. In the meantime, the rover completed its three scoops and has delivered a sample of Martian soil to its internal CheMin instrument. It will determine what minerals occur in this area






http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/curiosity-scoops-objects/


----------



## Mussels (Oct 19, 2012)

HD images from mars still tickles my jimmies.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 19, 2012)

Mussels said:


> HD images from mars still tickles my jimmies.



The dude abides. I may not always agree with Drone on some things but he comes through in this thread. However so does micropage7 now! Keep em' comin'!


----------



## Drone (Oct 19, 2012)

Different sources, different resolutions, some even b/w, I don't remember maybe I've posted some of these before or maybe not, but here they are:


----------



## PopcornMachine (Oct 19, 2012)

There's gold in them thar hills!


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 19, 2012)

PopcornMachine said:


> There's gold in them thar hills!



I hope they find gold on Mars. Maybe they will bring NASA's budget back up where it should be. Its about the only government program I still have faith in. When they cut NASA funding it was a real "Dafuq" moment IMO.


----------



## Drone (Oct 19, 2012)

PopcornMachine said:
			
		

> There's gold in them thar hills!



Mars and Earth formed at about the same time and probably they have similar rocks and minerals. Scientists will find out sooner or later. Martian gold is quite possible. 

On a side note: with all these high quality pictures taken by Curiosity someone might create a mod for Doom lol


----------



## MT Alex (Oct 19, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> I hope they find gold on Mars. Maybe they will bring NASA's budget back up where it should be. Its about the only government program I still have faith in. When they cut NASA funding it was a real "Dafuq" moment IMO.



I have no idea why you feel that way.

I think you are confusing this:







With this:







Too much government and not enough smoking and horn rimmed glasses now.  Today's NASA would never make it to the moon.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Oct 19, 2012)

MT Alex said:


> I have no idea why you feel that way.
> 
> I think you are confusing this:
> 
> ...



Meh I have a soft spot for the aerospace industry but, yeah I get what you are saying. If they said "Hey NASA your goal is to get a man on Mars by 2025. Here is 600 billion a year. Make it happen" and leave all the green politically crap at the door Ill admit I would be pretty damn happy......that will never happen.


----------



## MT Alex (Oct 19, 2012)

I couldn't agree with you more.


----------



## PopcornMachine (Oct 19, 2012)

Just signs O' the times.  Both pictures are good.


----------



## Drone (Oct 26, 2012)

Since nobody's gonna post a single damn thing I'll continue, ha. Curiosity still kills kitties and runs in circles. Still live and kickin'.

Virgin spatula 

Curiosity took this photo of its soil scoop on September 27. Looks clean and shiny as a new spatula.






The Chemistry and Camera instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used its laser and spectrometers to examine what chemical elements are in a drift of Martian sand during the mission's 74th Martian day, or sol (Oct. 20, 2012).






A windblown sand ripple at the Rocknest site. Curiosity used its wheel to crunch into the sand just to the right of the larger foreground rock which is about 5 inches wide.






http://www.digitfreak.com/technology/science/1477-top-10-photos-from-curiosity-mars-rover































And more random stuff





















Mars Curiosity rover tests soil scooping system - *video*

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2012/oct/14/mars-curiosity-rover-soil-scooping-video



> Nasa's Curiosity rover tries its soil scooping system for the first time on the red planet. *It used its wheels to break the surface on Gale Crater and used its scooping mechanism to pick up a tiny chunk of Mars.* After using the first few scoops to self-clean its systems, rover will deposit new samples into its laboratory, which will be able to determine the chemical make-up of the soil



Yeah baby, rip Mars a new one.


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 27, 2012)

looks like NASA uses much tape on those cables

anyway if this is curiosity before went to mars

































































http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/08/curiosity-just-days-away-from-mars/100346/


----------



## lyndonguitar (Oct 27, 2012)

Damn what if they find complex species hiding somewhere, or frozen in the poles


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 27, 2012)

From NASA













http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/building_curiosity.html


----------



## micropage7 (Oct 27, 2012)

Curiosity entry


----------



## Drone (Oct 27, 2012)

Curiosity @ Glenelg Area (September 19, 2012) 

Lol sounds like a gig event ahaha






Curiosity @ Glenelg Area (October 1, 2012)






Curiosity @ Rocknest:






Some hardware:











And just some data:






This spectrum graph made from data obtained by Curiosity after examination of four observation points on the rock "Jake Matijevic".


----------



## Irony (Oct 28, 2012)

It look like it has bmw logos on it, lol. (Second picture in above post)


----------



## Drone (Oct 29, 2012)

Casting a shadow






Another nth self-portrait






Interesting route:


----------



## Drone (Nov 2, 2012)

The Curiosity rover's ultimate self-portrait







3D version:


----------



## Irony (Nov 2, 2012)

How did it take it? Its an awesome shot.


----------



## Delta6326 (Nov 3, 2012)

NASA flew me in their Top Secret Ironman machine...


----------



## Irony (Nov 3, 2012)

Delta6326 said:


> NASA flew me in their Top Secret Ironman machine...



Silly me, I shouldve known that.


----------



## AsRock (Nov 3, 2012)

mlee49 said:


> Lets take a minute to recap:
> 
> We sent a remote controlled car 155 Billion miles away to take pictures on a different planet.
> 
> ...



Thought it needed a edit too.

Sorry cool it is but we need to look after what we have never mind other planets.


----------



## Mussels (Nov 3, 2012)

AsRock said:


> Thought it needed a edit too.
> 
> Sorry cool it is but we need to look after what we have never mind other planets.



why waste money on research, when we could spend it on todays problems!


yeah, satellites and microwaves dont help solve problems at all 

its not always obvious, but technological progression does do its part to raise the standards of living worldwide.


----------



## Irony (Nov 3, 2012)

Gold mines on mars. See, it totally has a helpful purpose


----------



## Drone (Nov 3, 2012)

A couple of b/w Curiosity pictures













_____________________________

Unrelated: I'd like to post pictures made by Opportunity and Spirit rovers. They weren't overhyped as Curiosity but they accomplished their missions very well:


Opportunity took this mosaic picture near the edge of the Endeavour crater on Mars in April 2010.






Spirit at the edge of a crater.


----------



## Irony (Nov 4, 2012)

Thanks for the constant supply of awesome pics drone, I've been loving this thread since the beginning.


----------



## Drone (Nov 9, 2012)

These are some new shots. They're definitely the best pictures ever taken:






















http://www.universetoday.com/98101/gorgeous-glenelg-promised-land-panorama-on-mars/


----------



## HammerON (Nov 9, 2012)

Thanks again Drone for the awesome pics


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 9, 2012)

*Rock 'Et-Then' Near Curiosity, Sol 82*




The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of a rock called "Et-Then" during the mission's 82nd sol, or Martian day (Oct. 29, 2012.) 

The rock's informal name comes from the name of an island in Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. 

MAHLI viewed the rock from a distance of about 15.8 inches (40 centimeters). The image covers an area about 9.5 inches by 7 inches (24 centimeters by 18 centimeters). Et-Then is located near the rover's front left wheel, where the rover has been stationed while scooping soil at the site called "Rocknest."

This is one of three images acquired by MAHLI from slightly different positions so that a three-dimensional information could be used to plan possible future examination of the rock.

for other pictures you can visit 
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?s=1


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 9, 2012)

*Curiosity, Before She Went to Mars – August 7, 2012*





Curiosity, at that time, sat over in the corner of the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) at KSC (Kennedy Space Center) awaiting its successful November launch. Klaxons rang above 25 or so reporters,  warning of impending lightning activity moving across the Cape. 
Silently gleaming in various shades of gold and silver, glistening white, very complicated hardware, plumbed to the max, six wheels, it sat behind a California vanity license plate jokingly emblazoned Curiosity.  American flag prominent on the wall.

Curiosity, the rover, the descent aeroshell, and the, I’ll admit, a little sinister-looking, descent stage, the “sky crane” were all on display. Blue-suited figures were everywhere. This was the “clean room” after all.










http://www.arcataeye.com/2012/08/curiosity-before-she-went-to-mars-august-7-2012/


----------



## AsRock (Nov 9, 2012)

Mussels said:


> why waste money on research, when we could spend it on todays problems!
> 
> 
> yeah, *satellites and microwaves dont help solve problems at all*
> ...



LMAO, Yeah sure, by time we can leave this planet their be so much space junk it wont be possible lol. And for microwaves  hardly a good thing.


----------



## RejZoR (Nov 9, 2012)

It's really amazing when you think about it. We've sent a remote controlled probe to a distant planet (a planet not inhabited by humans). And we got a high resolution photos from that planet.
And it's Mars, a planet that's fueling our imagination for centuries...


----------



## T4C Fantasy (Nov 9, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> http://www.arcataeye.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/This-reporter-with-aeroshell.jpg
> Curiosity, at that time, sat over in the corner of the PHSF (Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility) at KSC (Kennedy Space Center) awaiting its successful November launch. Klaxons rang above 25 or so reporters,  warning of impending lightning activity moving across the Cape.
> Silently gleaming in various shades of gold and silver, glistening white, very complicated hardware, plumbed to the max, six wheels, it sat behind a California vanity license plate jokingly emblazoned Curiosity.  American flag prominent on the wall.
> 
> ...



man.. that guy in the second pic looks like the same guy who blew himself up before lauching the time travel device in the movie Contact! quick stop him!


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 10, 2012)

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia15682.html





curiosity during test






















http://www.businessinsider.com/mars-rover-curiosity-honeybee-robotics-2012-8?op=1

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/08/201285112832621706.html


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 10, 2012)

*the wheels*
























_Left to right: Exploration (Spirit/Opportunity), Sojourner, and Curiosity wheels_

http://www.garrettbelmont.com/blog/the-wheels-of-the-mars-rovers/


----------



## Irony (Nov 10, 2012)

Mmmm, aluminum. Didn't realize how much bigger curiosity was than some of the earlier attempts.


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 16, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover Measures Radiation and Wind on Mars*






NASA’s Curiosity rover has lately been investigating the wind and radiation on Mars, providing data on some uniquely Martian weather phenomena.

The probe’s main objectives on Mars are to scour the planet for signs of ancient habitability. “But we also have some pretty important goals of studying the modern environment,” said geophysicist Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for Curiosity during a press conference today. ”And it’s a pretty dynamic environment.”

Previous Mars probes, such as Spirit and Opportunity, bounced to the ground using inflatable air-bag like systems that needed to roll across a relatively flat surface. Curiosity’s more accurate landing system allowed the rover to land in an area with more slopes, which has much more dynamic wind patterns. The probe measured these patterns with its Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and found that, much like hilly places on Earth, Gale crater has strong upslope winds during the day and downslope winds at night. Though Curiosity hasn’t yet taken any pictures of them, its wind sensors also seem to indicate that whirlwinds are often rushing by the rover







REMS’s pressure sensor has also been investigating how atmospheric pressure changes seasonally on Mars. Curiosity landed on the Red Planet during a time when atmospheric pressure was at its lowest point but as springtime breaks out in the Southern Hemisphere, carbon dioxide is vaporizing off the planet’s enormous dry ice cap and thickening the atmosphere. Earth’s thick atmosphere is relatively unperturbed by such activity at our poles but this action causes Mars’ atmosphere to change by as much as 30 percent from season to season. Scientists are eager to watch these changes from the ground to build better models of Mars’ atmosphere.

“If we can find out more about the weather and climate on present Mars, it gives us more confidence for predicting how Mars looked in the past,” said planetary scientist Claire Newman from Ashima Research, a collaborator on the REMS instrument.

Curiosity has been monitoring radiation during its stay on Mars with its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD). These are some of the first detailed radiation measurements from the Martian surface and have shown that radiation fluctuates by 3 to 5 percent each day on Mars. As the Martian atmosphere thickens during the night, it becomes more effective at shielding against ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun and interplanetary space.






http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/curiosity-radiation-wind/


----------



## micropage7 (Nov 16, 2012)

interesting 





http://imgur.com/r/futurama/WspKq


----------



## Drone (Nov 18, 2012)

Finally, Curiosity completed its first analysis of Martian atmosphere, thanks to its spectrometer. 






So it's full of CO2 and *no methane at all* which is sad news for scientists because ...  well here what they say:



> About 90% of the methane in our atmosphere is produced by living organisms. Methane could also be a precursor for the formation of simple life. The fact that Martian air contains no methane would suggest that there is no life on Mars. Or at least life as we know it…



And here's a brand new fantastic image of the Rocknest site (where Curiosity is currently located). Real image on the left, and white-balanced on the right hand side.






You can see how wind has blown the sand/soil into a dune-like formation, and also dusted the rocks.


----------



## Drone (Nov 19, 2012)

Curiosity has analysed Martian atmosphere (see my post above) and now it properly measured radiation dose rate. Radiation can destroy near-surface organic molecules. And that's why it's a life limiting factor to habitability. Mars' atmosphere reduces the radiation dose compared to what we saw during the cruise to Mars by a factor of about two. Mars atmospheric pressure is a bit < 1% of Earth's. It varies somewhat in relation to atmospheric cycles dependent on temperature and the freeze-thaw cycle of the polar ice caps and the resulting daily thermal tides.

So how about humans? What fate awaits them on a bold and likely year's long expedition to the endlessly extreme and drastically harsh environment on the surface of the radiation drenched planet? How much shielding would people need?



> Absolutely, the astronauts can live in this environment. It's not so different from what astronauts might experience on the International Space Station. The real question is if you add up the total contribution to the astronaut's total dose on a Mars mission can you stay within your career limits as you accumulate those numbers. Over time we will get those numbers.



Basically they didn't have the details yet.

And finally another new pics (they'll post more soon):


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## Irony (Nov 20, 2012)

Finally, we got a regular shot of mars. Lol, it looks like just like in john carter.

Thats interesting about the atmosphere; co2 is a lot heavier than oxygen, so a slower wind would have the same force as a bigger one here right?


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## micropage7 (Nov 20, 2012)

the signature, cool they make it like bentley


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## Mussels (Nov 20, 2012)

if aliens discovered it, they'd think the signatures/typed font was some kind of rosetta stone to allow translation of our various written dialects


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## micropage7 (Nov 21, 2012)

*Curiosity Rover’s Secret Historic Breakthrough? Speculation Centers on Organic Molecu*

*Curiosity Rover’s Secret Historic Breakthrough? Speculation Centers on Organic Molecules*






Much of the internet is buzzing over upcoming “big news” from NASA’s Curiosity rover, but the space agency’s scientists are keeping quiet about the details.

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.

The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7. Because it’s so potentially earth-shaking, Grotzinger said the team remains cautious and is checking and double-checking their results. But while NASA is refusing to discuss the findings with anyone outside the team, especially reporters, other scientists are free to speculate.

“If it’s going in the history books, organic material is what I expect,” says planetary scientist Peter Smith from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Smith is formerly the principal investigator on a previous Mars mission, the Phoenix lander, which touched down at the Martian North Pole in 2008. “It may be just a hint, but even a hint would be exciting.”

Smith added that he is not in contact with anyone from the Curiosity team about their results and offered his assessment as an informed outside researcher.

Organic molecules are those that contain carbon and are potential indicators of life. During its mission, Phoenix heated a sample of soil to search for organics but these efforts were stymied by the presence of perchlorates, chemical salts that sit in the Martian soil. Perchlorates react to heat and destroy any complex organic molecules, leaving only carbon dioxide, which is abundant in the Martian atmosphere.

The Viking landers, which explored opposite sides of Mars in the late 1970s, also conducted a search for organic molecules and came up empty. For decades afterward, astronomers considered Mars to be a dead planet, with conditions not very conducive to life. After the results from Phoenix, scientists realized that perchlorates were probably messing with those earlier findings as well, and could account for their negative outcome.

Curiosity’s suite of laboratory instruments are able to slowly heat a sample in a way that doesn’t trigger the perchlorates. They can also weigh any molecules present, determining how much carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen they are made from. Simple organic compounds wouldn’t be completely shocking, said Smith, since these probably come from meteorites originating in the asteroid belt and probably are around on present-day Mars. But they would indicate that the building blocks for life are present on Mars and might only need the addition of water, which Mars had in the past, in order to produce organisms.

“If they found signatures of a very complex organic type, that would be astounding,” said Smith, since they would likely be leftovers from complex life forms that once roamed Mars. But the odds of finding such a startling result in a sample of sand scooped from a random dune are “very, very low,” Smith said.

Smith cautioned against speculating too much, since rumors have a way of spreading rapidly when it comes to any discussion of potential life on Mars. During his tenure on the Phoenix mission, his team was evaluating the interesting perchlorate results, which they kept secret during analysis. Rumors got out and then became worse when some unsubstantiated report claimed a member of his team meeting was meeting with the White House.

“When you keep things secret, people start thinking all kinds of crazy things,” he said.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/curiosity-historic-news-organics/


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## Drone (Nov 21, 2012)

Relatively new pictures (November 18):


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## Irony (Nov 21, 2012)

In second and third pictures, thats the generator isn't it? With the white cooling fins. This rover looks more awesome in every shot


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## micropage7 (Nov 25, 2012)

when she manufactured


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## ALMOSTunseen (Nov 25, 2012)

Rocks, rocks, Lets see some ice! These colour pictures are great though.


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## WhiteLotus (Nov 25, 2012)

I kind of wished they took a few seeds up them and planted them, with a water bottle to spray on it everynow and then. Just to see if anything would grow.


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## ALMOSTunseen (Nov 25, 2012)

WhiteLotus said:


> I kind of wished they took a few seeds up them and planted them, with a water bottle to spray on it everynow and then. Just to see if anything would grow.


Yeah, It would also be nice, if they took a plant up, and would see how long it would live.


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## WhiteLotus (Nov 25, 2012)

At least now they have the compositions of the soil and the atmosphere they could replicate that at home. Saves a another trip.


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## Drone (Nov 25, 2012)

HazCam and the wheel






This image shows the crash site of the Mars rover Curiosity's sky crane, the rocket-powered backpack that lowered Curiosity down to the Martian surface. Haven't seen this one before. That's quite an impact.


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## micropage7 (Nov 26, 2012)

*Tracking Mars: Curiosity Makes Its Mark on the Red Planet*

Since Curiosity landed on mars on Aug. 6, the rover has traveled hundreds of feet over the Martian surface. In the process, it has tracked up the sandy, dusty terrain, leaving tire marks, scoop divots, Morse code and one tiny piece of itself behind.

Unlike the Apollo astronauts' footprints on the moon, Curiosity's trails will probably be wiped away by the planet's frequent wind and sand storms. But there is still something so incredible about these little ephemeral marks we are making on another world.

Though the physical traces won't last, their impact lives on in the images the rover is sending back to Earth. Here are some of our favorite shots of Curiosity's tracks on Mars


























from space 





http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/11/rover-tracks-gallery/


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## Peter1986C (Nov 26, 2012)




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## SilverKnight (Nov 26, 2012)

Can anyone say WALL-E.


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## Irony (Nov 26, 2012)

Yeah, thats what I said too when I saw its wall-e head. 

Shots of the tracks are cool. Has the rover experienced any windstorms yet? I would be interested in seeing if there would be lightning in them; I was talking to an old guy who lived through the dustbowl, he said that there were lightning and explosions in the dust. I guess from friction of the particles creating static electricity


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## dank1983man420 (Nov 26, 2012)

Irony said:


> Yeah, thats what I said too when I saw its wall-e head.
> 
> Shots of the tracks are cool. Has the rover experienced any windstorms yet? I would be interested in seeing if there would be lightning in them; I was talking to an old guy who lived through the dustbowl, he said that there were lightning and explosions in the dust. I guess from friction of the particles creating static electricity



http://www.space.com/7102-lightning-detected-mars.html

They did confirm lightning in dust storms a few years back.  It's probably not going to be bolts of lightning, just flashes of light in the clouds if the Rover manages to capture any pics of it.


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## ALMOSTunseen (Nov 26, 2012)

Irony said:


> Yeah, thats what I said too when I saw its wall-e head.
> 
> Shots of the tracks are cool. Has the rover experienced any windstorms yet? I would be interested in seeing if there would be lightning in them; I was talking to an old guy who lived through the dustbowl, he said that there were lightning and explosions in the dust. I guess from friction of the particles creating static electricity


I wonder if It will ever flip over.......


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## Drone (Nov 27, 2012)

New rocky images taken at Rocknest site in November.











Looks like Earth's dead landscape


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## PopcornMachine (Nov 27, 2012)

Those enhanced images are awsome!


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## Mussels (Nov 28, 2012)

looks like home


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## Irony (Nov 28, 2012)

I knew the mods were from a different planet!


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## Drone (Nov 30, 2012)

New pic and something more:



> After careful analysis, there are no Martian organics in recent samples.



No organics, no life .... not yet, anyway.


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

What happens if the rover flips?


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## micropage7 (Nov 30, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> What happens if the rover flips?



it will be upside down 

yeah the land looks like on earth but the grain is different, like small rounds


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

I bet the lag between here and mars is BAD LOL!!!! If you move it from earth how long does it take to move on mars?


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## micropage7 (Nov 30, 2012)

yeah its about 40 minutes delay from earth to mars, i guess it depends on gravity too


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## Drone (Nov 30, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> I bet the lag between here and mars is BAD LOL!!!! If you move it from earth how long does it take to move on mars?



Mars is *4 light minutes* from Earth when it's in the _nearest point_ and *20 light minutes* in the furthest point. So playing multiplayer games or talking on skype with someone on Mars will make you wait for minutes.


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## Mindweaver (Nov 30, 2012)

Drone said:


> New rocky images taken at Rocknest site in November.
> 
> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/oneyearafter.jpg
> 
> ...



Actually that looks like a dried out lake.. Wow that would be amazing if water stood there years ago.  they should take all the areas that look like that and fill it with water virtually and see what Mars looks like from virtual orbit.


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

I could imagine the guys controlling it when they run into a rock or something


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## Drone (Nov 30, 2012)

Mindweaver said:


> Actually that looks like a dried out lake.. Wow that would be amazing if water stood there years ago.




Here's a good book about theories of water on Mars.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/58223main_Water.on.Mars.pdf

Who knows maybe it was water that etched all those valleys in the Martian surface.


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## Drone (Nov 30, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> I could imagine the guys controlling it when they run into a rock or something
> 
> http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/24206661.jpg



That's not how it works. All such remote probes are robotic devices that have some kind of AI. Remote controlling a device with such a big lag is not reasonable.


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

Drone said:


> That's not how it works. All such remote probes are robotic devices that have some kind of AI. Remote controlling a device with such a big lag is not reasonable.



So they build a waypoint list then send to the unit and let it go on its waY?


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## Drone (Nov 30, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> So they build a waypoint list then send to the unit and let it go on its waY?



Waypoints are in counter strike lol, it's rather like bots from unreal tournament. They can "learn" and explore without waypoints


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## 3870x2 (Nov 30, 2012)

http://xkcd.com/695/

onions...


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## brandonwh64 (Nov 30, 2012)

3870x2 said:


> http://xkcd.com/695/
> 
> onions...



Fixed


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## 3870x2 (Nov 30, 2012)

I would have posted the picture, but I would like the site to get credit for their work.


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## micropage7 (Dec 4, 2012)

*Mars Rover Detects Simple Organic Compounds*

_Unclear whether substances are entirely Martian, scientists say_







NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet.

Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously in polar Mars—appeared to also be present in Gale Crater, the site of Curiosity's exploration.

The possible discovery of organics—or carbon-based compounds bonded to hydrogen, also called hydrocarbons—could have major implications for the mission's search for more complex organic material.

It would not necessarily mean that life exists now or ever existed on Mars, but it makes the possibility of Martian life—especially long ago when the planet was wetter and warmer—somewhat greater, since available carbon is considered to be so important to all known biology.


The announcements came after several weeks of frenzied speculation about a "major discovery" by Curiosity on Mars. But project scientist John Grotzinger said that it remains too early to know whether Martian organics have been definitely discovered or if they're byproducts of contamination brought from Earth.

"When this data first came in, and then was confirmed in a second sample, we did have a hooting and hollering moment," he said.

"The enthusiasm we had was perhaps misunderstood. We're doing science at the pace of science, but news travels at a different speed."

*Organics Detected Before on Mars*

The organic compounds discovered—different combinations of carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine—are the same or similar to chlorinated organics detected in the mid-1970s by the Viking landers.


At the time, the substances were written off as contamination brought from Earth, but now scientists know more about how the compounds could be formed on Mars. The big question remains whether the carbon found in the compounds is of Martian or Earthly origin.

Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator of the instrument that may have found the simple organics—the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)—said that while the findings were not "definitive," they were significant and would require a great deal of further study.

Mahaffy also said the discovery came as a surprise, since the soil sample involved was hardly a prime target in the organics search. In fact, the soil was scooped primarily to clean out the rover's mobile laboratory and soil-delivery systems.

Called Rocknest, the site is a collection of rocks with rippled sand around them—an environment not considered particularly promising for discovery. The Curiosity team has always thought it had a much better chance of finding the organics in clays and sulfate minerals known to be present at the base of Mount Sharp, located in the Gale Crater, where the rover will head early next year.


The rover has been at Rocknest for a month and has scooped sand and soil five times. It was the first site where virtually all the instruments on Curiosity were used, Grotzinger said, and all of them proved to be working well.

They also worked well in unison—with one instrument giving the surprising signal that the minerals in the soil were not all crystalline, which led to the intensive examination of the non-crystalline portion to see if it contained any organics.

*Rover Team "Very Confident"*

The simple organics detected by SAM were in the chloromethane family, which contains compounds that are sometimes used to clean electronic equipment. Because it was plausible that Viking could have brought the compounds to Mars as contamination, that conclusion was broadly accepted.

But in 2010, Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center and Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico published an influential paper describing how dichloromethane can be a byproduct of the heating of other organic material in the presence of the compound perchlorate.

They conducted the experiment because NASA's Phoenix mission had discovered large amounts of perchlorate in the northern polar soil of Mars, and it seems plausible that it would exist elsewhere on the planet.

"In terms of the SAM results, there are two important conclusions," said McKay, a scientist on the SAM team.

"The first is confirming the perchlorate story—that it's most likely there and seems to react at high temperatures with organic material to form the dichloromethane and other simple organics."

"The second is that we'll have to either find organics without perchlorates nearby, or find a way to get around that perchlorate wall that keeps us from identifying organics," he said.

Another SAM researcher, Danny Glavin of Goddard, said his team is "very confident" about the reported detection of the hydrocarbons, and that they were produced in the rover's ovens. He said it is clear that the chlorine in the compounds is from Mars, but less clear about the carbon.

"We will figure out what's going on here," he said. "We have the instruments and we have the people. And whatever the final conclusions, we will have learned important things about Mars that we can use in the months ahead."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/12/121203-curiosity-rover-mars-organic-compounds-space-science-nasa/


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## THE_EGG (Dec 4, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> _Unclear whether substances are entirely Martian, scientists say_
> 
> http://images.nationalgeographic.co...y-have-found-organics-scoop_61854_600x450.jpg
> 
> ...



Interesting, thanks for all the updates man


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## Drone (Dec 4, 2012)

New pics, no life, no organics just like before:








> "We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.



Either there's no life at all or they need to look in other places.


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## Irony (Dec 4, 2012)

Maybe theyre not digging deep enough. They should bring Bagger 288 next trip


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## drdeathx (Dec 4, 2012)

The Rover has found proof of life on Mars!


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## Peter1986C (Dec 5, 2012)

Is that a Comky (or Twinkuter, or whatever)? Assuming that the edible part is a twinkie.


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## Irony (Dec 5, 2012)

Poor twinkies...got killed by their creator. Now what will the cockroaches eat after the apocalypse?


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## evulmunk33 (Dec 6, 2012)

actually... wouldnt that be a great way to find life?
lay out bait? 

why turn over every little rock on the entire planet?
life is very good at spreading and populating sweet spots all by itself, so instead of trying to find life, let life find US!

just leave some pods here and there that offer warmth and water...
eventually, IF there is life, it should populate those pods?


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## Mussels (Dec 6, 2012)

evulmunk33 said:


> actually... wouldnt that be a great way to find life?
> lay out bait?
> 
> why turn over every little rock on the entire planet?
> ...



only if we knew what life there ate/liked. for example, we cant throw earth food there without earth bacteria growing there - and they want to know the life STARTED on mars.


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## evulmunk33 (Dec 6, 2012)

Mussels said:


> only if we knew what life there ate/liked. for example, we cant throw earth food there without earth bacteria growing there - and they want to know the life STARTED on mars.


true... we might warm the pods thinking its nice n cozy for them, but they are used to freezing temps on mars and die off... haha

well, providing liquid water is a basic fundamental requirement for any lifeform, isnt it?
so doing that should work... it might then freeze next to the pods, and maybe martians will settle around the pods where the water is frozen and temps are closer to what they are used to... but it should still attract them...

idk, i think it would be worth a shot...

theres a lot of life in the sahara you wouldnt find for months by driving a remote controled robot through it...


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## Irony (Dec 6, 2012)

evulmunk33 said:


> well, providing liquid water is a basic fundamental requirement for any lifeform, isnt it?



Known life form. For all we know, there could be; and most probably is, life based in other elements than carbon, with totally different requirements for existence. Since mars has no liquid water on the surface, any life that exists there wouldn't need liquid water. Unless they live underground; in which case, we need bagger 288 again lol


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## evulmunk33 (Dec 6, 2012)

Irony said:


> Known life form. For all we know, there could be; and most probably is, life based in other elements than carbon, with totally different requirements for existence. Since mars has no liquid water on the surface, any life that exists there wouldn't need liquid water. Unless they live underground; in which case, we need bagger 288 again lol



idk... from what i read its unlikely that there is live thats not based on carbon... possible but unlikely...
and life that doesnt need water is even less likely, as life needs a stable neutral medium to create proteins, rna, dna or anything like it...

sure, there might be 23 dimensional light ferries, but cmon... 
right now what we are doing is looking for traces of water and carbohydrates, cause based on what we know, or think to know, thats what life needs

all im saying is, instead of looking for it, lay out a bait
if you use an RC car with webcam in your kitchen to hunt for roaches it would probably take you years to spot them, but all it takes to figure out if there are some or not, is put a snickers bar in front of the cam hehe


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## jacksonwalt (Dec 6, 2012)

great achievement ..well done NASA


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## Irony (Dec 7, 2012)

Then let us send the last of the twinkies to mars; Let hostess go out with a bang!


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## Peter1986C (Dec 8, 2012)

Hostess should have been bought by Mars Foods or Unilever instead of an investment company.


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## Drone (Dec 8, 2012)

Mars Rover Opportunity: 3 years in 3 minutes


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## Drone (Dec 12, 2012)

Ok ... new picture (Dec. 7, 2012):






View of a rock outcrop informally named Shaler. Currently, Curiosity rover nearing Yellowknife Bay. Here's a map:


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## ALMOSTunseen (Dec 12, 2012)

Drone said:


> Ok ... new picture (Dec. 7, 2012):
> 
> http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2012/29-curiosityrov.jpg
> 
> ...


I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Dec 13, 2012)

ALMOSTunseen said:


> I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?



I believe your right.


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## 3870x2 (Dec 13, 2012)

ALMOSTunseen said:


> I swear I can see water/ice or something reflective in that first picture?



I have no idea what you are talking about.


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## Mussels (Dec 14, 2012)

the smooth patches underneath the ledges look almost reflective. they arent.


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## Drone (Dec 16, 2012)

New picture Curiosity @ Shaler. Now full panorama:


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## Irony (Dec 16, 2012)

Thats one of the best shots yet.


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## Peter1986C (Dec 17, 2012)

Agreed Irony.


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## micropage7 (Dec 18, 2012)

This color image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows an area excavated by the blast of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent stage rocket engines. This is part of a larger, high-resolution color mosaic made from images obtained by Curiosity's Mast Camera

With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are clearly seen. Of particular note is a well-defined, topmost layer that contains fragments of rock embedded in a matix of finer material. Shown in the inset in the figure are pebbles up to 1.25 inches (about 3 centimeters) across (upper two arrows) and a larger clast 4 inches (11.5 centimeters) long protruding up by about 2 inches (10 centimeters) from the layer in which it is embedded. Clast-rich sedimentary layers can form in a number of ways. Their mechanisms of formation can be distinguished by the size, shape, surface textures and positioning with respect to each other of the fragments in the layers. 

The images in this mosaic were acquired by the 34-millimeter Mastcam over about an hour of time on Aug. 8, 2012 PDT (Aug. 9, 2012 EDT)

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16054-color.html


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## micropage7 (Dec 18, 2012)

*Remnants of Ancient Streambed on Mars*





NASA's Curiosity rover found evidence for an ancient, flowing stream on Mars at a few sites, including the rock outcrop pictured here, which the science team has named "Hottah" after Hottah Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. It may look like a broken sidewalk, but this geological feature on Mars is actually exposed bedrock made up of smaller fragments cemented together, or what geologists call a sedimentary conglomerate. Scientists theorize that the bedrock was disrupted in the past, giving it the titled angle, most likely via impacts from meteorites. 

The key evidence for the ancient stream comes from the size and rounded shape of the gravel in and around the bedrock. Hottah has pieces of gravel embedded in it, called clasts, up to a couple inches (few centimeters) in size and located within a matrix of sand-sized material. Some of the clasts are round in shape, leading the science team to conclude they were transported by a vigorous flow of water. The grains are too large to have been moved by wind.

Broken surfaces of the outcrop have rounded, gravel clasts, such as the one circled in white, which is about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) across. Erosion of the outcrop results in gravel clasts that protrude from the outcrop and ultimately fall onto the ground, creating the gravel pile at left. 

This image mosaic was taken by Curiosity's 100-millimeter Mastcam telephoto lens on its 39th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Sept. 14, 2012 PDT/Sept. 15 GMT).

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4723


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## Drone (Dec 20, 2012)

New image. Curiosity explores Yellowknife Bay






EDIT And another one: Rock Burwash






http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16553
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16237


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## Drone (Dec 20, 2012)

Some images made by Opportunity:





March 4, 2010





Sept. 6, 2010





Aug. 18, 2011





Aug. 4, 2011


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## Drone (Dec 21, 2012)




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## Drone (Dec 26, 2012)

Ok, so this is my final post here. New images of Curiousity @ Yellowknife Bay


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## micropage7 (Jan 1, 2013)

*NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Reveals Geological Mystery*





*Small spherical objects fill the field in this mosaic combining four images from the Microscopic Imager on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ USGS/Modesto Junior College*

NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers.

Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date.

Opportunity is investigating an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The spheres measure as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. The analysis is still preliminary, but it indicates that these spheres do not have the high iron content of Martian blueberries.

"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."

The Martian blueberries found elsewhere by Opportunity are concretions formed by action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, evidence of a wet environment on early Mars. Concretions result when minerals precipitate out of water to become hard masses inside sedimentary rocks. Many of the Kirkwood spheres are broken and eroded by the wind. Where wind has partially etched them away, a concentric structure is evident.

Opportunity used the microscopic imager on its arm to look closely at Kirkwood. Researchers checked the spheres' composition by using an instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on Opportunity's arm.

"They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres said. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking."

Just past Kirkwood lies another science target area for Opportunity. The location is an extensive pale-toned outcrop in an area of Cape York where observations from orbit have detected signs of clay minerals. That may be the rover's next study site after Kirkwood. Four years ago, Opportunity departed Victoria Crater, which it had investigated for two years, to reach different types of geological evidence at the rim of the much larger Endeavour Crater.

The rover's energy levels are favorable for the investigations. Spring equinox comes this month to Mars' southern hemisphere, so the amount of sunshine for solar power will continue increasing for months.

"The rover is in very good health considering its 8-1/2 years of hard work on the surface of Mars," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago, and we are looking forward to productive spring and summer seasons of exploration."

NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003, and both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. They continued bonus, extended missions for years. Spirit finished communicating with Earth in March 2010. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20120914.html


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## Drone (Jan 15, 2013)

Didn't wanna post anymore but anyway ... some boring pictures (only dust and rocks)

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/4-curiosityrov.jpg

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/3-curiosityrov.jpg

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/2-curiosityrov.jpg

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/nasasbigmars.jpg

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/2013/1-curiosityrov.jpg

All images are uber huge, don't wanna rape your browsers so just click the links. Bye.


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## micropage7 (Jan 16, 2013)

*Curiosity on Mars sits on rocks similar to those found in marshes in Mexico*






Millions of years ago fire and water forged the gypsum rocks locked in at Cuatro Ciénegas, a Mexican valley similar to the Martian crater where NASA's Rover Curiosity roams. A team of researchers have now analysed the bacterial communities that have survived in these inhospitable springs since the beginning of life on Earth. "Cuatro Ciénegas is extraordinarily similar to Mars. As well as the Gale crater where Curiosity is currently located on its exploration of the red planet, this landscape is the home to gypsum formed by fire beneath the seabed," as explained by Valeria Souza, evolutionary ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The researcher states that sulphur components from magma and minerals from the sea (carbonates and molecules with magnesium) are required to form gypsum. In the case of the Cuatro Ciénegas Basin, the magma under the seabed was very active. In fact, it allowed for the continent displacement during the Jurassic Period: "Here was where the supercontinent Pangea opened up some 200 million years ago, pushing the hemisphere north from the equator where it is now."

In the case of Mars, the scientists have not been able to confirm tectonic movement in its crust at any point, but they believe that a large meteorite crashed into its primitive sea. The fact that probing has detected gypsum in the Gale crater indicates that mineral-rich water was present and that sulphur was able to form due to the impact of the meteorite causing the crater.

It is no easy task to find a place on Earth similar to this Martian environment, except in Cuatro Ciénegas. For this reason astrobiologists toil in their work to understand how its bacterial communities work. "This oasis in the middle of the Chihuahua desert is a time machine for organisms that, together as a community, have transformed our blue planet yet have survived all extinctions. How they have managed to do this can be revealed by their genes," says Souza.

The team have analysed the 'metagenomes', the genome of the different bacterial communities that proliferate in these marshes by adapting parallel strategies to overcome survival challenges in a place with so little nutrients.

*Green, red and blue springs*

The results published in the journal Astrobiology reflect the existence of two communities in different pits for example. One is 'green' and is formed by cyanobacteria and proteobacteria that have adapted to the lack of nitrogen. Another is 'red' and is made of Pseudomonas and other micro-organisms that live without hardly any phosphorus. There are also blue springs which are generally deeper and lacking in nutrients.

"Understanding the usage and exploitation strategies of phosphorus is necessary in understanding what could happen in extreme scenarios like on other planets where there is a possibly serious limitation to this and other nutrients," explains Luis David Alcaraz, Mexican researcher participating in the study from the Higher Public Health Research centre of Valencia, Spain.

This project has enjoyed the support of Mexico's Carlos Slim Foundation and the Technological Innovation Research Project Support Programme of UNAM. It has also received the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the USA and NASA, which has been studying Cuatro Ciénegas for more than a decade.

The Cuatrociénegas Flora and Fauna Protection Area is a protected area but the scientists and conservation groups are worried that its water is being over exhausted. "The bacterial communities have survived all types of cataclysms here such as the extinction of the dinosaurs or the majority of marine creatures. But, the only thing they are not adapted for is the lack of water," warns Souza.


http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/10/30/curiosity.mars.sits.rocks.similar.those.found.marshes.mexico


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## micropage7 (Jan 16, 2013)

*Mars Rover Finds Intriguing New Evidence of Water*










The first drill sample ever collected on Mars will come from a rockbed shot through with unexpected veins of what appears to be the mineral gypsum.

Delighted members of the Curiosity science team announced Tuesday that the rover was now in a virtual "candy store" of scientific targets—the lowest point of Gale crater, called Yellowknife Bay, is filled with many different materials that could have been created only in the presence of water. (Related: "Mars Has 'Oceans' of Water Inside?")

Project scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said during a press conference that the drill area has turned out "to be jackpot unit. Every place we drive exposes fractures and vein fills."

Mission scientists initially decided to visit the depression, a third of a mile from Curiosity's landing site, on a brief detour before heading to the large mountain at the middle of Gale Crater. But because of the richness of their recent finds, Grotzinger said it may be some months before they begin their trek to Mount Sharp.

The drilling, expected to start this month, will dig five holes about two inches (five centimeters) into bedrock the size of a throw rug and then feed the powder created to the rover's two chemistry labs for analysis.

The drill is the most complex device on the rover and is the last instrument to be used. Project Manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that operating it posed the biggest mechanical challenge since Curiosity's high-drama landing. (Watch video of Curiosity's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

*A Watery Past?*

That now-desiccated Mars once had a significant amount of surface water is now generally accepted, but every new discovery of when and where water was present is considered highly significant. The presence of surface water in its many possible forms—as a running stream, as a still lake, as ground water soaked into the Martian soil—all add to an increased possibility that the planet was once habitable. (Watch a video about searching for life on Mars.)

And each piece of evidence supporting the presence of water brings the Curiosity mission closer to its formal goal—which is to determine whether Mars was once capable of supporting life.

Curiosity scientists have already concluded that a briskly moving river or stream once flowed near the Gale landing site.

The discovery of the mineral-filled veins within Yellowknife Bay rock fractures adds to the picture because those minerals can be deposited only in watery, underground conditions.

The Curiosity team has also examined Yellowknife Bay for sedimentary rocks with the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).  Scientists have found sandstone with grains up to about the size of a peppercorn, including one shaped like a flower bud that appears to gleam. Other nearby rocks are siltstone, with grains finer than powdered sugar. These are quite different from the pebbles and conglomerate rocks found in the landing area, but all these rocks are evidence of a watery past. (Related: "A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?")

One of the primary reasons Curiosity scientists selected Gale crater as a landing site was because satellite images indicated that water-formed minerals were present near the base of Mount Sharp. Grotzinger said that the minerals' presence so close to the landing site, and some five miles from the mountain, is both a surprise and an opportunity.

The current site in Yellowknife Bay is so promising, Grotzinger said, that he would have been "thrilled" to find similar formations at the mission's prime destination at the base of Mount Sharp.  Now the mission can look forward to the surprises to come at the mountain base while already having struck gold.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/130115-curiosity-mars-drill-water-space-science/


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## Mussels (Jan 16, 2013)

the question now is - how long ago was the water there?


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## PopcornMachine (Jan 16, 2013)

Mussels said:


> the question now is - how long ago was the water there?



And how long was it there?


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## Drone (Jan 16, 2013)

If Mars ever was alive it was billions years before. It'd look like this:






With oceans weather and atmosphere



> This is a conception view of the Western hemisphere of Mars with oceans and clouds. Olympus Mons is visible on the horizon beyond the Tharsis Montes volcanoes and the Valles Marineris canyons near the center.


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## Irony (Jan 16, 2013)

Mussels said:


> the question now is - how long ago was the water there?



According to john carter, late 1800s. Lol

It would be awesome to find water there, might justify a manned trip


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## suraswami (Jan 16, 2013)

may be where they landed has only deserts?


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## Drone (Jan 16, 2013)

Irony said:


> According to john carter, late 1800s. Lol



John Carter didn't just get teleported through space but trough time as well, so the actual Martian date is unknown. At least that was so in the books.


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## Irony (Jan 16, 2013)

Ah. I should read the books. Just watched the movie


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## Drone (Jan 16, 2013)

Tarzan and John Carter are the best characters ever.


New video:










Tracks from the Curiosity rover were imaged by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance: January, 2013

And here's the Mars weather report provided by REMS for January 15, 2013


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## Drone (Jan 19, 2013)

New image: Curiosity found widespread evidence for flowing water








> The Curiosity rover hit the science “jackpot” and has discovered widespread further evidence of multiple episodes of liquid water flowing over ancient Mars billions of years ago when the planet was warmer and wetter, scientists announced. The watery evidence comes in the form of water bearing mineral veins, cross-bedded layering, nodules and spherical sedimentary concretions.



Source: UniverseToday


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## Mussels (Jan 19, 2013)

billions of years? laaame. needs water now.


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## Drone (Jan 19, 2013)

Mussels said:
			
		

> billions of years? laaame. needs water now.


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## Drone (Jan 24, 2013)

new image and diagram:


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## Irony (Jan 24, 2013)

Wow, I never knew that they drove that much with the lunar rovers.


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## Drone (Jan 24, 2013)

Irony said:


> Wow, I never knew that they drove that much with the lunar rovers.



Here's a video showing Apollo 16 astronaut driving Lunar rover


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## Drone (Jan 25, 2013)

Dry Ice and sand dunes






Spirit Rover, 2004


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## Drone (Jan 29, 2013)

Martian rock Sayunei illuminated by Curiosity's ultraviolet LEDs.






New b/w image (Curiosity is ready to drill)


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## Drone (Jan 31, 2013)

New pictures of Curiosity at John Klein Outcrop. 
















Still drilling.


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## HammerON (Jan 31, 2013)

Wow! Great pics Drone


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## Mussels (Feb 1, 2013)

HammerON said:


> Wow! Great pics Drone



its impressive how he flies over there and takes pics of the rover for us.


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## Irony (Feb 1, 2013)

Bloody long flight.


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## Drone (Feb 1, 2013)

Mussels said:
			
		

> its impressive how he flies over there and takes pics of the rover for us.



Pffft that's easy. Here's how it looks from above


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## micropage7 (Feb 5, 2013)

*NASA's Curiosity Rover Hammers Into 1st Mars Rock*





_NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pounded into a Martian rock with its hammering drill for the first time, as this picture snapped by the robot on Feb. 2, 2013 shows._

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has pounded into a Red Planet rock with its drill for the first time, bringing the 1-ton robot a big step closer to initiating its first full-bore drilling operations.

The Curiosity rover hammered the rock using the arm-mounted drill's percussive action over the weekend, completing another test along the path toward spinning the bit and biting into rock for the first time.

"We tapped this rock on Mars with our drill. Keep it classy everyone," Curiosity flight director Bobak Ferdowsi — who gained fame as "Mohawk Guy" during the rover's nail-biting landing on the night of Aug. 5, 2012 — wrote in a Twitter post Sunday (Feb. 3), sharing a photo of the pounded rock.

Curiosity's drill can bore 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) into Martian rock, deeper than any rover has been able to go before. Using the drill and its associated systems is a complex operation, so the mission team has been building up slowly to the first drilling activity on the Red Planet.

Last week, Curiosity performed some "pre-load" tests, pressing down on a rock with its drill in several different places to see if the amount of force applied matches predictions.

The six-wheeled robot has also been carefully evaluating its target rock, which is part of an outcrop the mission team has named "John Klein," after a former Curiosity deputy project manager who died in 2011.

Curiosity's main goal is to determine if its Gale Crater landing site could ever have supported microbial life. Along with the rover's 10 science instruments and 17 cameras, the drill is viewed as key in this quest, as it allows Curiosity to dig deep into Martian rocks for potential signs of past habitability. 

The mission team wants to test the drill out on a target with scientific value, and John Klein seems to qualify. The outcrop shows many signs of past exposure to liquid water, including light-colored mineral veins that were apparently deposited by flowing water long ago.

http://www.space.com/19620-mars-rover-curiosity-hammers-rock.html


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## Drone (Feb 5, 2013)

Some NSFW closeup pictures of Curiosity ..... ghm penetrating Martian rock. I hope children are  not watching ....


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## ALMOSTunseen (Feb 5, 2013)

Drone said:


> Some NSFW closeup pictures of Curiosity ..... ghm penetrating Martian rock. I hope children are  not watching ....
> 
> http://ut-images.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Curiosity-Sol-174_1a_Ken-Kremer.jpg
> 
> ...


That stuff needs to be in the Sexy Closeup hardware thread.


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## Drone (Feb 5, 2013)

New images: (too big to post, just click to see them)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8441455819_1b79207c4d_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8516/8442544614_81f2f6e6dd_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8515/8441458081_9f48baab8b_o.jpg






some shiny thingy dafuq was that lol


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## Mussels (Feb 6, 2013)

looks like a knob from a water tap


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## Irony (Feb 6, 2013)

Drone said:


> New images: (too big to post, just click to see them)
> 
> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8441455819_1b79207c4d_o.jpg
> 
> ...



Looks kinda like a laser or camera periscope. It does look rather mechanical, not much like an average mars rock


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## Drone (Feb 10, 2013)

Drill holes


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## Drone (Feb 14, 2013)

New panorama images:


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## Irony (Feb 15, 2013)

It looks so surreal


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## Sliver Victor (Feb 15, 2013)

From the pics: it looks to me like the only thing alien about Mars is the rover itself! Lol Edit: I am amazed that small thing can power enough energy to send a image back to earth. A supercomputer right there with our limited technology.


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## Irony (Feb 15, 2013)

I wouldn't say SUPER computer; I gues it is impervious to radiation and extreme temperatures, but as far as power goes it has sbout the same power of my dumbphone.

"The rover is equipped with two computers, but only one is active at a time. Both are built around a radiation-hardened BAE RAD750 microchip operating at up to 200 megahertz. Each computer is equipped with 2 gigabytes of flash memory, 256 megabytes of random access memory and 256 kilobytes of erasable programmable read-only memory."

The RAD750s also meet lifetime dosage standards that are up to a million times more extreme than those considered fatal for a human being. As a result, over a 15-year period, the RAD750 chips aboard Curiosity would not be expected to suffer more than one external event requiring intervention from Earth.
"The RAD750 card is designed to accommodate all those single event effects and survive them," Vic Scuderi, BAE business manager for satellite electronics, said in an interview. "The ultimate goal is one upset is allowed in 15 years. An upset means an intervention from Earth -- one 'blue screen of death' in 15 years. We typically have contracts that (specify) that."

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-5...ugged-curiositys-computer-was-built-for-mars/


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## Sliver Victor (Feb 17, 2013)

for it's motorized efforts I am guessing it is sufficient enough for the job. I have heard that when they "drive" the rover from the launch control that it is a 7 second delay for each designated movement.


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## micropage7 (Feb 22, 2013)

*Curiosity Rover Ready to Analyze Martian Time Capsule From Inside of Rock*






After a long and careful hole drilling operation, NASA’s Curiosity rover has collected powdered rock representing the first sample ever acquired from the interior of Mars.

The tablespoon of crushed rock will be sent through the rover’s suite of state-of-the-art instruments, which will provide important information about the ancient landscape at Gale crater and its potential habitability. Curiosity has already uncovered evidence that the spot it is currently placed at, Yellowknife Bay, is an ancient riverbed with a complex history of water. The rover’s science team described the interior sample as time capsule preserving a record of the environment in which the rocks formed.

“We’ve been preparing for this for weeks and months so you can image how happy it makes us to see it successfully completed,” said engineer Avi Okron, a member of the rover drilling team, during a NASA press conference on Feb. 20.

About two weeks ago, Curiosity drilled its first 2-cm-deep test hole on Mars, followed a few days later by a full drill hole 6.4 cm deep. The rover’s rotary percussive drill hammered into the rock as it bored down, collecting a fine powder from at least 5 cm below the surface of the rock. This bit of crushed rock was placed in Curiosity’s scoop, where it was processed further and delivered to the rover’s internal instruments, CheMin and SAM. The former instrument will bombard the sample with X-rays to reveal its composition while the latter will identify the individual elements from inside the rock.

The local geology at Yellowknife Bay suggests that Curiosity will find a rich and complicated history of water. The area around the rover is made of large bedrocks featuring veins containing different minerals and spherical nodules. The rocks are made of fine grains, too small to be resolved by the rover’s hand-held MAHLI camera, indicating that they are likely either siltstone or mudstone, both of which could have been deposited by water. Since the interior sample hasn’t been exposed to surface weathering processes, they will provide a clean example of the early history of Mars and whether or not it was favorable to life.

Because this is the first time the rover’s drill has been used on Mars, the sample may still have some residual contaminants from Earth. The science team actually wants to analyze this impure material because the contaminants will be scrubbed away each time a new sample is taken. Researchers can watch as the contaminants disappear in subsequent samples and figure out exactly what came from our planet and what is native to Mars.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/curiosity-drill-sample/


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## Irony (Feb 22, 2013)

I wonder why the scoop has squared edges, Instead of being sharpened or toothed like a scoop from a backhoe or front end loader. Seems like it would make it harder to scoop up their drillings very well


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## Mussels (Feb 23, 2013)

isnt it being dropped there from the drill? they probably only exposed it like that to take a photo/drop the leftovers.


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## grunt_408 (Mar 13, 2013)

sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon found on Mars . source.


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## Drone (Mar 25, 2013)

Gusev Crater (Spirit mission, old b/w pic)






Yellowknife Bay (Curiosity mission, new pics)












Edit: one new b/w image


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## Drone (Mar 26, 2013)

They found white rock dubbed Tintina


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## micropage7 (Apr 6, 2013)

*Curiosity’s Abandoned Parachute Still Flapping in the Wind on Mars*





NASA’s Mars machines continue to work in beautiful tandem as seen in this image, where the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera captured the changing conditions of the landing parachute that brought the Curiosity rover safely to the ground nine months ago.

We’ve already seen lots of parts of Curiosity’s mission from space. HiRISE has snapped incredible images of the rover’s nail-biting descent, the scar marks left on the Martian surface from its ballast masses, and even its tracks on the ground as it explored habitable conditions in Mars’ past.

This latest animation consists of seven images taken from August to January showing the parachute blowing around in the wind. You can see the suspension lines that still hold the chute to Curiosity’s back shell, the bright shape in the upper half of the images. The parachute was the biggest ever used on another planet, and had a 15-meter diameter when fully open. Movement of the object in the wind continuously kicks off dust that would otherwise accumulate, helping to explain why the parachute from Viking 1 can still be seen from space nearly 40 years after it landed.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/curiosity-parachute-from-space/


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## micropage7 (Apr 21, 2013)

*Mars rover Curiosity back in action after engineers fix technical glitch*







NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is back in action, after engineers have fixed the software snag which put the robot on a precautionary ‘standby’ mode earlier this week.

“We expect to get back to sample-analysis science by the end of the week,” said Curiosity Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.

Curiosity went into a precautionary ‘safe mode’ on March 16, after being sidelined by a computer glitch for the second time in three weeks.

The safe-mode entry was triggered when a command file failed a size-check by the rover’s protective software. Engineers detected a software bug that appended an unrelated file to the file being checked, causing the size mismatch.

Engineers diagnosed the software issue and know how to prevent it from happening again, according to a JPL statement.

Next steps will include checking the rover’s active computer, the B-side computer, by commanding a preliminary free-space move of the arm.

The B-side computer was provided information last week about the position of the robotic arm, which was last moved by the redundant A-side computer.

The rover was switched from the A-side to the B-side by engineers on February 28 in response to a memory glitch on the A-side. The A-side now is available as a back-up if needed.

However, Curiosity only has about two weeks to continue analysing the drill sample it recently collected from a Yellowknife Bay rock, before it is forced to take another break.

Beginning April 4, all commands to the rover will be suspended for four weeks due to solar system geometry of Mars passing nearly directly behind the Sun from Earth’s perspective.

The suspension is a precaution against interference by the Sun corrupting a command sent to the rover.

http://www.firstpost.com/tech/mars-rover-curiosity-back-in-action-after-engineers-fix-technical-glitch-669974.html


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## micropage7 (May 5, 2013)

*Back From Far Side of the Sun, Curiosity Rover Gets Ready to Resume Science*





_A beautiful mosaic stitched together from Curiosity images from before the Mars conjunction, showing the rover’s arm and Mount Sharp in the distance_

After a long period of silence, NASA has reestablished its link with the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers and is getting ready to resume science operations on Mars.

The Red Planet has been hidden behind the sun for most of the month of April, meaning that signals sent from here to there could get interrupted or scrambled. The Mars flotilla — which includes the two rovers, two orbiting satellites, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey, and ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft – have been on their own for this duration. The rovers have been banned from driving and have mostly been taking routine measurements. Curiosity, for instance, has monitored radiation and atmospheric changes from its position at Gale Crater.

But now the wait is over. Both rovers are reporting healthy status. The smaller and older Opportunity rover, which has been on Mars since 2004, is out of standby mode and executing new instructions from NASA. The first thing in store for Curiosity is a software update.

“From time to time on your laptop, you need to update your operating system,” said geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, the rover’s project scientist. “Every couple of months we also upload a new version of Curiosity’s flight software and, when it’s convenient, we transition to it.”


The newest 225-million-kilometer software patch will improve the rover’s efficiency. Certain operations, like making sure the robot’s ChemCam wasn’t pointed at the sun, previously required a human at mission control to be in the loop. Such processes are now automated.

The software update won’t go as quickly as getting the newest version of an iPhone app. It will take the rest of the week to make sure everything is properly installed. After that, Curiosity will be ready to resume doing science.

Grotzinger said the science team is looking to document their drill site, perhaps getting some close-up photos and X-ray measurements inside the drill hole. After that, they will probably look to bore another hole about one or two meters from the original drill site to see if there are any mineral variations in the rock.

“Then we’ll make sure there aren’t some last minute things to wrap up and begin our plan to head to Mount Sharp,” said Grotzinger, referring to the 5.5-km-high peak at the center of Gale Crater that is Curiosity’s main target.

The rover hopes to investigate the mountain in order to better understand its watery history and whether or not it could have definitively supported life in the past. Curiosity moves slowly, about the same speed as a crawling baby, so it will take a while to reach Mount Sharp, likely after a few stops at areas of geologic interest. Grotzinger is optimistic that the long trek will begin this summer.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/curiosity-resumes-contact/


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## micropage7 (May 9, 2013)

*Curiosity Mars rover to investigate classic rock type*

*Nasa's Curiosity rover will soon return to a spectacular set of rocks on Mars to confirm their deposition in water billions of years ago.*





_The Shaler outcrop pictured with Mount Sharp in the distance. This panorama was built from pictures taken by the rover's navigation cameras, and assembled by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorezo_

This conjunction, as it is known, plays havoc with communications and the robot was forced to park up while the celestial mechanics took their course. But the ability to send commands has now been restored, and scientists have a heavy schedule of tasks they want the rover to work through.

The vehicle is currently sitting in a small depression on the floor of Gale Crater known as Yellowknife Bay. Just before conjunction, it drilled into a mudstone in a rock unit referred to as Sheepbed and found further compelling evidence for a watery past in Gale - sediments that possibly once formed a lakebed.

Curiosity is due to turn its drill again in this mudstone for further analysis before climbing out of Yellowknife Bay and heading for the crater's big central mountain, Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp).

But almost as soon as it starts that journey, the robot is going to stop at some of the most spectacular rocks seen so far on the mission.

Scientists have mentioned the so-called Shaler outcrop but haven't yet spoken about it in great detail.

Shaler is a classic example of cross-stratification - a structure produced from thin, inclined layers of sediment.

You'll have seen examples in a river or on a beach.

The turbulent flow of water creates undulations in the bed sediments - a series of ripples or dunes that slowly migrate in the direction of the water current.

The sediment grains bouncing along the bed get pushed up the rearward-facing slope (stoss) and then avalanche down the other side (lee).

As they cascade downwards, they form discrete layers that can be preserved over geological time as laminations in the rock.

If you look at the pictures of Shaler taken by Curiosity, you can see how subsequent erosion has taken its toll on this preserved bedform. Layers just a few millimetres thick are now falling out. Thin plates of rock are strewn over the ground.

For anyone about to begin their study of geology, cross-stratification, or cross-bedding, will be one of the first topics to be covered in "sedimentary processes", and Shaler is a beautiful example.

"It's textbook; you could use the Shaler pictures of cross-bedding in an intro-textbook," Prof John Grotzinger, the project scientist on the Curiosity mission, told me.

"For a while Shaler really was a contender to drill. We were discussing it as a team and then we drove down into Sheepbed and thought 'wow, well let's put Shaler off to the side'."





_Sedimentary processes at work on Earth are also seen in play on the Red Planet_

But scientists will now get a chance to study Shaler in more detail in the coming weeks, using the rover's cameras and survey instruments.

They're keen to establish for sure how those thin layers were built.

At first glance, it might seem obvious that it was through the action of flowing water (fluvial), but the Curiosity team needs to rule out the possibility that these rocks were deposited by the wind (aeolian) or by some kind of surge, such as the fast-moving clouds of gas and rock that will often plummet down the sides of particular types of volcano (a pyroclastic surge).

"Aeolian. That's the one you always have to falsify on Mars because it's a windy planet," says Prof Grotzinger.

This can be done by looking at the size of the rock grains in the layers; and from the pictures taken of Shaler on the way into Yellowknife Bay, it seems the particles are simply too big to have been carried in the wind. Further imagery will confirm that.

There are ways to discount the base surge idea, also, explains Dr Lauren Edgar from Arizona State University.

"If you're migrating faster than you're accumulating, you just preserve the lee side because you're eroding on that stoss side. However, in a pyroclastic surge environment, you often have high rates of accumulation relative to migration, so as the bedform is migrating it is also rapidly accumulating more sediment. This means you tend to get the full stoss-side and lee-side preserved," she told BBC News.

Another check is to look for a diversity of flow directions. A surge deposition will tend to move radially away from a point source. Cross-stratification from water currents, on the other hand, will likely show movement in assorted directions.

To be honest, it's hard to think where a surge might have come from in Gale. There are no volcanoes around.

But Curiosity should nail all this with its return visit to Shaler.

Here's the really clever thing, though, I think. Cross-stratification is one of those rock structures that is so well understood, you can use it to pull out some amazing information about the past environment in which it occurred.

I've mentioned the direction of flow, but you can also determine the depth of the water and the speed of the water - not precisely, but to a good approximation.

Ponder that for a moment. That's information about an environment that existed on another planet millions of kilometres away.

"The other really nice thing," says Prof Sanjeev Gupta, a Curiosity science team-member from Imperial College London, "is that what you're recording at Shaler is perhaps just a few minutes to hours of migration in those dunes, and then that activity has been preserved for billions of years. That's stunning."

Edgar, Grotzinger and Gupta presented their latest thinking about Shaler on a poster at the recent European Geosciences Union General Assembly. Two of their colleagues on the work have some particularly nice web resources related to cross-stratification.

Prof Dawn Sumner from the University of California at Davis describes how the layers are built in a YouTube video. Dr Dave Rubin, at the US Geological Survey, has a collection of animations to show the different forms. And click here to see a tank experiment. Watch the ripples migrate into view from the left.





_After landing on the floor of Gale Crater last August, Curiosity drove east. It passed Shaler on its way into Yellowknife Bay. When the rover drives back out in the coming weeks, it will stop at Shaler for a closer look_

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22402849


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## micropage7 (May 11, 2013)

*Curiosity rover team selects second drilling target on Mars*





_This map shows the location of "Cumberland," the second rock-drilling target for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, in relation to the rover's first drilling target, "John Klein," within the southwestern lobe of a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay." Cumberland, like John Klein, is a patch of flat-lying bedrock with pale veins and bumpy surface texture. The bumpiness is due to erosion-resistant nodules within the rock, which have been identified as concretions resulting from the action of mineral-laden water. _

This second drilling target, called "Cumberland," lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the rock where Curiosity's drill first touched Martian stone in February. Curiosity took the first rock sample ever collected on Mars from that rock, called "John Klein." The rover found evidence of an ancient environment favorable for microbial life. Both rocks are flat, with pale veins and a bumpy surface. They are embedded in a layer of rock on the floor of a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay."

This second drilling is intended to confirm results from the first drilling, which indicated the chemistry of the first powdered sample from John Klein was much less oxidizing than that of a soil sample the rover scooped up before it began drilling.

"We know there is some cross-contamination from the previous sample each time," said Dawn Sumner, a long-term planner for Curiosity's science team at the University of California at Davis. "For the Cumberland sample, we expect to have most of that cross-contamination come from a similar rock, rather than from very different soil."





_This patch of bedrock, called "Cumberland," has been selected as the second target for drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The rover has the capability to collect powdered material from inside the target rock and analyze that powder with laboratory instruments. The favored location for drilling into Cumberland is in the lower right portion of the image._

Although Cumberland and John Klein are very similar, Cumberland appears to have more of the erosion-resistant granules that cause the surface bumps. The bumps are concretions, or clumps of minerals, which formed when water soaked the rock long ago. Analysis of a sample containing more material from these concretions could provide information about the variability within the rock layer that includes both John Klein and Cumberland.

Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., recently finished upgrading Curiosity's operating software following a four-week break. The rover continued monitoring the Martian atmosphere during the break, but the team did not send any new commands because Mars and the sun were positioned in such a way the sun could have blocked or corrupted commands sent from Earth.

Curiosity is about nine months into a two-year prime mission since landing inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. After the second rock drilling in Yellowknife Bay and a few other investigations nearby, the rover will drive toward the base of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometers) layered mountain inside the crater.

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-curiosity-rover-team-drilling-mars.html


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## micropage7 (Jun 2, 2013)

*'Mars rat' spied by NASA's Curiosity rover*









The patch of windblown sand and dust downhill from a cluster of dark rocks labeled the "Rocknest" site, where eagle-eyed believers think they've uncovered a "space rat."NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS





A zoomed-in view of the "Rocksnest" spot; the patch of rocks in question is seen at the lower-left side.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS





An even closer, zoomed-in view of the "Rocksnest" spot; the "rodent" is seen at the top left.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Is that a rat on Mars?

A photo from the mast camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover reveals the dusty orange, rock-strewn surface of the Red Planet -- and what starry-eyed enthusiasts claim is a dusty orange rodent hiding among the stones.

The photo, taken Sept. 28, 2012, depicts the “Rocknest” site, where NASA’s rover took a scoopful of sand, tasted it, and determined it was full of weathered basaltic materials -- not unlike Hawaii, the space agency’s scientists said last year.

'Note its lighter color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach.'
- ScottCWaring on the blog UFO Sightings Daily

No word on how the rodent tasted, however.

The “creature” was identified on the UFO Sightings Daily website, where its finder, ScottCWaring, held tight to his opinion: That’s one darn cute rodent on Mars.

“Note its lighter color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach. Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors," he wrote. "Hey, who doesn't love squirrels, right?”

Others pointed out that the similarity in coloring and position mean it was most likely just a rock, fingering the psychology phenomenon known as pareidolia, a propensity to pick out faces from everyday objects and structures.

To take advantage of this psychological phenomenon closer to home, designers at Berlin's Onformative studio developed an algorithm that scans the surface of the earth with Google Maps, picking out geographical structures that are likely to be construed as having face-like features, science blog iO9 recently pointed out.

Their algorithm found faces in fields, mustaches in mountains, hills with actual eyes.

Perhaps the algorithm should be turned loose on Mars?

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/05/29/mars-rat-spied-by-nasa-curiosity-rover/


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## Deleted member 67555 (Jun 2, 2013)

I don't always read everything in this thread...
But when I do its fucking awesome!
Stay thirsty my friends....

Seriously a rock that looks like a rat! Totally sweet pics...


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## micropage7 (Jun 9, 2013)

*Rover Finds New Evidence That Ancient Mars Was Habitable*





_The pale rock in the upper center of this image, about the size of a human forearm, includes a target called "Esperance," which was inspected by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. This image is a composite of three exposures taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera during the 3,262nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (March 28, 2013)._


NASA's Mars rover Opportunity has made perhaps the biggest discovery of its nearly 10-year career, finding evidence that life may have been able to get a foothold on the Red Planet long ago.

The Opportunity rover spotted clay minerals in an ancient rock on the rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater, suggesting that benign, neutral-pH water once flowed through the area, scientists said.

"This is water you could drink," Opportunity principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University told reporters today (June 7), explaining why the rock, dubbed "Esperance," stands out from other water-soaked stones the rover has 

"This is water that was probably much more favorable in its chemistry, in its pH, in its level of acidity, for things like prebiotic chemistry — the kind of chemistry that could lead to the origin of life," Squyres added.

*A long-lived rover*
The golf cart-size Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on the Red Planet in January 2004 on three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity. The robotic explorers found plenty of such evidence (much of it indicating extremely acidic water, however), then just kept rolling along.

Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later, but Opportunity is still going strong. In August 2011, the six-wheeled robot arrived at the rim of the 14-mile-wide Endeavour Crater, which it has been investigating ever since.

Opportunity has seen signs of clays in Endeavour rocks before, but in nowhere near the concentrations observed in Esperance, researchers said. Overall, Esperance provides strong evidence that ancient Mars was habitable.

"The fundamental conditions that we believe to be necessary for life were met here," Squyres said.

The neutral-pH water that generated the clays probably flowed through the region during the first billion years of Martian history, he added, stressing that it's nearly impossible to pin down the absolute ages of Red Planet rocks without bringing them back to Earth.

Opportunity's latest discovery fits well with one made recently on the other side of the planet by the rover's bigger, younger cousin Curiosity, which found strong evidence that its landing site could have supported microbial life in the ancient past.

Such observations could help scientists map out Mars' transition from a relatively warm and wet world long ago to the cold and dry planet we know today.

"All the details need to be worked out, but the more we look, the more it fits into this kind of broad context," said Opportunity deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis

http://www.space.com/21483-mars-life-nasa-opportunity-rover.html


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## micropage7 (Jun 23, 2013)

During Barack Obama’s first inauguration as president in 2009, photographer David Bergman snapped hundreds of photos to build a stunning mosaic of the event, comprising more than one billion pixels in total. Users of the clickable, zoomable Gigapan platform (where the inauguration mosaic has attracted more than 15 million views) dove into the image to pull out any number of embedded details, from celebrities in the crowd to an apparently dozing Clarence Thomas.

Now a new 1.3-billion-pixel image of the surface of Mars should keep curious clickers occupied for a while, even though the chances of spotting Beyoncé or a sleepy Supreme Court justice are nil. NASA released the ultradetailed Gigapan mosaic, built up from roughly 900 individual images, on June 19.

The images in the mosaic come from the space agency’s Curiosity Rover, currently scouring Gale Crater on the Red Planet in search of evidence of past habitable environments. The rover’s telephoto camera acquired most of the snapshots, according to a NASA statement, with supplemental images from a wide-angle camera on the rover’s mast and a few robot selfies from Curiosity’s navigation camera.

The mosaic shows Curiosity’s environs in late 2012, when the rover was parked at a sandy location called Rocknest. That is where Curiosity first deployed the scoop at the end of its robotic arm to sample the fine-grained Martian soil and fired up its suite of onboard instruments to chemically analyze the material.

In this presentation of the Mars mosaic, NASA has helpfully supplied some annotations of significant sites, such as the rover’s landing area and its ultimate destination, Mount Sharp. But once you familiarize yourself with the image, I recommend exploring it in full-screen panorama mode to fully appreciate the astonishing detail.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/06/19/explore-mars-for-yourself-with-this-billion-pixel-image-from-the-curiosity-rover/


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## micropage7 (Jul 10, 2013)

*Curiosity Rover Begins Epic Drive to Mars Mountain*





_This view from the left Navigation Camera of NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity looks back at wheel tracks made during the robot's first drive toward Mount Sharp on July 4, 2013. The base of Mount Sharp, which lies about 5 miles away, is Curiosity's main destination._


NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has set out on its first big road trip, a long journey that will traverse miles of Red Planet scenery over the course of the next year or so.

 The 1-ton Curiosity rover took its first steps toward the foothills of Mount Sharp — a mysterious mountain that rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Red Planet sky — on July 4, then made another drive in that direction on Sunday (July 7), NASA officials said.

 Curiosity is headed toward a spot about 5 miles (8 km) away that will afford it access to Mount Sharp's lower reaches. This area is the rover's ultimate science destination; the mission team wants Curiosity to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the Red Planet's history like a book as it goes.

Mount Sharp "exposes many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved," NASA officials wrote in a mission update today (July 8).

 The two recent drives mark a big shift for Curiosity, which hadn't strayed far from its landing site since touching down inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a two-year surface mission to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

 The six-wheeled robot accomplished a great deal without putting too much wear on its wheels. In March, for example, mission scientists announced that Curiosity had already checked off its main goal, finding that a spot called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

 The rover team took some time afterward to confirm and extend this discovery, and then completed a few other tasks near the landing site before hitting the road for Mount Sharp on July 4 with a 59-foot (18 meters) drive. The July 7 drive measured 131 feet (40 m), researchers said.

Mission officials have estimated that the trek to Mount Sharp will take about a year, though they stress that there is no rigid timeline. Progress will depend on what Curiosity finds along the way, they say.

 "We are on a mission of exploration," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters last month. "If we come across scientifically interesting areas, we are going to stop and examine them before continuing the journey."

 The car-size rover's top speed across hard, flat ground is about 0.09 mph (0.14 km/h).

http://www.space.com/21888-mars-rover-curiosity-begins-long-drive.html


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## micropage7 (Jul 20, 2013)

*Mars Rover Curiosity Rolls Past Mileage Milestone*






_NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this image with its left front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Hazcam) just after completing a drive that took the mission's total driving distance past the 1 kilometer (0.62 mile) mark. Image released July 17, 2013._

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has notched a mileage milestone, reaching 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of total driving distance as it heads toward a huge and mysterious Red Planet mountain.

 The 1-ton Curiosity rover rolled past the mark on Wednesday (July 17), when a 125-foot (38 meters) drive brought its total odometry to 1.029 km (3,376 feet), NASA officials said.

 "When I saw that the drive had gone well and passed the kilometer mark, I was really pleased and proud," rover driver Frank Hartman, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "Hopefully, this is just the first of many kilometers to come." 

Curiosity is in the early stages of a long trek to the base of Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Red Planet sky. The targeted foothills lie about 5 miles (8 km) from Curiosity's current location as the crow flies, and it will likely take the six-wheeled robot — which has a top speed of 0.09 mph (0.14 km/h) — about a year to cover the ground, mission team members have said. Curiosity touched down inside Mars' 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. 

The car-size robot didn't stray far in its first 11 months on Mars, finding happy scientific hunting grounds close to its landing site. Indeed, mission scientists announced in March that Curiosity had already accomplished its primary goal, finding that an area called Yellowknife Bay was habitable billions of years ago. But Mount Sharp's lower reaches have long been Curiosity's ultimate destination. The mission team wants Curiosity to read the history of Mars' changing environmental conditions like a book as the robot climbs up through Mount Sharp's many layers. 

The long haul to Mount Sharp should vault Curiosity past NASA's Spirit rover, which logged 4.8 miles (7.7 km) on the surface of Mars between 2004 and 2010. But Curiosity will still be a distant second to Spirit's twin, Opportunity, whose odometer reads 23.35 miles (37.58 km) — and counting. 

The golf-cart-size Opportunity, which is currently making its way toward a site called Solander Point to wait out the Martian winter, holds the American record for distance driven on the surface of another world. But the overall champ is the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which tallied 26 miles (42 km) on the moon back in 1973.



http://www.space.com/22006-mars-rover-curiosity-driving-milestone.html


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## de.das.dude (Jul 20, 2013)

keep tyhe updates flowing


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## micropage7 (Jul 20, 2013)

de.das.dude said:


> keep tyhe updates flowing



yea man 
and its interesting when curiosity going up hill and got some off road


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## micropage7 (Aug 30, 2013)

*Curiosity Rover Snaps Best Mars Solar Eclipse Photos Ever*





_This set of three images taken three seconds apart by NASA's Curiosity rover shows the larger of Mars' two moons, Phobos, passing in front of the sun on Aug. 17, 2013_

 NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured the sharpest-ever images of a solar eclipse as seen from the Red Planet.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover snapped pictures with its telephoto lens as Phobos, the larger of Mars' two tiny moons, blotted out much of the solar disk on Aug. 17.

"This event occurred near noon at Curiosity's location, which put Phobos at its closest point to the rover, appearing larger against the sun than it would at other times of day," Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, a co-investigator for Curiosity's Mastcam instrument, said in a statement. "This is the closest to a total eclipse of the sun that you can have from Mars."

 Phobos does not completely cover the sun as seen from the Red Planet's surface, so the Aug. 17 event was an annular or "ring of fire" eclipse, like the one that wowed skywatchers here on Earth from Australia to Hawaii in May of this year.

Phobos is just 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide on average, and the other Martian moon, Deimos, is even smaller. Many scientists think both natural satellites are asteroids that were captured by the Red Planet's gravity long ago.

The tiny Phobos appears to take a relatively big bite out of the sun because the moon orbits so close to Mars — just 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) from the planet's surface. Earth's much larger moon, by contrast, zips around our planet at an average distance of 239,000 miles (384,600 km)




http://www.space.com/22592-mars-solar-eclipse-curiosity-rover-photos.html


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## Mussels (Aug 30, 2013)

MARS iS GOOGLY EYES


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## alucard13mmfmj (Aug 31, 2013)

must be a very small, ugly moon to create that solar eclipse hehe.


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## micropage7 (Sep 26, 2013)

*NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds More Signs that Ancient Mars Had Water*

NASA's Curiosity rover has found yet more evidence of ancient Martian water, this time during a recent pit stop along the way toward a huge Red Planet mountain.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover paused to examine a few rocks late last week, making the first of five planned science stops en route to the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp. The break was fruitful, returning further signs of long-ago liquid water, researchers said.

"We examined pebbly sandstone deposited by water flowing over the surface, and veins or fractures in the rock," Curiosity science team member Dawn Sumner, of the University of California, Davis, said in a statement. "We know the veins are younger than the sandstone because they cut through it, but they appear to be filled with grains like the sandstone." 

 Curiosity landed inside Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012 to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The six-wheeled robot checked off that main mission goal this past March, finding that a location near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed wet and habitable billions of years ago.

In July, Curiosity set out on the 5.3-mile (8.6 km) trek to Mount Sharp, which has been the rover's primary destination since before its November 2011 launch. Researchers want Curiosity to climb up through the mountain's foothills, studying its many layers for clues about the Red Planet's changing environmental conditions.

 The rover team also wants to understand the geology of the area between Yellowknife Bay and Mount Sharp, so they planned out investigations at five "waypoints" along the route. The first came Thursday (Sept. 19) at an outcrop scientists dubbed "Darwin."

"We want to understand the history of water in Gale Crater. Did the water flow that deposited the pebbly sandstone at Waypoint 1 occur at about the same time as the water flow at Yellowknife Bay?" Sumner said.

"If the same fluid flow produced the veins here and the veins at Yellowknife Bay, you would expect the veins to have the same composition," Sumner added. "We see that the veins are different, so we know the history is complicated. We use these observations to piece together the long-term history."





_This mosaic of four images taken by the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager camera on Sept. 21, 2013 shows detailed texture in a ridge of rock at a location called "Darwin" inside Gale Crater._

Curiosity spent four days studying the rocks at Darwin, then resumed the journey to Mount Sharp on Sunday (Sept. 22) with a 75-foot (22.8 meter) drive. Curiosity has now covered about 20 percent of the distance from Yellowknife Bay to Mount Sharp, researchers said.

"There's a trade-off between wanting to reach Mount Sharp as soon as we can and wanting to chew on rocks all along the way," Curiosity science team member Kenneth Williford, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "Our team of more than 450 scientists has set the priority on getting to Mount Sharp, with these few brief waypoint stops."

http://www.space.com/22927-mars-rover-curiosity-water-evidence.html


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## micropage7 (Sep 27, 2013)

*Curiosity Finds Water And Poison In Martian Soil*

One of the first things Curiosity did on the red planet was scoop up some stuff from a patch of sand and dust called Rocknest. (Scientists thought it looked like a little nest for rocks, deputy director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Laurie Leshin, told the Science podcast.) The rover then examined its Martian soil sample using its ChemCam, CheMin and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments.

In one of its analyses, Curiosity heated a sample of soil, about half the size of a baby aspirin, to about 835 degrees Celsius (about 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit). At that temperature, the minerals in the soil break down and release volatile gases. A team of international scientists found water vapor, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and oxygen in the sample, in that order of abundance. 

So a good amount of the sample—about 1.5 percent to 3 percent by weight—was water. "To me, that's interesting because of the good resource for potential human explorers," Leshin says. "Two percent water means that if you had, say, a square foot of this—or, a cubic foot, sorry—of this soil and heated it up, you could get about two pints of water out of it." Earth's dirt has about 10 times as much water as Mars'.

One recurring theme from this and other soil analyses: Curiosity and its predecessors, including Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity, all pretty much found the same soil composition in different Martian locations. This suggests that water-containing soil is available everywhere on Mars. It could also mean some process on Mars is mixing its dirt evenly across its surface, or that the composition of the planet's crust is similar everywhere.

*Killer dirt*
The other gases from the heating analysis told scientists about what minerals appeared in Martian soil. There was some bad news for any future Mars visitors. The oxygen was released with chlorine gas, which indicates a small fraction of the soil contains perchlorate, which is toxic if ingested. "It's good to know now that it's there," Leshin says, "so we can plan for when humans go to Mars and there's dust everywhere. How are we going to deal with that issue?"

*No organics*
Curiosity did not find any so-called organic compounds, a name that doesn't necessarily mean the compounds come from living sources. Instead, organic compounds contain elements, including carbon, that scientists consider to be the building blocks of life. Such compounds may be important to future Mars explorers.

The surface of Mars is exposed to a lot of radiation and other harsh conditions, Leshin says, so scientists are still holding out hope that the planet has organic compounds tucked away deeper underground. Curiosity is equipped with a drill to find out.

*An unusual rock*






On its 43rd Mars-day, or sol, after landing, Curiosity ran into a pyramid-shaped rock that is unlike any other Martian rock humans have ever found. Scientists named the rock Jake Matijevic, after Curiosity's former lead surface operations systems engineer, who died in 2012.

An analysis found Jake_M's proportions of minerals is different from other Martian rocks. However, the rock does look a lot mugearites on Earth, which are a rare type of rock that appear on ocean islands and in continental rifts (Glamorous). Jake_M is so similar to Earthly mugearites, the research team wrote in their paper that if they'd found Jake_M on Earth, they wouldn't know it came from Mars. Mugearites—and Jake_M—are igneous rocks, which means they formed from magma. (Other missions have found other igneous rocks on Mars, but not mugearite-like ones.)

The team used Jake_M's chemistry to hypothesize how it could have formed. It would have required either a high amount of water in the magma, or high pressure, or both. That's evidence that there may be some water under Mars' crust.

*More dirt on Mars*
*Where is Curiosity now?*
The little rover that could is still in the Gale Crater, moving as fast as it can toward Mount Sharp. Mount Sharp has geologic layers that may tell scientists more about Mars' history. The mountain may also contain organic compounds. 

There are five planned rest stops along the way, during which Curiosity will take samples and perform more science. The rover recently passed Waypoint 1.





_A mosaic of four images taken by the Curiosity rover on its way to Mount Sharp, on its 400th Mars-day (sol), September 21, 2013, on Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS_

http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/curiosity-finds-water-and-poison-martian-soil


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## micropage7 (Sep 27, 2013)

*Curiosity Rover Makes Big Water Discovery in Mars Dirt, a 'Wow Moment'*





_SA's Mars rover Curiosity is a mosaic of photos taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lends Imager taken on Sol 85, the rover's 85th Martian day, as Curiosity was sampling rocks at a stop dubbed Rocknest in Gale Crater. Image released Sept. 26, 2013_

Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

"For me, that was a big 'wow' moment," Leshin told SPACE.com. "I was really happy when we saw that there's easily accessible water here in the dirt beneath your feet. And it's probably true anywhere you go on Mars."

The new study is one of five papers published in the journal Science today (Sept. 26) that report what researchers have learned about Martian surface materials from the work Curiosity did during its first 100 days on the Red Planet.

*Soaking up atmospheric water*
Curiosity touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater in August 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. It achieved that goal in March, when it found that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago.

But Curiosity did quite a bit of science work before getting to Yellowknife Bay. Leshin and her colleagues looked at the results of Curiosity's first extensive Mars soil analyses, which the 1-ton rover performed on dirt that it scooped up at a sandy site called Rocknest in November 2012.

Using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, Curiosity heated this dirt to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit (835 degrees Celsius), and then identified the gases that boiled off. SAM saw significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds — and lots of water on Mars.

SAM also determined that the soil water is rich in deuterium, a "heavy" isotope of hydrogen that contains one neutron and one proton (as opposed to "normal" hydrogen atoms, which have no neutrons). The water in Mars' thin air sports a similar deuterium ratio, Leshin said.

"That tells us that the dirt is acting like a bit of a sponge and absorbing water from the atmosphere," she said.





_At left, a closeup view of the Mars rock target Rocknest taken by the Curiosity rover showing its sandy surface and shadows that were disrupted by the rover's front left wheel. At right, a view of Mars samples from Curiosity's third dirt scoop after it was seived. Image released Sept. 26, 2013_

*Some bad news for manned exploration*
SAM detected some organic compounds in the Rocknest sample as well — carbon-containing chemicals that are the building blocks of life here on Earth. But as mission scientists reported late last year, these are simple, chlorinated organics that likely have nothing to do with Martian life

Instead, Leshin said, they were probably produced when organics that hitched a ride from Earth reacted with chlorine atoms released by a toxic chemical in the sample called perchlorate.

Perchlorate is known to exist in Martian dirt; NASA's Phoenix lander spotted it near the planet's north pole in 2008. Curiosity has now found evidence of it near the equator, suggesting that the chemical is common across the planet. (Indeed, observations by a variety of robotic Mars explorers indicate that Red Planet dirt is likely similar from place to place, distributed in a global layer across the surface, Leshin said.)

The presence of perchlorate is a challenge that architects of future manned Mars missions will have to overcome, Leshin said.

"Perchlorate is not good for people. We have to figure out, if humans are going to come into contact with the soil, how to deal with that," she said.

"That's the reason we send robotic explorers before we send humans — to try to really understand both the opportunities and the good stuff, and the challenges we need to work through," Leshin added.

*A wealth of discoveries*
The four other papers published in Science today report exciting results as well.

For example, Curiosity's laser-firing ChemCam instrument found a strong hydrogen signal in fine-grained Martian soils along the rover's route, reinforcing the SAM data and further suggesting that water is common in dirt across the planet (since such fine soils are globally distributed).

Another study reveals more intriguing details about a rock Curiosity studied in October 2012. This stone — which scientists dubbed "Jake Matijevic" in honor of a mission team member who died two weeks after the rover touched down — is a type of volcanic rock never before seen on Mars.

However, rocks similar to Jake Matijevic are commonly observed here on Earth, especially on oceanic islands and in rifts where the planet's crust is thinning out.

"Of all the Martian rocks, this one is the most Earth-like. It's kind of amazing," said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "What it indicates is that the planet is more evolved than we thought it was, more differentiated."

The five new studies showcase the diversity and scientific value of Gale Crater, Grotzinger said. They also highlight how well Curiosity's 10 science instruments have worked together, returning huge amounts of data that will keep the mission team busy for years to come.

"The amount of information that comes out of this rover just blows me away, all the time," Grotzinger told SPACE.com. "We're getting better at using Curiosity, and she just keeps telling us more and more. One year into the mission, we still feel like we're drinking from a fire hose."

*The road to Mount Sharp*
The pace of discovery could pick up even more. This past July, Curiosity left the Yellowknife Bay area and headed for Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater's center.

Mount Sharp has been Curiosity's main destination since before the rover's November 2011 launch. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading the terrain's many layers along the way.

"As we go through the rock layers, we're basically looking at the history of ancient environments and how they may be changing," Grotzinger said. "So what we'll really be able to do for the first time is get a relative chronology of some substantial part of Martian history, which should be pretty cool."

Curiosity has covered about 20 percent of the planned 5.3-mile (8.5 km) trek to Mount Sharp. The rover, which is doing science work as it goes, may reach the base of the mountain around the middle of next year, Grotzinger said.

http://www.space.com/22949-mars-water-discovery-curiosity-rover.html


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## PopcornMachine (Sep 27, 2013)

Thanks for all the updates.


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## micropage7 (Sep 28, 2013)

*Mars Mystery Deepens: Curiosity Rover Finds No Sign of Methane*





_This self-portrait, composed of more than 50 images taken by Curiosity's MAHLI camera on Feb. 3, 2013, shows the rover at the John Klein drill site. A drill hole is visible at bottom left._

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has revealed no trace of methane, a potential sign of primitive life, on the Martian surface, contradicting past evidence of the gas spotted by spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, researchers say.

The Mars methane discovery, or rather the lack thereof, adds new fuel to the debate over whether the gas is truly present on Mars. And not all scientists are convinced that methane is missing on Mars.

The first and only attempts to search for life on Mars were the Viking missions, launched in 1975. Those probes failed to find organic compounds in Martian soils, apparently ruling out the possibility of extant life on the Red Planet.

But in the past decade, probes orbiting Mars and telescopes on Earth have detected what appeared to be plumes of methane gas from the Red Planet. The presence of colorless, odorless, flammable methane on Mars, the simplest organic molecule, helped revive the possibility of life once existing, or even currently living, just below the planet's surface.

On Earth, much of the methane in the atmosphere is released by life-forms, such as cattle. Scientists have suspected that methane stays stable in the Martian atmosphere for only about 300 years, so whatever is generating this gas did so recently.

Now, the new findings from NASA's Curiosity rover unveiled online today (Sept. 19) in the journal Science suggest that, at most, only trace amounts of methane exist on Mars.

"Because methane production is a possible signature of biological activity, our result is disappointing for many," said study lead author Christopher Webster, an Earth and planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

But the findings still puzzle scientists.

"It's a mystery surrounded by an enigma here," said imaging physicist Jan-Peter Muller of University College London, who is a Curiosity rover science team member but is not one of the authors of this latest Mars methane study. "This clearly contradicts what has been measured from space and from Earth."

*Methane mystery on Mars*
The Curiosity rover has analyzed the surface and atmosphere of Mars with an arsenal of advanced scientific instruments ever since its spectacular landing on Mars in August 2012. Measurements from the rover's Tunable Laser Spectrometer, a device specially designed for measuring the gas on Mars, say the most methane that could currently exist in the Martian atmosphere is 1.3 parts per billion by volume. [Latest Mars Photos by the Curiosity Rover]

"Based on earlier observations, we were expecting to land on Mars and measure background levels of methane of at least several parts per billion, but saw nothing," Webster told SPACE.com.

When the researchers first looked for methane using Curiosity, they found strong signals that they quickly realized were coming from the little methane that they had taken with them, Webster said — that is, "'Florida air' that had leaked into one chamber during the long prelaunch activities. This contamination has been removed in stages, but each attempt to look for methane from the Mars atmosphere has resulted in a non-detection."

The original plan of the researchers was to analyze the carbon isotope ratios of methane on Mars to get insight on whether that gas could be biologically produced. "However, the lack of significant methane has denied that latter experiment," Webster said.

This new measurement is about six times lower than previous estimates of methane levels on Mars. Webster and his colleagues suggest this severely limits the odds of methane production by microbes below the surface of Mars or from rock chemistry.

"It's an excellent piece of science," Muller told SPACE.com. "However, it's not to say that what is measured 1 meter (3 feet) above the ground is representative of the atmosphere in total — that's a matter of interpretation, not necessarily a matter of fact."

*Is the methane hiding?*
For instance, past measurements of methane in the atmosphere of Mars analyzed a region much higher above the surface, "so these might be very different measurements," Muller said. "It does leave a little wiggle room in terms of interpretation."

Moreover, when it comes to places on Earth where methane leaks out, scientists can detect large volumes of methane right at the plumes but practically none away from them, Muller said.

"It's difficult to know whether the null measurement from Curiosity has to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or whether it is representative of Mars," Muller said.

"We are often asked if our measurements at Gale Crater represent the planet as a whole," Webster noted. "We remind others that the lifetime of methane on Mars is very long, about 300 years, compared to the short mixing time — months — for the whole atmosphere, so we feel our measurement does represent the global background value."

*Curiosity experiment may hold the key*
The Sample Analysis at Mars suite of instruments on Curiosity has yet to conduct a "methane enrichment" experiment that will increase the sensitivity of the rover's Tunable Laser Spectrometer even further — by a factor of at least 10, Webster said. "It's possible that we may then see methane at extremely low levels — or, alternatively, we will not, and our upper limit will go down much further," he added.

The ExoMars spacecraft, planned for launch in 2016, will study the chemical composition of Mars' atmosphere to learn more about any methane there.

"It can look at the vertical distribution of methane on Mars, see if it's lofted some way high up in the atmosphere or if it's near the ground," Muller said. "If it's near the ground, that's likely reflective of it seeping out of the ground; if it's high in the atmosphere, some exotic photochemical process may be responsible."

Webster stressed that Curiosity will continue its mission to assess the habitability of Mars.

"The Curiosity rover will continue to make its measurements of both atmosphere and rock samples to discover if organics other than methane exist on Mars," Webster said. "To that end, the jury is still out, as these important measurements are being made in a series of studies that will extend many months into the future. Stay tuned!"

http://www.space.com/22862-mars-methane-missing-curiosity-rover.html


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## micropage7 (Oct 27, 2013)

*Mars Rover Curiosity Snaps High-Res Pic of Penny Payload (Photo)*

A penny on Mars has grown rich with red dust while riding on a NASA rover.

An ultra high-resolution photo recently sent back from the Red Planet revealed the red cent is covered in Mars dust, despite it being mounted vertically on the space agency's Curiosity rover for the past 14 months. The penny's patina however, was not the primary focus of the photograph that captured its current condition.

"I'm so proud of how beautifully the camera has performed on Mars," said R. Aileen Yingst, the senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson and deputy principal investigator for the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI for short. "I can't wait to apply this newly available capability to real geologic targets on our way to Mount Sharp." [Amazing Mars Rover Curiosity's Martian Views (Latest Photos)]

The six-wheeled Curiosity, which is also referred to as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), landed inside Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012 and then spent the next 11 months being checked out while starting science investigations in an area near where it had touched down. It was there that Curiosity achieved its major science objective, finding the evidence for a wet environment that could have supported ancient microbial life.

Now into the second year of its planned two-year mission, the rover is trailblazing a path to the base of Mount Sharp, a 3.4-mile-high (5.5-kilometer) mountain that rises from the crater's center. Once there, Curiosity will resume its study into how the Mars' environment changed and evolved.

The coin, which was minted during the first year President Abraham Lincoln was depicted on the front of the one cent piece, was flown to Mars as part of a calibration target for the MAHLI. The rover was equipped with the hand lens to take color close-up images of rocks and surface materials at a very high resolution.

At 14 micrometers per pixel, the photo of the penny was a demonstration of the imager's best-capable return, Yingst said. A micrometer, also referred to as a micron, is about 0.000039 inches.

The image was obtained as part of a test. It was the first time that the rover's robotic arm placed the camera close enough to a target such that it could obtain the MAHLI's highest-possible resolution. Earlier MAHLI images, which focused on Martian rocks, were taken at 16 to 17 microns per pixel.

It was not however, the highest resolution photo taken on Mars. Credit for that record goes to the optical microscope on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, which touched down in 2008. As a microscope though, fine-grained samples had to be delivered to it to be imaged, whereas the MAHLI on Curiosity can be deployed to look at the geologic materials in their natural setting.






 The image of the penny was acquired on Oct. 2, Sol 411, or the 411th Martian day that Curiosity has been exploring Gale Crater.

As the photo shows in fine detail, the copper coin is dated for 1909. What it does not reveal is what makes the penny particularly rare: the initials ("VDB") of the coin's designer, Victor David Brenner, which are etched on the reverse.

Brenner's initials were deemed to be too prominent, and as such were removed from subsequent mintings within days of the penny's initial release.

Ken Edgett, who picked out and purchased the penny with his own funds, said that he selected the coin to continue a tradition that began on Earth.

"The penny is on the MAHLI calibration target as a tip of the hat to geologists' informal practice of placing a coin or other object of known scale in their photographs," Edgett, principal investigator with Malin Space Science Systems, said prior to Curiosity landing. "Of course, this penny can't be moved around and placed in MAHLI images; it stays affixed to the rover."

The penny was also intended as an outreach tool, he said.

"Everyone in the United States can recognize the penny and immediately know how big it is, and can compare that with the rover hardware and Mars materials in the same image," Edgett said. "The public can watch for changes in the penny over the long term on Mars."

http://www.space.com/23211-mars-rover-curiosity-penny-photo.html


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## Drone (Nov 12, 2013)

New panorama

http://www.360cities.net/image/mars-panorama-curiosity-solar-day-437#321.90,5.90,70.7


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## grunt_408 (Nov 14, 2013)

NASA | Mars Evolution - YouTube


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## micropage7 (Nov 18, 2013)

*Curiosity Rover Suffers Software Glitch On Mars*





NASA's Mars rover Curiosity rebooted its software after an unexpected glitch late last week, but the six-wheeled robot is now doing fine on the surface of the Red Planet, NASA officials say.

The reboot — also known as a "warm reset" — occurred on Thursday (Nov. 7), less than five hours after Curiosity's handlers had uploaded new flight software to the 1-ton rover. It was the first time Curiosity had experienced such a fault-related reboot since landing on Mars in August 2012, officials said.

"Telemetry later downlinked from the rover indicates the warm reset was performed as would be expected in response to an unanticipated event," Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. 

 Warm resets are triggered when a spacecraft's flight software identifies a problem with one of its operations. While mission team members are still working to figure out what exactly happened, the glitch does not appear to pose any serious problems.

"So, that happened. Had a warm reset yestersol. I'm healthy. Spending the weekend awaiting new instructions," NASA officials said Friday (Nov. 8) via Curiosity's official Twitter feed, @MarsCuriosity. (A "sol" is one Martian day, which is about 40 minutes longer than a day here on Earth.)

The 1-ton Curiosity rover touched down inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The robot has already achieved that goal, finding that an area near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitable billions of years ago

 Curiosity is now on its way to the towering Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater's center. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through Mount Sharp's foothills, reading the history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.

The trek from Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp covers about 5.3 miles (8.6 km). Curiosity embarked upon this journey in early July and is about one-third of the way to the mountain, which has been its primary destination since before the rover's November 2011 launch

http://www.space.com/23553-mars-rover-curiosity-software-glitch.html


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## micropage7 (Nov 18, 2013)

*NASA Curiosity Rover spots iguana on Mars*






NASA's Mars Rover has captured the image of a rock that looks just like an iguana.

The iguana doppleganger was first spotted by the website UFO Sightings Daily who found the photograph on NASA's archives of dozens of images of the barren landscape surrounding the Curiosity Rover.

The reptile-shaped rock is not the first "animal" to be found on Mars. A rock shaped like a rat was discovered earlier this year.

"This is not the first animal found on Mars, actually there have been about 10-15 to date," UFO Sightings Daily coordinator Scott C. Warring told Canadian news site agoracosmopolitan.com. "I even found a rock that moved four times in four photos...then vanished on the fifth."

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/11/07/nasa-curiosity-rover-spots-iguana-on-mars/


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## Drone (Dec 10, 2013)

New images and news:






Outcrops in Yellowknife Bay are being exposed by wind driven erosion. These rocks record superimposed ancient lake and stream deposits that offered past environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.






The ancient fresh water lake at the Yellowknife Bay existed for periods spanning perhaps millions to tens of millions of years in length – before eventually evaporating completely after Mars lost its thick atmosphere. This lake was likely ~30 miles long and 3 miles wide.

Curiosity revealed the presence of clay minerals. These clay minerals form in neutral pH water that is ‘drinkable” and conducive to the formation of life.


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## Drone (Dec 10, 2013)

More:


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## Drone (Jan 2, 2014)

Latest photo


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## micropage7 (Jan 18, 2014)

After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover
Opportunity thought they’d seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously "appeared" a few feet in front of the six-wheeled rover a few days ago.
News of the errant rock was announced by NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve
Squyres of Cornell University at a special NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory " 10 years of roving
Mars " event at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night. The science star-studded public event was held in celebration of the decade since
twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the red planet in January 2004.
 http://m.space.com/24330-mars-rover-mystery-rock-appears.html?cmpid=514630_20140118_17228644


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## Mussels (Jan 18, 2014)

i lost this thread when the forum updated, yay for space rocks!


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## micropage7 (Jan 18, 2014)

Drone said:


> More:



interesting, but what is a, b, c, d, e and f?
yeah i got it, from the video


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## Drone (Jan 18, 2014)

micropage7 said:
			
		

> After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover
> Opportunity thought they’d seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously "appeared" a few feet in front of the six-wheeled rover a few days ago.



Here's a colored version of that _thing_:











And two new b/w shots:


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## Mussels (Jan 18, 2014)

might be a chunk of debris that was stuck to the rover?


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## Drone (Jan 18, 2014)

Close-up pictures of well worn wheels


























And this underbelly picture shows how it looked earlier


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## Mussels (Jan 18, 2014)

yeah i'm seeing holes in those wheels where holes dont belong, i reckon that mystery object was a chewed up piece of rover


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## Drone (Jan 18, 2014)

Yes maybe. And I wonder how fast those wheels wear out on Earth. Martian gravity is 38% of Earth’s


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## micropage7 (Jan 18, 2014)

Drone said:


> Close-up pictures of well worn wheels
> 
> 
> 
> ...


the second picture, theres crack on the wheel.
i never thought that the terrain could affect the wheels so much


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## Drone (Jan 19, 2014)

New views of Solander Point shot by Opportunity. Amazing, it's still working!


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## WhiteLotus (Jan 19, 2014)

As Bender Rodriguez would say...


Neat!


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## micropage7 (Jan 19, 2014)

i just think, its just far far away
and this is one of great achievement of technology
note: i still thinking of the crack on the wheel, its like  hitting something in 90 km/h, im wondering what could crack the wheel


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## WhiteLotus (Jan 19, 2014)

May have been damaged in the landing for all we know.


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## micropage7 (Jan 19, 2014)

WhiteLotus said:


> May have been damaged in the landing for all we know.


could be, it started from landing and those rocky road makes it worse


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## Drone (Jan 19, 2014)

New shot:






Plus two new photos made by a sharp-eyed NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. You can spot Curiosity trundling across the Red Planet, on its way to the base of a huge and mysterious mountain.






The rover is near the lower-left corner of this view. For scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 3m apart.






Two parallel tracks left by the wheels of NASA's Curiosity. The rover itself does not appear in this image.


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## micropage7 (Jan 19, 2014)

Drone said:


> New shot:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



personally i would see whats on the right lower part, its like sand or dried lake


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## micropage7 (Jan 19, 2014)

may i add more?

*Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheel Damage 'Accelerated'*





_On Friday (Dec. 20), NASA's Mars Science Laboratory team announced that they were monitoring Curiosity's wheels. The rover's six wheels appear to have sustained accelerated damage as the one-ton rover drives over the rocky terrain inside Gale Crater. Although the aircraft-grade aluminum is designed to withstand some dents and holes, some of the rips and gashes in between the wheels' treads are causing concern. In this selection of "before and after" photos from Curiosity's raw image archive, we've pulled some photos taken by Curiosity's robotic-arm mounted MAHLI camera. The dates and the day (sol) of Curiosity's mission are noted_
http://news.discovery.com/space/martian-wear-and-tear-curiositys-wheel-damage-photos-131220.htm






_A photograph taken by Curiosity's robotic arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Dec. 20 (Sol 488) shows marked wear and tear on the rover's front left wheel. Punctures in the rover's thin aluminum are highlighted by the arrows._

In May, Discovery News reported the dramatic signs of wear and tear on Mars rover Curiosity’s wheels. The aircraft-grade aluminum material appeared scratched, dented, even punctured.

At the time, lead rover driver Matt Heverly said that the damage was to be expected. “The ‘skin’ of the wheel is only 0.75mm thick and we expect dents, dings, and even a few holes due to the wheels interacting with the rocks,” he said via email. Despite the assurances that the holes were just a part of Curiosity’s mission, there seems to be increasing concern for the wheels’ worsening condition after the one-ton robot rolled over some craggy terrain.


In an upcoming driving activity for Curiosity, rover drivers will command Curiosity to rove across a relatively smooth area of the Martian surface. Throughout the drive, Curiosity’s powerful MAHLI camera, which is mounted to the end of the rover’s robotic arm, will monitor the condition of the wheels.

“We want to take a full inventory of the condition of the wheels,” said Jim Erickson, project manager for the NASA Mars Science Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Dents and holes were anticipated, but the amount of wear appears to have accelerated in the past month or so. It appears to be correlated with driving over rougher terrain. The wheels can sustain significant damage without impairing the rover’s ability to drive. However, we would like to understand the impact that this terrain type has on the wheels, to help with planning future drives.”


Curiosity has recent endured some challenging terrain laced with sharp rocks protruding from the ground. These rocks have caused some perforations in the six wheels, sometimes peeling back flaps of cut aluminum.

Depending on the outcome of the upcoming monitoring session, mission managers may need to better factor in the roughness of terrain of Curiosity’s future drives, re-routing if necessary.

Since landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity has driven a little under three miles, so damage to the wheels was going to be inevitable. But the rover hasn’t even begun the tough drive up the slopes of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp), a 5.5 kilometer-high mountain in the center of the crater — the ultimate goal of the mission to piece together the habitability puzzle of the red planet. There will undoubtedly be some tense times ahead for the rover team, especially if the rough terrain continues to chew up the six aluminum wheels.

http://news.discovery.com/space/rough-roving-curiositys-wheel-damage-accelerated-131220.htm


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## Drone (Jan 21, 2014)

View from Curiosity’s navigational camera on Jan. 8, 2014






This is a portion of the first color 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity











Full-resolution selfie and more


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## micropage7 (Jan 21, 2014)

Drone said:


> View from Curiosity’s navigational camera on Jan. 8, 2014
> 
> 
> 
> ...


black n white looks pretty dramatic but color looks amazing
thankz for updating


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## micropage7 (Jan 21, 2014)

Drone said:


> View from Curiosity’s navigational camera on Jan. 8, 2014
> 
> 
> 
> ...


black n white looks pretty dramatic but color looks amazing
thankz for updating


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## TheMailMan78 (Jan 21, 2014)

When they do the color correction I swear you could just walk around up there. Looks like Nevada.

Also as smart as the engineers at NASA are (Lots of respect here) you would think they would have used a better material than aluminum for the wheels. I mean honestly that was a dumb choice. Titanium or even 1080 carbon steel (heavy I know) would have been a far better choice. I mean 1 ton stilling on paper thin aluminum? Not smart.


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## micropage7 (Jan 21, 2014)

Drone said:


> View from Curiosity’s navigational camera on Jan. 8, 2014
> 
> 
> 
> ...


black n white looks pretty dramatic but color looks amazing
thankz for updating


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## Drone (Jan 24, 2014)

Opportunity Discovers That Oldest Rocks Reveal Best Chance for Martian Life


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## micropage7 (Jan 24, 2014)

Drone said:


> Opportunity Discovers That Oldest Rocks Reveal Best Chance for Martian Life


ooo... you passed me. i just wanna post the same


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## Drone (Jan 28, 2014)

Nice video


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## Drone (Jan 30, 2014)

Latest photo, IMO it's the best ever.

Curiosity Mars rover during the 526th Martian day (Jan. 28, 2014)


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## Drone (Feb 1, 2014)

Unposted pictures made by Spirit and Opportunity


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## micropage7 (Feb 1, 2014)

thanks for updating
its been a while i havent seen any news from Spirit and Opportunity


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## Drone (Feb 3, 2014)

New b/w photo made by Opportunity






New true color shot of Dingo Gap made by Curiosity


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## Drone (Feb 4, 2014)

New high resolution images of Martian rocks Harrison and Darwin. Could be a good texture pack for Doom's Martian levels lol


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## Drone (Feb 5, 2014)

Today's pictures:


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## Drone (Feb 6, 2014)

Dingo Gap Sand Dune bigger version






And watch panorama here


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2014)

Friday Martian goodness!

NASA spacecraft spots new crater on Mars






Martian Avalanches And Defrosting Dunes











Another shot of Dingo Gap and Gale Crater






Curiosity captured Earth and Moon in Martian twilight sky (picture and video below)






It's amazing! First picture of Earth from Mars!


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## PopcornMachine (Feb 7, 2014)

A fresh crater!  Info from this could have a huge impact!


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## lilhasselhoffer (Feb 7, 2014)

TheMailMan78 said:


> When they do the color correction I swear you could just walk around up there. Looks like Nevada.
> 
> Also as smart as the engineers at NASA are (Lots of respect here) you would think they would have used a better material than aluminum for the wheels. I mean honestly that was a dumb choice. Titanium or even 1080 carbon steel (heavy I know) would have been a far better choice. I mean 1 ton stilling on paper thin aluminum? Not smart.



I was with a team of engineers at school who were designing a lunar rover prototype.  The reason they gave for aluminum was three fold.  It deforms much easier than other metals, it forms a protective layer during oxidization, and the weight is low.

Deformation makes traveling over uneven surfaces much easier.  The shaped treads are able to elasticaly deform around the surface, and scale surfaces that would otherwise only allow the wheels to spin on.

Oxidization prevents pretty much any ferric materials from being used.  The whole "red planet" moniker isn't for nothing.  Carbon steels would oxidize too fast, and stainless steels are far too heavy.  Utilizing titanium is tricky.  Titanium tends to oxidize in a rather funny way, and produce some stunningly colored metal.  If you have time, check out the forced oxidization projects, which can produce a rainbow of colors.  All you need is an acidic solution and a controlled amperage.

Low weight is a huge concern in the rover.  Titanium sounds great on paper, being that it is stronger than steel and significantly less dense.  The part that is often forgotten is that aluminum and its alloys are nearly half as dense as titanium.  That kind of weight reduction yields a significantly less robust wheel, but at almost half the mass you can actually afford to send it into space.  Each pound counts.


Again, focusing on the small amount mass that can be blasted to the red planet, that "paper thin" aluminum makes us squishy humans look pretty fragile by comparison.  It's less than that thickness of aluminum which skins the wings on passenger planes, which generate enough lift at take-off to carry several tons of aircraft into the sky.  The steel mesh that you load lawn mowers onto (assuming you've got a trailer) is only 0.101 inches wide by 0.068 inches thick, and it isn't even a solid.  Engineers for NASA are good at pushing the envelope.  Occasionally this backfires...fill in your own jokes about metric to imperial conversions here.. but more often than not we get to see something truly amazing.


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## Drone (Feb 8, 2014)

New pictures:






Curiosity leaves Dingo Gap






Rear view: Curiosity looks back to ‘Dingo Gap’ sand dune *waves goodbye*






Front view


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## Drone (Feb 11, 2014)

New raw images


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## Drone (Feb 13, 2014)

New b/w gif and two jpegs


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## Drone (Feb 15, 2014)

New colored and b/w photos taken by Curiosity and Opportunity


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## Drone (Feb 20, 2014)

New Martian photos:






Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted *Mawrth Vallis *dunes





Opportunity Rover on ‘*Murray Ridge*’ seen from orbit






Opportunity captured this photomosaic view on Feb. 16, 2014 (Sol 3579) from the western rim of *Endeavour Crater*


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## Drone (Feb 21, 2014)

New images:






Main map






Up close photomosaic view shows lengthy tear in Curiosity’s left front wheel caused by recent driving over sharp edged Martian rocks on the months long trek to Mount Sharp.






Curiosity scans *Moonlight Valley* beyond Dingo Gap Dune


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## xt0m (Feb 21, 2014)

Fascinating.


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2014)

New images and video


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2014)

And more:


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## Drone (Feb 28, 2014)

A retro photo





*This panoramic image of sand dunes and large rocks is the first photograph taken of Mars (Voyager 1's Camera 1 on July 23, 1976).
*
And of course new stuff:
















That was *mount* *Sharp *and* Dingo gap*. And here are barchan sand dunes: (view from above)


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## Drone (Mar 2, 2014)

New images:


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## Drone (Mar 3, 2014)

New images:


----------



## Drone (Mar 11, 2014)

new images (Sol 565)


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## D R E N (Mar 11, 2014)

These latest images are beyond cool!


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## Drone (Mar 11, 2014)

Latest picture from Opportunity and news:

Mars Rover Opportunity Funding Ceases In 2015 Under NASA Budget Request


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## Drone (Mar 14, 2014)

Friday goodness

Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft shows a sand dune field in a Southern highlands crater





And Curiosity pics


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## Drone (Mar 17, 2014)

new images:


----------



## Drone (Mar 19, 2014)

Today's raw images


----------



## Drone (Mar 23, 2014)

New coloured images of Curiosity at Kimberly


----------



## Drone (Mar 24, 2014)

2 new black and white photos


----------



## Drone (Mar 25, 2014)

Another bunch of new images of Curiosity @ Kimberley


----------



## Drone (Mar 29, 2014)

New pic of solar panel on Opportunity






And new close-ups of rock samples taken by Curiosity


----------



## Drone (Apr 1, 2014)

New raw b/w images from different angles/cameras


----------



## PopcornMachine (Apr 1, 2014)

Thanks for all the very cool pictures.  The dune field is my new background image.


----------



## Drone (Apr 2, 2014)

PopcornMachine said:


> Thanks for all the very cool pictures.  The dune field is my new background image.



Not a problem 

I got some more new stuff: 2 new b/w photots











1 coloured Curiosity's wheel close-up photo











And one old pic

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took this picture of a light-toned rock "Tisdale 2" Aug 18, 2011


----------



## Drone (Apr 6, 2014)

New stuff:


----------



## Drone (Apr 7, 2014)

New images of Curiosity @ Kimberly, plus map


----------



## Drone (Apr 9, 2014)

Australia shaped rock and more:


----------



## Drone (Apr 9, 2014)

B/w and coloured photos of *Curiosity*












Retro photos by *Spirit* rover!!!!


----------



## Drone (Apr 11, 2014)

Images of *Osuga Valles* taken by the _European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft
_










And new Curiosity images as always


----------



## Drone (Apr 13, 2014)

Coloured photo of Gusev Crater from above






Lots of  new b/w pictures taken by Curiosity


----------



## 4ghz (Apr 13, 2014)

Anyone noticed that the wheel on that rover spells out morse code for JPL?


----------



## Agility (Apr 13, 2014)

All these images are awesome... Reminds me of the show Book Of Eli with these barren wastelands.


----------



## Drone (Apr 16, 2014)

View from above photo and video















And new shots:


----------



## Drone (Apr 18, 2014)

New giant clean shiny and coloured selfie by Opportunity {(right) shows that *much of the dust on the rover's solar arrays has been removed* since a similar portrait from January 2014 (left)}






And two new remarkable b/w shots by Curiosity


----------



## Peter1986C (Apr 19, 2014)

How did the dust get removed? Wind?


----------



## blobster21 (Apr 19, 2014)

Chevalr1c said:


> How did the dust get removed? Wind?



Absolutely :



> Modification of the martian surface by the wind is a process occurring presently, as evidenced by atmospheric dust storms, dust devils, and perhaps even tornados.


source : Winds of MArs : Aeolian activities and Landforms


----------



## Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Blobster is right. Those are dust devils, you can see one in action:


----------



## Drone (Apr 21, 2014)

New b/w raw images


----------



## Drone (Apr 23, 2014)

New Martian ground close-ups


----------



## Drone (Apr 24, 2014)

still spamming new stuff!!!


----------



## Drone (Apr 25, 2014)

New b/w and coloured images at Kimberley
















Curiosity Captures First Ever Asteroid Images from Mars Surface






And Deimos (lower right)


----------



## Drone (Apr 28, 2014)

Monday goodness


----------



## Drone (Apr 28, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Apr 29, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Apr 30, 2014)

Drilling ....


----------



## Drone (May 4, 2014)

New


----------



## Drone (May 8, 2014)

Mars' North Polar ice cap, Olympia Undae. The high latitude of the dunes causes water and CO2 frost to cover them in the winter


----------



## Drone (May 11, 2014)

It's getting better



























And view from above


----------



## Drone (May 12, 2014)

And finally Phobos aligned with Jupiter


----------



## Drone (May 14, 2014)

new shots










and night shots


----------



## Drone (May 19, 2014)




----------



## Drone (May 19, 2014)




----------



## Drone (May 20, 2014)

New


----------



## Drone (May 22, 2014)

Curiosity drilled Kimberley and left lolz


----------



## Drone (May 25, 2014)




----------



## blobster21 (May 25, 2014)

> Curiosity drilled Kimberley and left lolz



They're made for each other, curiosity should be back for more...drilling later


----------



## Drone (May 26, 2014)

New landscape






Surface






Wheels' inner part


----------



## micropage7 (May 27, 2014)

the dust


----------



## micropage7 (May 27, 2014)




----------



## Drone (May 28, 2014)

Possibly habitable environs. Braided fluvial channels (inset) emerge from the edge of glacial deposits roughly 210 million years old on the Martian volcano Arsia Mons, nearly twice as high as Mount Everest. (Colors indicate elevation.)






There's no going back ...


----------



## Drone (May 31, 2014)

New big images:


----------



## Drone (Jun 3, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jun 5, 2014)

edit:  new images by HiRISE

A large crater in Meridiani Planum






sandy features






alluvial fan on the floor of a crater





shiny dunes





migrating dunes


----------



## Drone (Jun 9, 2014)

Valles Marineris pictures taken by MRO


----------



## Drone (Jun 13, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jun 16, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jun 17, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jun 21, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 7, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 8, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 8, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 8, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 11, 2014)

Hellespontus Montes






Hellas basin


----------



## Drone (Jul 14, 2014)

And watch sol673 panorama here


----------



## Drone (Jul 16, 2014)

Huge Meteorite called Lebanon on Mars Discovered by Curiosity

http://www.space.com/26533-curiosity-mars-rover-meteorite-photos.html


----------



## Drone (Jul 16, 2014)

Crater Gratteri


----------



## Drone (Jul 17, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 19, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 20, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Jul 27, 2014)

Ridges in Eridania Basin


----------



## Drone (Aug 4, 2014)

More sand


----------



## Drone (Aug 4, 2014)

CO2 frost






New panorama






New map






Wheels ..





Rock ..


----------



## Drone (Aug 6, 2014)




----------



## Rannick1982 (Aug 6, 2014)

So, what happens when that wheel completely shatters?


----------



## Peter1986C (Aug 6, 2014)

It is all-wheel drive as far as I am concerned.


----------



## Drone (Aug 7, 2014)

More tracks:



















HiRISE images from space































Nili Patera






dunes in Kaiser crater


----------



## Drone (Aug 8, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Aug 10, 2014)

2 years... can't believe it


----------



## Drone (Aug 11, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Aug 14, 2014)

Whoa! Rolling boulder on Mars leaves trail visible from Space


----------



## Drone (Aug 15, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Aug 16, 2014)




----------



## Peter1986C (Aug 17, 2014)

That rock looks like a toy car (pic 2, bottom right).


----------



## Drone (Aug 17, 2014)

^ haha didn't notice


----------



## Drone (Aug 18, 2014)

> Scarring the southern highlands of Mars is one of the Solar System’s largest impact basins: Hellas, with a diameter of 2300 km and a depth of over 7 km. Hellas is thought to have formed between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago, when a large asteroid hit the surface of Mars. Since its formation, Hellas has been subject to modification by the action of wind, ice, water and volcanic activity.


----------



## Drone (Aug 19, 2014)




----------



## Arjai (Aug 20, 2014)

Thanks @Drone I love this stuff!! I don't stop by here often enough and I ended up eating through more than an HOUR, just now! Oh well. Keep it up man!!


----------



## Drone (Aug 20, 2014)

Arjai said:


> Thanks @Drone I love this stuff!! I don't stop by here often enough and I ended up eating through more than an HOUR, just now! Oh well. Keep it up man!!



No problem lol. It's amazing to look at another world.


----------



## Drone (Aug 22, 2014)

Layered Deposits and Dunes in Arabia Terra


----------



## Drone (Aug 23, 2014)

Frost-Dust Avalanches


----------



## Drone (Aug 23, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Aug 25, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Aug 27, 2014)

_*Eberswalde Crater*_


----------



## D007 (Aug 27, 2014)

Great pics, thanks. 
Go Mars rovers!


----------



## Drone (Aug 29, 2014)




----------



## revin (Aug 29, 2014)

@Drone      Again, Thank you so much for keeping this updated ! Truely amazing to see some of my 32 yrs. of contrubtion to aerospace and others that are used in peacetime efforts.


----------



## Drone (Aug 29, 2014)

revin said:


> @Drone      Again, Thank you so much for keeping this updated ! Truely amazing to see some of my 32 yrs. of contrubtion to aerospace and others that are used in peacetime efforts.




Wow didn't know that! People like you change the world *thumbs up* I love space not only because of science and technology but because it's truly beautiful and innocent. Lol I'm emotional today


----------



## revin (Aug 31, 2014)

I listen to astronomy.fm everynight when sleeping, and they mention'd about that section of rock's that tore up the wheel's, and they will have to plan to go round them.
Later unit's NASA will have a new design to cope with this situation, or they hope to ................


----------



## Drone (Aug 31, 2014)




----------



## revin (Sep 1, 2014)

@Drone  Congrat's on 4 yrs at TPU, but also 2 YEARS of dedication to this thread !!!. Not to lessen all the other contributors at all, but Drone is a dedicated poster !


----------



## Drone (Sep 1, 2014)

revin said:


> @Drone  Congrat's on 4 yrs at TPU, but also 2 YEARS of dedication to this thread !!!. Not to lessen all the other contributors at all, but Drone is a dedicated poster !


Haha 4 years I didn't even notice. Thank you friend! I also post in other space threads Solar System and Mysteries of the Sun.











Layered Rocks in Iani Chaos


----------



## revin (Sep 1, 2014)

OMG !! I'm getting too old ! I forgot about your's and other's  "Outta this World" threads !!!
jeez's ! I gotta get my shit together, [no not just "to get her"} lol

TBH I miss alot of good stuff on TPU the laast couple years !


----------



## Drone (Sep 2, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 3, 2014)

^ Image at the bottom is from Opportunity the rest is from Curiosity


----------



## Drone (Sep 5, 2014)

Skies ...






and ground again ....


----------



## Drone (Sep 7, 2014)

Dunes


----------



## micropage7 (Sep 8, 2014)

nice updates, btw i dunno they release color and black and white pics, the rover actually take color pictures or nasa coloring it later


----------



## Drone (Sep 8, 2014)

micropage7 said:


> nice updates, btw i dunno they release color and black and white pics, the rover actually take color pictures or nasa coloring it later



Rovers have several cameras. Some of them are color cameras (like mastcam and navcam) others b/w. All these images are raw and unedited.











^* Opportunity* rover


----------



## Drone (Sep 10, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 12, 2014)

*NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars Arrives at Mountain Destination*

http://www.space.com/27123-curiosity-rover-mars-mountain-destination.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-09-mars-curiosity-rover-martian-mountain.html


----------



## Drone (Sep 13, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 15, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 16, 2014)

Repaired *Opportunity* rover delivers new images:


----------



## Drone (Sep 17, 2014)

New images from *Curiosity*



























Overlapping lava flows in Daedalia Planum (image from *HIRISE*)


----------



## Mussels (Sep 17, 2014)

i had an argument with my in laws because they did not believe humans had ever sent anything to mars, just the moon.


----------



## 64K (Sep 17, 2014)

Mussels said:


> i had an argument with my in laws because they did not believe humans had ever sent anything to mars, just the moon.



I'm embarrassed to say that I have a family member that is convinced that the Moon Landing was faked.


----------



## Mussels (Sep 17, 2014)

64K said:


> I'm embarrassed to say that I have a family member that is convinced that the Moon Landing was faked.



personally i think its a mix of both - we made it there, but some footage/photos etc may be re-creations, due to low quality imagery or equipment failures.


----------



## Drone (Sep 18, 2014)




----------



## Lopez0101 (Sep 18, 2014)

I just wish we'd go back to the moon. Any hope of interstellar, or even deeper into our own solar system, is going to require some kind of off planet base/station. For instance, building a ship in space that would be much more capable because it doesn't have to worry about exiting a planet's gravity well, or atmosphere.


----------



## Mussels (Sep 18, 2014)

Lopez0101 said:


> I just wish we'd go back to the moon. Any hope of interstellar, or even deeper into our own solar system, is going to require some kind of off planet base/station. For instance, building a ship in space that would be much more capable because it doesn't have to worry about exiting a planet's gravity well, or atmosphere.




moon bases have a severe issue with static electricity causing moondust buildup - moonbases have been delayed for that specific reason. anything temporarily there just gets gunked up and chewed up.


----------



## Lopez0101 (Sep 18, 2014)

It doesn't have to be a moon base, like I said, it could also be a larger station type thing. I'm not saying it's going to happen any time soon, but I think it is more likely than launching massive ships from Earth, building ships in space, that is.

Just give the solar panels giant wiper blades, lol.


----------



## Drone (Sep 19, 2014)

New set


----------



## Peter1986C (Sep 20, 2014)

64K said:


> I'm embarrassed to say that I have a family member that is convinced that the Moon Landing was faked.





Mussels said:


> personally i think its a mix of both - we made it there, but some footage/photos etc may be re-creations, due to low quality imagery or equipment failures.


----------



## Drone (Sep 20, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 21, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Sep 23, 2014)

Drilling again















And two images from Opportunity


----------



## Drone (Sep 26, 2014)

First image by HIRISE and the one below by Opportunity


----------



## Drone (Sep 26, 2014)

Geologic Martian Map


----------



## Lopez0101 (Sep 26, 2014)

Holy shit.


----------



## Drone (Sep 29, 2014)




----------



## suraswami (Oct 1, 2014)

Not sure if its posted already, but this is great achievement.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-...osoft&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=windowsapp


----------



## Drone (Oct 4, 2014)

Hell if I know what it is but it's from Mars lol


----------



## de.das.dude (Oct 4, 2014)

as an indian.... Fuck yeah B|


----------



## Drone (Oct 6, 2014)

*Ceraunius Tholus* and *Uranius Tholus* (neighboring volcanoes)






*Nili Patera*  (volcanic cone with hydrothermal mineral deposits)






Curiosity (new*)






Opportunity (new*)


----------



## Drone (Oct 9, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Oct 13, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Oct 15, 2014)

NASA Mission Provides Its First Look at Martian Upper Atmosphere






This graph shows atomic carbon/oxygen/hydrogen scattering ultraviolet sunlight in the upper atmosphere of Mars


----------



## Drone (Oct 18, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Oct 20, 2014)

New images by HIRISE, Opportunity and Curiosity






West Edge of Melas Chasma






It seems Opportunity has better and more durable wheels than Curiosity, so many years and still working lol XD











Martian landscape looks so doomish


----------



## Drone (Oct 21, 2014)

Spirit rover











Curiosity rover






Comet Siding Spring is seen near Mars (the bright object) as a bluish-green orb at the center


----------



## Drone (Oct 22, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Oct 23, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Oct 24, 2014)

RAW pictures by all 3 rovers (Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity) from different Martian locations


----------



## Drone (Oct 28, 2014)

Comet seen from Mars


----------



## Drone (Oct 29, 2014)

Athabasca Valles


----------



## Drone (Nov 1, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 3, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 4, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 5, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 9, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 13, 2014)

new images:


----------



## Drone (Nov 15, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 17, 2014)

Sunspot region 2192 (lower left) as seen by Curiosity






Siding Spring comet as seen by Curiosity






This photo of Phobos was taken by Curiosity






Phobos occults Deimos photographed by Curiosity




​Ok, now let's come back to Earth .. I mean Mars


----------



## Drone (Nov 19, 2014)




----------



## bhaalkc (Nov 19, 2014)

any cacodemon around?


----------



## Drone (Nov 20, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 21, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 22, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Nov 26, 2014)

Opportunity pushes past 41 km of driving on Mars


----------



## Drone (Nov 27, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 1, 2014)




----------



## micropage7 (Dec 1, 2014)

Drone said:


> Opportunity pushes past 41 km of driving on Mars


at some points, its like on earth
desert in black and white


----------



## Drone (Dec 6, 2014)

Athabasca lava flows


----------



## Drone (Dec 8, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 9, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 12, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 12, 2014)

A color mosaic of *Candor Chasma* (part of Valles Marineris)






And here's geological map of that area






Two new shots (and lots of old ones) by Opportunity rover


----------



## Drone (Dec 13, 2014)

Some goodness by HIRISE:

Geological map of Candor Chasma and amazing video














*Juventae Chasma*






*Morava Valles*


----------



## Drone (Dec 13, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 13, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 14, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 16, 2014)

Analemma showing the Sun's movements over one Martian year (Sun's path looks like a teardrop)


----------



## rtwjunkie (Dec 17, 2014)

Interesting news: Mars Rover has found carbon-containing compounds in rock samples on Mars in the crater.  Carbon indicates the possibility that organic material may have been present at one time, since it is associated with life on earth.  It has also detected methane spike for the last year as well, including a large one that lasted almost 60 days.  On Earth, methane is associated with organic(aka life) material as well.

Unfortunately the rover doesn't have the capability to do any more detailed study, so any follow up will have to wait a long time to answer that question.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/17/us-space-mars-idUSKBN0JU2JX20141217


----------



## Drone (Dec 19, 2014)




----------



## Drone (Dec 21, 2014)

Opportunity took these images today (rear, front and panorama)


----------



## Drone (Dec 26, 2014)

Frosty Mars


----------



## Drone (Jan 3, 2015)

New page, new year, fresh pictures



















Elorza Crater is an approximately 40-km diameter complex crater located at 304.8 degrees east, 8.76 degrees north, about 300 km north of Coprates Chasma. This image centers on the southwestern portion of the central uplift, and is characterized by numerous bedrock exposures and coherent impact melt flows.


----------



## Drone (Jan 5, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Jan 7, 2015)

Under CO2 loneliness
Everlasting nothingness


----------



## Drone (Jan 8, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Jan 10, 2015)

*Here's a fresh, never before seen impact crater on Mars*:


----------



## Drone (Jan 13, 2015)

New images from opportunity and hirise


----------



## grecinos (Jan 13, 2015)

Fantastic photos!  This is my first post on this forum.  I hope this is an appropriate question to ask...

Just wondering, what are these objects that appear in the sky?  Possibly moons, sattelites, or dust particles on the lens?


----------



## Drone (Jan 14, 2015)

grecinos said:


> Just wondering, what are these objects that appear in the sky?  Possibly moons, sattelites, or dust particles on the lens?


Nice question. Looks like an artifact or like you said maybe just a piece of dust on the lens.



New images:


















The Eastern Portion of Cerberus Fossae


----------



## Drone (Jan 16, 2015)

Friday Martian goodness






















Acidalia Region


----------



## Nullifier (Jan 16, 2015)

Did they swap it's failing memory out yet? or is that still a mission in progress?


----------



## Drone (Feb 1, 2015)

Updates from the orbiter and two rovers


----------



## Drone (Feb 8, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Feb 9, 2015)

new images by curiosity and opportunity

















and retro images of Bumpy Boulder and McCool Hill by spirit


----------



## Drone (Feb 14, 2015)




----------



## Drone (Feb 16, 2015)

New images of Mars by Opportunity and Curiosity


----------



## Drone (Feb 17, 2015)

New images by Opportunity
















And this one is my favorite


----------



## Drone (Feb 18, 2015)

today's pictures


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 26, 2015)

Drill Hole






27 months of driving






A view of Curiosity's first meteorite discovery on Mars. These iron meteorites, called Lebanon (larger rock) and Lebanon B (smaller rock in foreground) were discovered by Curiosity on May 25, 2014. The larger Lebanon rock is nearly 7 feet (2 meters) wide.


----------



## micropage7 (Mar 1, 2015)

*Curiosity rover drills rock sample at Mount Sharp*





This hole, with a diameter slightly smaller than a U.S. dime coin, was drilled by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover into a rock target called “Telegraph Peak,” within the basal layer of Mount Sharp. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.


NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its drill on Tuesday, 24 February to collect sample powder from inside a rock target called “Telegraph Peak.” The target sits in the upper portion of “Pahrump Hills,” an outcrop the mission has been investigating for five months.

The Pahrump Hills campaign previously drilled at two other sites. The outcrop is an exposure of bedrock that forms the basal layer of Mount Sharp. Curiosity’s extended mission, which began last year after a two-year prime mission, is examing layers of this mountain that are expected to hold records of how ancient wet environments on Mars evolved into drier environments.

The rover team is planning to drive Curiosity away from Pahrump Hills in coming days, exiting through a narrow valley called “Artist’s Drive,” which will lead the rover along a strategically planned route higher on the basal layer of Mount Sharp.

The Telegraph Peak site was selected after the team discussed the large set of physical and chemical measurements acquired throughout the campaign. In particular, measurements of the chemistry of the Telegraph Peak site, using the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the rover’s arm, motivated selection of this target for drilling before the departure from Pahrump Hills.

Compared to the chemistry of rocks and soils that Curiosity assessed before reaching Mount Sharp, the rocks of Pahrump Hills are relatively enriched in the element silicon in proportion to the amounts of the elements aluminum and magnesium. The latest drilling site exhibits that characteristic even more strongly than the earlier two, which were lower in the outcrop.

“When you graph the ratios of silica to magnesium and silica to aluminum, ‘Telegraph Peak’ is toward the end of the range we’ve seen,” said Curiosity co-investigator Doug Ming, of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston. “It’s what you would expect if there has been some acidic leaching. We want to see what minerals are present where we found this chemistry.”

The rock-powder sample from Telegraph Peak goes to the rover’s internal Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument for identification of the minerals. After that analysis, the team may also choose to deliver sample material to Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of laboratory instruments.

The sample-collection drilling at Telegraph Peak was the first in Curiosity’s 30 months on Mars to be conducted without a preliminary “mini drill” test of the rock’s suitability for drilling. The team judged full-depth drilling to be safe for the drill based on similarities of the target to the previous Pahrump Hills targets. The rover used a low-percussion-level drilling technique that it first used on the previous drilling target, “Mojave 2.”

Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp after two years of examining other sites inside Gale Crater and driving toward the mountain at the crater’s centre.


http://astronomynow.com/2015/02/28/curiosity-rover-drills-rock-sample-at-mount-sharp/


----------



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 14, 2015)

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is back in action for the first time after suffering a glitch late last month.








The 1-ton Curiosity rover transferred powdered rock sample from its robotic arm to an analytical instrument on its body on Wednesday (March 11), and then drove about 33 feet (10 meters) toward the southwest on Thursday (March 12), NASA officials said.

Curiosity had been stationary since Feb. 27, when it experienced a short circuit while attempting to transfer the sample, which the rover had collected from a rock dubbed Telegraph Peak.


More here
http://www.space.com/28823-mars-rover-curiosity-short-circuit-drive.html?cmpid=559178


----------



## micropage7 (Apr 19, 2015)

*Nasa's Curiosity rover finds water below surface of Mars*






Mars has liquid water just below its surface, according to new measurements by Nasa’s Curiosity rover.

Until now, scientists had thought that conditions on the red planet were too cold and arid for liquid water to exist, although there were known to be deposits of ice.

Prof Andrew Coates, head of planetary science at the Mullard Space Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, said: “The evidence so far is that any water would be in the form of permafrost. It’s the first time we’ve had evidence of liquid water there now.”

The latest findings suggest that Martian soil is damp with liquid brine, due to the presence of a salt that significantly lowers the freezing point of water. When mixed with calcium perchlorate liquid water can exist down to around -70C, and the salt also soaks up water vapour from the atmosphere.

New measurements from the Gale crater show that during winter nights until just after sunrise, temperatures and humidity levels are just right for liquid brine to form.

Morten Bo Madsen, a senior Mars scientist at the University of Copenhagen and a co-investigator on the Curiosity rover, said: “The soil is porous, so what we are seeing is that the water seeps down through the soil. Over time, other salts may also dissolve in the soil and now that they are liquid, they can move and precipitate elsewhere under the surface.”

Liquid water is traditionally considered an essential ingredient for life as we known it, but Mars remains hostile for other reasons, the scientists said. The latest findings are unlikely to change the view that if life ever blossomed on Mars, it probably died out more than a billion years ago.

“There are organisms on Earth, halophiles, that can survive in salty environments, but if it’s also very cold and very dry that’s a problem” said Madsen. “The radiation on Mars nails it – that environment is very hostile.”

Related: Methane on Mars: does it mean the Curiosity rover has found life?

Prof Coates agreed: “Liquid water is one of the conditions you need for life, it’s not all of them.”

On Earth, the global magnetic field protects the atmosphere from being degraded by harmful cosmic radiation from the Sun. In the past, scientists believe that Mars had a similar magnetic field and thicker atmosphere, but that the field was lost around four billion years ago.

Today, cosmic radiation penetrates at least one metre into the Martian surface and would kill even the most robust microbes known on Earth.

Surface temperatures on Mars range from around 20C at noon, at the equator, down to lows of around −153C at the poles. The presence of perchlorate salts was discovered in 2008, but until now if was not known whether temperatures and humidity would be high enough to produce liquid brine.

The latest paper, published in Nature, analyses humidity and temperature data for a full Martian year, showing that liquid brine ought to form. Instruments on-board Curiosity also measured estimates of subsurface water concentration, which suggested that water was indeed being absorbed from the air and the surface frost by the salty soil.

The water would be present in tiny quantities between the grains of soil, rather than in droplet form. “If you dug a trench you might see that the soil at the base was a bit darker,” said Madsen.

Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 in the large crater, Gale, located just south of the equator. The giant crater is 154 kilometres in diameter and the rim of the crater is almost five kilometres high.

In the middle of the crater lies Mount Sharp, which Curiosity is currently ascending.

Observations by the Mars probe’s stereo camera have previously shown areas characteristic of old riverbed, with rounded pebbles that indicate there were flowing rivers up to one metre deep in the past.

The latest close-up images show slanting expanses of sedimentary deposits, lying one above the other. “These kind of deposits are formed when large amounts of water flow down the slopes of the crater and these streams of water meet the stagnant water in the form of a lake,” said Madsen.




http://www.theguardian.com/science/...osity-rover-finds-water-below-surface-of-mars


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## micropage7 (Jul 31, 2015)

*NASA's Curiosity Rover Eyes Weird Rock On Mars*


*



*
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity went out of its way to investigate a rock the likes of which it has never seen before on the Red Planet.

Measurements by Curiosity's rock-zapping ChemCam laser and another instrument revealed that the target, a chunk of bedrock dubbed Elk, contains high levels of silica and hydrogen, NASA officials said.

The abundance of silica — a silicon-oxygen compound commonly found here on Earth in the form of quartz — suggests that the bedrock may provide conditions conducive to the preservation of ancient carbon-containing organic molecules, if any exist in the area, the officials added. So Curiosity's handlers sent the rover back 151 feet (46 meters) to check Elk out. [Latest Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover]



"One never knows what to expect on Mars, but the Elk target was interesting enough to go back and investigate," ChemCam principal investigator Roger Wiens, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a statement.

Elk lies near a spot on the lower reaches of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp, called Marias Pass, whose rocks Curiosity had been studying. Marias Pass is a "geological contact zone" where dark sandstone meets lighter mudstone.

"We found an outcrop named Missoula where the two rock types came together, but it was quite small and close to the ground," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in the same statement. "We used the robotic arm to capture a dog's-eye view with the MAHLI [Mars Hand Lens Imager] camera, getting our nose right in there."








http://www.space.com/30062-mars-rover-curiosity-weird-rock.html


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## micropage7 (Jul 31, 2015)

duh moment.....
*Wheel Worries: Mars Rover Curiosity Dealing With Damage*






NASA's Mars rover Curiosity faces ongoing wheel wear and tear as it continues its trek across the rock-strewn Red Planet.

The car-size Curiosity rover has been on duty since landing on Mars in August 2012. Curiosity has six aluminum wheels, each with its own individual motor. The rover has a top speed on flat, hard ground of a little over 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) per second.

But dealing with the rocky Martian landscape has become somewhat of an unanticipated wheel of misfortune for the Curiosity crew. Back here on Earth, mission engineers are watching the wheels turn, keeping an eye on the dings and cracks that have begun to appear.

*Grousing about grousers*
"The bottom line is that we are monitoring the wheels all the time," said Jim Erickson, Curiosity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Each of Curiosity's wheels is about 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and 16 inches (40 cm) wide. The wheels have "grousers," forming something akin to a tread pattern. The skin of a rover wheel is just 0.03 inches (0.75 millimeters) thick, with the protruding grousers providing structural strength.

Erickson said that, to date, no grouser has been broken — and that's a good thing. "You can break one. It looks bad, but not horrible. We aren't there yet," he told Space.com.

Special wheel tests have been performed at JPL. Even with two-thirds of the inner part of the wheel gone, driving on that outer one-third of the wheel appears doable, Erickson said.

*Uncertain wheel life*
Curiosity's two front wheels began accumulating damage early in the mission.

That wear and tear continues, and now the rover's two middle wheels are showing major damage, Erickson said.

But "the rear wheels are still almost pristine," he said.

To help cope with the wheel situation, Curiosity engineers are looking at software changes on the vehicle, "to try and make things a little bit better," Erickson said. "They've had some good tests, but it's not ready for prime time yet."

The software could provide situational awareness to the wheels, Erickson said, matching wheel drive with electrical current, depending on what terrain the rover faces.

There remain uncertainties about how much overall wheel life is left onCuriosity, Erickson said. One helpful remedy is to carefully guide the robot through less-damaging terrain, he said.

*Right balance*
Team members spend significant amounts of time planning out Curiosity's routes, particularly making use of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its high-resolution imaging science experiment (HiRISE) camera system.

Finding the right balance between wheel protection and data collection is also on the mind of Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, also of JPL.

"Curiosity's engineering and science teams have spent over a year understanding how the rover's design and driving algorithms — and Mars' terrain — led to more wheel damage than was expected," Vasavada told Space.com. "We've also developed a wheel test bed to better predict how the wheels will degrade over time, under certain conditions."

In addition, Vasavada said that Curiosity teams have mapped out a network of routes up Mount Sharp — the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain whose foothills the rover is exploring — that vary in their scientific value and also in risk to the robot's wheels.

"This allows the project as a whole to find the right balance between our scientific progress and factors like wheel wear, slopes, navigability, etc.," Vasavada said. "It all looks quite optimistic and manageable at this point."

Erickson agrees.

From all of the simulation testing, "the wheel assessment is that we haven't used up 50 percent of the wheels as yet ... and we've been driving for three years. I guess I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic," Erickson said. "I am more resigned to the fact that we have a consumable."

http://www.space.com/29844-mars-rover-curiosity-wheel-damage.html


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## grunt_408 (Aug 9, 2015)

Woman found on mars??
https://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/29218197/woman-found-in-photo-sent-back-from-mars/?cmp=fb


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## Drone (Sep 2, 2015)

Opportunity (rear view cam)






Curiosity (arm and ughm yeah whatever)


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## Drone (Sep 5, 2015)




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## Drone (Sep 7, 2015)




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## Drone (Sep 12, 2015)




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## Drone (Sep 14, 2015)




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## micropage7 (Sep 14, 2015)

Drone said:


>


i dunno that pic reminds me of transformers


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## Drone (Sep 15, 2015)




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## Drone (Sep 25, 2015)




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## Drone (Oct 2, 2015)




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## mickel116 (Oct 2, 2015)

is that the water that was found?


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## Drone (Oct 6, 2015)




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## Drone (Oct 7, 2015)




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## Drone (Oct 9, 2015)




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## GorbazTheDragon (Oct 9, 2015)

It looks eerily similar to the deserts back in Chile.


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## Drone (Oct 15, 2015)

new selfie


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## Drone (Oct 16, 2015)

Curiosity can wait. Time for HIRISE and Opportunity


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## Drone (Oct 18, 2015)

Crater within Schiaparelli Crater Filled with Layered Rock


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## Drone (Oct 25, 2015)




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## Drone (Oct 28, 2015)




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## Drone (Nov 6, 2015)

MAVEN data have enabled researchers to determine the rate at which the Martian atmosphere currently is losing gas to space via stripping by the solar wind. The findings reveal that the erosion of Mars' atmosphere increases significantly during solar storms. MAVEN measurements indicate that the *solar wind strips away gas at a rate of about 100 grams every second*.

The solar wind is a stream of particles, mainly protons and electrons, flowing from the sun's atmosphere at a speed of about one million miles per hour. The magnetic field carried by the solar wind as it flows past Mars can generate an electric field. This electric field accelerates electrically charged gas atoms in Mars' upper atmosphere and shoots them into space.







The incoming energetic electrons are accelerated by a transient electric field along the residual magnetic field lines to interact with the carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere, resulting in the ultraviolet emission.

MAVEN has been examining how solar wind and ultraviolet light strip gas from of the top of the planet's atmosphere. New results indicate that the loss is experienced in three different regions of the Red Planet: down the "tail," where the solar wind flows behind Mars, above the Martian poles in a "polar plume," and from an extended cloud of gas surrounding Mars. The science team determined that almost 75% of the escaping ions come from the tail region, and nearly 25% are from the plume region, with just a minor contribution from the extended cloud. *Solar wind erosion is an important mechanism for atmospheric loss, and was important enough to account for significant change in the Martian climate*.


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## Drone (Nov 6, 2015)

Curiosity images and one epic image by HIRSE, see below:






Cydonia Region


The paleochannel system has wind-blown bedforms in its interior, with crests oriented approximately perpendicular to the channel walls. The large rocky patch near the center of the image shows some evidence of bedding as would be expected for a river delta or other water-lain sediments, but the rough dissected nature of outcrops and superimposed aeolian bedforms and other sediments makes identification of this feature difficult.


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## Drone (Nov 10, 2015)

Indifferent rocks exposed to ultraviolet loneliness; boulders; emptiness; craters and ...
















... and marching Dust Devils






On an early fall afternoon in Ganges Chasma (Valles Marineris), scientists managed to capture a cluster of *dust devils*. They’re together on a dark sandy surface that tilts slightly to the north, towards the Sun.

Both of these factors help warm the surface and *generate convection in the air above*. The surface is streaked with the faint tracks of earlier dust devils. A pair of dust devils appears together at top right, spaced only 250 m apart. These two have quite different morphologies. The bigger one (on the right) is about 100 m in diameter and is shaped like a *doughnut with a hole in the middle*. Its smaller companion is more compact and plume-like, but it too has a small _hole in the center, where the pressure is lowest_. It may be that the smaller dust devil is younger than the larger one.


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## Drone (Nov 12, 2015)




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## Drone (Nov 15, 2015)




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## Drone (Nov 19, 2015)

In the next few days, the rover will get its first close-up look at these dark dunes, called the "*Bagnold Dunes*," which skirt the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. No Mars rover has previously visited a sand dune, as opposed to smaller sand ripples or drifts. *One dune Curiosity will investigate is as tall as a two-story building and as broad as a football field*. The Bagnold Dunes are active: Images from orbit indicate some of them are *migrating as much as about 1 meter per Earth year*. No active dunes have been visited anywhere in the solar system besides Earth.






"We've planned investigations that will not only tell us about modern dune activity on Mars but will also help us interpret the composition of *sandstone layers made from dunes that turned into rock long ago*," said Bethany Ehlmann of the California Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, California.


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## Drone (Nov 21, 2015)

*A witness to a wet early Mars *

Vast volumes of water once flooded through this deep chasm on Mars that connects the ‘Grand Canyon’ of the Solar System – Valles Marineris – to the planet’s northern lowlands.

The image, taken by ESA’s Mars Express on 16 July, focuses on Aurorae Chaos, close to the junction of Ganges, Capri and Eos Chasmata.







Aurorae Chaos measures roughly 710 km across (a smaller section is shown here) and plunges some 4.8 km below the surrounding terrain.

The region is rich in features pointing to wet episodes in the history of the Red Planet. Dominating the southern (left) portion of the scene are numerous jumbled blocks – ‘chaotic terrain’, believed to form when the surface collapses in response to melting of subsurface ice and the subsequent sudden release of water.

Towards the center of the image is the smoother floor of Ganges Chasma, comprising mostly alluvial deposits, and which transitions into a steep scarp and a cratered plateau to the north (right).

The northern plateau shares the same elevation as that on the southern side, but does not exhibit similar levels of catastrophic collapse.






However, the cliff tops display small channels and the walls show evidence of slumped material or landslides – best seen in the perspective view. Material closest to the main chasma floor appears stepped, which could reflect different water or ice levels over time.

Another interesting feature can be seen towards the upper center and to the left in the main images, where a pair of faults cuts through a collapsed block, and perhaps extends into the southern plateau at the top of the image.

The faults could be the result of a tectonic event that occurred after the formation of the chaotic terrain, or they could be from simple subsidence.

This region is just a small subsection of a huge system of interconnected valleys and flood channels that emptied water into the northern plains, and which were most likely active in the first 1–2 billion years of Mars’ history.


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 14, 2015)

Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover has captured photos of the first Martian sand dune ever studied.

The rover encountered these dunes on an excursion up a layered mountain. The Martian sand dunes are a part of ‘Bagnold Dunes,' which run along the northwestern side of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater.












The Martian sand dunes are a part of ‘Bagnold Dunes, which run along the northwestern side of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. The images show the rippled surface of the ‘High Dune,’ taken by the Curiosity’s Mast Camera, and have been adjusted slightly to resemble daytime conditions on Earth


Mount Sharp stands about 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall, its lower flanks exposing hundreds of rock layers.

The rock layers – alternating between lake, river and wind deposits -- bear witness to the repeated filling and evaporation of a Martian lake much larger and longer-lasting than any previously examined close-up.






Curiosity currently is investigating the lowest sedimentary layers of Mount Sharp, a section of rock 500 feet (150 meters) high dubbed the Murray formation. 

The Gale Crater once contained lakes that remained for up to 10,000 years at a time - long enough to support life.







Rock formations photographed by the rover suggest that long ago a transient water system of deltas and lakes dominated the landscape.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project uses Curiosity to assess ancient, potentially habitable environments and the significant changes the Martian environment has experienced over millions of years.

This project is one element of NASA's ongoing Mars research and preparation for a human mission to the planet in the 2030s. 

In 2005, the wheels of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity dug more than 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep into the soft, sandy material of a wind-shaped ripple in Mars' Meridiani Planum region during the rover's 446th martian day, or sol (April 26, 2005). 

Getting the rover out of the ripple, dubbed "Purgatory Dune," required more than five weeks of planning, testing, and carefully monitored driving.

Opportunity used its navigation camera to capture this look back at the ripple during sol 491 (June 11, 2005), a week after the rover drove safely onto firmer ground. 

The ripple that became a sand trap is about one-third meter (one foot) tall and 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide. 






A wheel track left by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover exposes underlying material in a shallow sand sheet in this Dec. 2, 2015, view from Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam)


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## PCGamerDR (Dec 14, 2015)

Can i ask where you guys get these pictures? i wanna set some of those as wallpapers


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 14, 2015)

@PCGamerDR
Check my avatar. I have early access.  

Please pm me.

Not really.......all items, pics or quotes come with credits to original artists or authors. If NASA isnt providing them i think its little green people with smart phones.

Check bottom left of pics for credits please in my posts.






NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has drilled a hole into the surface of the planet and is collecting samples of the powdery results for analysis. NBC’s Lester Holt reports.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33102980/ns/technology_and_science-mars_rover?q=Mars Rover


THE BEST PHOTO/WALLPAPER SOURCE   
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html


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## PCGamerDR (Dec 14, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> @PCGamerDR
> Check my avatar. I have early access.
> 
> Please pm me.
> ...



Haha! will do thanks


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 21, 2015)

Not rover pics.




More than a decade ago, Nasa announced the discovery of gullies carved in the surface of Mars, new research suggests these pathways were actually created by blocks of dry ice.







'Martian gully land forms resemble terrestrial debris flows formed by the action of liquid water,' said Dr Cedric Pilorget of Paris-Sud University of France.
'[They] have been interpreted as evidence for potential habitable environments on Mars within the past few millennia,' said Dr Cedric Pilorget of Paris-Sud University of France.
'However, ongoing gully formation has been detected under surface conditions much too cold for liquid water, but at times in the Martian year when a thin layer of seasonal CO2 frost is present and defrosting above the surface.'
Dr Cedric Pilorget and his team used computer simulations of the Martian surface to model the planet's underlying CO2 ice layer and atmosphere.
The models showed that the pores beneath the ice layer can be filled with CO2 ice and subjected to extreme pressure variations during the defrosting season.
'The subsequent gas fluxes can destabilize the surface material and induce gas-lubricated debris flows with geomorphic characteristics similar to Martian gullies,' he said




















In 1888, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced the discovery of a network of narrow lines on Mars, which he described as 'canali,' an Italian word that means 'channels.'

In 1971, observations from the Mariner 9 suggested Mars could have had rivers and oceans in its history, but due to its weak gravity and thin atmosphere the water evaporated.

In the past 15 years, more evidence was sent back from five landers that suggested there was water on Mars.

The Phoenix dug patches of soil in 2008 that consisted of material that disappeared a few days later, suggesting the water vaporized in the soil samples.

Other evidence of subsurface water was confirmed five years, based on the Martian climate changes that allowed water to trickle into the ground.

Back in 2013, the Mars Curiosity rover discovered the extent of H2O present on the surface with two percent of water in every cubic foot of red soil.







*THIS DOESN'T MEAN THERE ISN'T FLOWING WATER ON MARS*






These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks called recurring slope lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. Scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes, corroborating their original hypothesis that the streaks are indeed formed by liquid water.

Water on Mars









Water on Mars










Earlier this year scientists provided the best estimates yet, claiming Mars once had more water than the Arctic Ocean - and the planet kept these oceans for more than 1.5 billion years.

The findings suggest there was ample time and water for life on Mars to thrive, but over the last 3.7 billion years the red planet has lost 87 per cent of its water - leaving it barren and dry.

The study by scientists at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the first to determine just how much water Mars had in its past.

During its wet Noachian period - 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago - it is estimated that it had enough water to cover the entire surface in a liquid layer 450 feet (137 metres) deep.

However, it's likely that most of the water formed an ocean that occupied the northern hemisphere of Mars, which would have been as deep as one mile (1.6km) in places - comparable to the Mediterranean Sea on Earth.

Published in the journal Science, the research estimates that, in total, what is now the planet's arid northern plains would have contained at least 12.4 million cubic miles (20 million cubic kilometres) of water.

'Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,' said Dr Geronimo Villanueva, first author of the paper and a scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center.

'With this work, we can better understand the history of water on Mars.'

It is thought that while 87 per cent of the water has since been lost to space, owing largely to the planet losing its atmosphere, the remaining 13 per cent resides in the ice caps.

But in the past, the ocean would have covered about 20 per cent of the planet's surface area.

The most interesting conclusion, though, is that Mars stayed wet for longer than previously thought, which means it was habitable for longer.

'We now know that Mars was wet for a much longer time than we thought before,' said Dr Michael Mumma, co-author of the study and Senior Scientist at Nasa Goddard.

'Curiosity shows it was wet for 1.5 billion years, already much longer than the period of time needed for life to develop on Earth.

'And now we see that Mars must have been wet for a period even longer.'


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 28, 2015)

Nasa's Curiosity rover celebrated its arrival at the lee face of Namib Dune by taking its first ever coloured self-portrait.

The rover has used the Mastcam colour camera to take thousands of high resolution panoramic images of the red planet, but this is the first image taken of the rover's deck by the sensor.








Andrew Bodrov, a member of the International Virtual Reality Photography Association, stitched together the series of images to create a mosaic that stretches about 30,000 pixels in width and includes 138 images, including the deck of the rover and the seldom seen robotic arm that holds the MAHLI camera.

Curiosity has been using the MAHLI, a camera attached at the end of its robotic arm, to take self-portraits and pictures of the Martian land.

But with its arrival at the lee side of the active sand dune, scientists believe the deck camera is necessary to look for grains of sand that have blown onto the rover from the dune.

Although the self-portrait does not include the rover mast, it does contain the robotic arm that has been missing from previous photos.

I've collaged thumbnails of all of the individual images that include rover hardware, so you can see just how many frames it took to cover the whole thing,' stated Bodrov.

'Near the horizon, it takes 30 individual Mastcam frames to cover the full 360 degrees around the rover; they can use fewer as they go downward in elevation, but it still takes a lot of frames to cover the hemisphere.'

Bodrov noticed the deck was incredibly dusty, but found it fascinating how nonuniformed the dust was distributed.








'The cups that acted as lens caps for the cameras during landing (when the rover mast was folded down to the deck) are fairly uniformly filled with dust,' he explained.

'The front end of the rover is very, very, very dusty.'

'Yet the center of the deck is relatively dust free.'

'It's sort of sad that one of the dustiest spots on the rover is the bit of elevated deck that carries the calibration target for the Mastcams—it's so covered with dust now, I wonder how useful it is.' 






Curiosity's dirty deck (pictured). It landed outside of Namib Dune earlier this month, which is an enormous region of rippled dark sand dunes known as Bagnold Dunes

The plan includes a Mastcam image of the rover deck to monitor the movement of particles,' wrote MSL science team member Lauren Edgar, Research Geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center, in a mission update








While awaiting a decision on whether to cross the dune at Dingo Gap, Curiosity captured a 360-degree view of the dramatic landscape. Near the horizon, it takes 30 individual Mastcam frames to cover the full 360 degrees around the rover; they can use fewer as they go downward in elevation, but it still takes a lot of frames to cover the hemisphere


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## alucasa (Dec 28, 2015)

Provided that there are tools and adequate resources - initially - to build an underground base, is it possible to inhabit underground on Mars?


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Dec 28, 2015)

alucasa said:


> Provided that there are tools and adequate resources - initially - to build an underground base, is it possible to inhabit underground on Mars?




time will tell us that manned missions to mars are unrealistic for the percieved gains......, resources should be aimed at building a manhabitable station on the dark side of the moon.

Much more sensible in my opinion.


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 3, 2016)

Orbiter pics.

Launched Aug. 12, 2005, the MRO spacecraft has been studying the surface of Mars from orbit since March 2006. Its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, run by researchers at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, provides incredibly detailed images of Mars’ varied terrain in visible and near-infrared wavelengths.





This HiRISE observation shows the northwest quadrant of a fracture-filled crater on Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona







Polygonal terrain within and around a polar crater on Mars (monochrome red-filter HiRISE image.)

The entire crater is around 3 miles (5 km) across and its ancient interior has undergone countless millennia of freeze/thaw cycles that have broken the surface into polygonal shapes. This process is common on Mars and can even be found on Earth.


HiRISE is capable of resolving structures on Mars’ surface down to about a meter in size from its location in orbit. The image above was acquired from a distance of 196 miles (314 km). You can see many more images from HiRISE here.


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## broken pixel (Jan 3, 2016)

Life existed on Mars but they farked it up like the humans are farking up the Earth. I predict Earth will be Mars 2.0 in about 10,000 years, maybe sooner. Now humans are trying to get to Mars & terraform it back to life, broadcast reality shows just so they can destroy it again.


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## rtwjunkie (Jan 26, 2016)

broken pixel said:


> Life existed on Mars but they farked it up like the humans are farking up the Earth. I predict Earth will be Mars 2.0 in about 10,000 years, maybe sooner. Now humans are trying to get to Mars & terraform it back to life, broadcast reality shows just so they can destroy it again.



Interesting. Terraforming won't work.  Any atmosphere created will dissipate into space, leaving the same thin atmosphere it holds now.  Mars lost its magnetic field, which is all the Earth has to keep the solar winds from dissipating Earth's atmosphere into space in the same way.

On another note, yesterday was the 12th anniversary of Opportunity Rover!  Happy Birthday to a machine designed to run 90 days. Pretty impressive, not only for its longevity, but also for the wealth of knowledge about Mars we might not have gained otherwise.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ver-still-going-strong-after-12-years-on-mars


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## Drone (Jan 29, 2016)




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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 30, 2016)

The Curiosity Mars rover sends Earth a photo of itself after NASA pieces 57-photo composite together







In August 2015, the rover took a 92-image composite selfie after drilling a rock nicknamed 'Buckskin' in the Marias Pass area.
In June 2014, it snapped a self-portrait to celebrate being on Mars for exactly one full Martian year, which is the equivalent of 687 Earth days.
The latest selfie was released on Friday and is at least the third that Curiosity has sent back to NASA since the rover first landed on Mars in 2012. 
The rover took the picture by the Red Planet's Namib Dune on January 19.
NASA scientists used the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imagers camera, which is at the end of its arm, to take the picture. 
The arm with the Hand Lens is only partly visible because the image is a composite


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## Drone (Jan 31, 2016)

This block of martian terrain, etched with an intricate pattern of landslides and wind-blown dunes, is a small segment of a vast labyrinth of valleys, fractures and plateaus.






The region, known as Noctis Labyrinthus – the “labyrinth of the night” – lies on the western edge of Valles Marineris, the grand canyon of the Solar System. It's part of a complex feature whose origin lies in the swelling of the crust owing to tectonic and volcanic activity in the Tharsis region, home to Olympus Mons and other large volcanoes.






As the crust bulged in the Tharsis province it stretched apart the surrounding terrain, ripping fractures several km deep and leaving blocks stranded within the resulting trenches. *The entire network of fractures spans ~1200 km*.






Landslides are seen in extraordinary detail. Wind has drawn the dust into dune fields that extend up onto the surrounding plateaus. Fault lines crossing each other in different directions suggest many episodes of tectonic stretching in the complex history of this region.


And new image of Opportunity's shadow


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## Drone (Feb 1, 2016)

5 new images


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 2, 2016)

Unusual 'cauliflower' formations on Mars have provided scientists with the latest clues to ancient life on the red planet.







The *Smithsonian *reported on their results, which were announced at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December.







Valles Marineris. The area includes outcrops of opaline silica in which the 'cauliflower' formations have been seen


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## Drone (Feb 3, 2016)

nice video


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2016)

Those were images from HIRISE, Opportunity and Curiosity.

Here's new Curiosity's giant full-circle panorama (looks rather creepy) and same image with labels











View of the downwind face of "Namib Dune" on Mars covers 360 degrees, including a portion of Mount Sharp on the horizon. The site is part of the dark-sand "Bagnold Dunes" field of active dunes.


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## Drone (Feb 12, 2016)

New images from HIRISE, Curiosity, Opportunity


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## Drone (Feb 15, 2016)

new images of landscape and soil


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## Drone (Feb 21, 2016)

New landscape image (HIRISE)






Opportunity






Curiosity











Wind at work (HIRISE)






Wind is one of the most active forces shaping Mars' surface in today's climate. The wind has carved the features we call “yardangs,” one of many in this scene, and deposited sand on the floor of shallow channels between them.

On the sand, the wind forms ripples and small dunes. *In Mars' thin atmosphere, light is not scattered much, so the shadows cast by the yardangs are sharp and dark*.


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2016)

And some new images from HIRISE









Water has left its mark in a variety of ways in this Martian scene captured by ESA's Mars Express.




The region lies on the western rim of an ancient large impact basin, as seen in the context map. The image shows the western part of the Arda Valles, a dendritic drainage system 260 km north of Holden Crater and close to Ladon Valles. Vast volumes of water once flowed from the southern highlands, carving Ladon Valles.


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## Drone (Feb 25, 2016)

*Mars' permanent North Polar* cap is ringed by sand dunes. In the winter and spring the dunes are covered by a seasonal cap of dry ice.







This scene from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity looks upward at "Knudsen Ridge" from the valley below.


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## Drone (Feb 28, 2016)

Hargraves Crater







Other amazing images:


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## Drone (Feb 29, 2016)

NASA's Mars Pathfinder & Sojourner Rover and Curiosity (360 View)

[simply play or pause the videos and then hold and move mouse cursor]


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 29, 2016)

Perhaps i have lived a sheltered life but those ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ are some of the best Y/T vids i have ever seen.


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## Drone (Mar 1, 2016)

Orbiter and rovers are still kicking and sending new images!

















A powerful combination of tectonic activity and strong winds have joined forces to shape the Aeolis Mensae region.
It straddles the transitional region between the southern hemisphere highlands and the smooth, northern hemisphere lowlands.

Several fracture zones cross this region, the result of the Martian crust stretching apart under tectonic stress. As it did so, some pieces of the crust sheared away and became stranded, including the large block in the center of the image.

This flat-topped block, some 40 km across and rising some 2.5 km above the surrounding terrain, is one such remnant of the crust's expansion. Its elevation is the same as the terrain further to the south, supporting the idea that it was once connected.

Over time, the stranded blocks and their associated landslides have been eroded by wind and possibly flowing water.

Towards the north (right) it becomes apparent that wind is the dominant force. Hundreds of sets of ridges and troughs known as ‘yardangs’ are aligned in southeasterly to northwesterly, reflecting the course of the prevailing wind over a long period of time.

One small steep-sided feature set perpendicular to the main direction of the yardangs is prominent in the lower right of the image. This ridge is evidently made of harder and more resistant rock that has allowed it to withstand the erosive power of the wind.


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## Drone (Mar 10, 2016)

*NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, nearing the 10th anniversary* of its arrival at Mars, used its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to obtain this view of an area with unusual texture on the southern floor of Gale Crater.

Congrats!











And new images from Curiosity and Opportunity


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 11, 2016)

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) arrival into Martian orbit







here are some more nice ones

http://mars.nasa.gov/mro/multimedia/images/


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## Drone (Mar 22, 2016)

New Gravity Map Sheds Light On Mars' Mysterious Interiors

































New images from Opportunity and Curiosity


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## copenhagen69 (Mar 24, 2016)

when are we going to build homes out there?


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## Drone (Mar 24, 2016)

At 2200 km wide and up to 9 km deep, the Hellas Basin is the largest impact crater on Mars. This scene, captured on 6 December 2015 by ESA's Mars Express, focuses on a portion of the western rim of the basin. This region spans a height difference of over 6 km, stepping down like a staircase from the basin's fractured, terraced rim to its flat, low-lying floor that is covered in frost or ice. The surface expression of numerous valley-like features can be seen below the icy covering, indicating a flow of material towards the catchment areas on the floor of Hellas.











New images by Opportunity and Curiosity


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## Drone (Apr 2, 2016)

*Wind* is a predominant factor in shaping the Martian geography - something which doesn't quite happen here on Earth.















A new study has concluded that *dust devils* on Mars are likely amplified by the difference in temperature between their shadows and the light shining on them.


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## Drone (Apr 14, 2016)

This image shows a set of coalesced collapse pits in western Valles Marineris.


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## Drone (Apr 27, 2016)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has nearly finished crossing a stretch of the most rugged and difficult-to-navigate terrain encountered during the mission's 44 months on Mars.






The rover climbed onto the "Naukluft Plateau" of lower Mount Sharp in early March after spending several weeks investigating sand dunes. The plateau's sandstone bedrock has been carved by eons of wind erosion into ridges and knobs. The path of about 400 m westward across it is taking Curiosity toward smoother surfaces leading to geological layers of scientific interest farther uphill.






On Naukluft Plateau, the rover's Mast Camera has recorded some panoramic scenes from the highest viewpoints Curiosity has reached since its August 2012 landing on the floor of Gale Crater on Mars.






The scenes show wind-sculpted textures in the sandstone bedrock close to the rover, and Gale Crater's rim rising above the crater floor in the distance. Mount Sharp stands in the middle of the crater, which is ~ 154 km in diameter.






The next part of the rover's route will return to a type of lake-deposited mudstone surface examined previously. Farther ahead on lower Mount Sharp are three geological units that have been key destinations for the mission since its landing site was selected. One of the units contains an iron-oxide mineral called hematite, which was detected from orbit. Just above it lies a band rich in clay minerals, then a series of layers that contain sulfur-bearing minerals called sulfates. By examining them with Curiosity, researchers hope to gain a better understanding of how long ancient environmental conditions remained favorable for microbial life, if it was ever present on Mars, before conditions became drier and less favorable.


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## Deeveo (Apr 27, 2016)

Very nice pics! Seems like one of the wheels on the rover has taken some hits during the journey  But I guess there are no paved roads down there


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## Drone (May 4, 2016)

This image of an impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars was taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 30, 2015. The crater is approximately 1 km wide and appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta. The steep inner slopes are carved by gullies and include possible recurring slope lineae on the equator-facing slopes.






This graphic illustrates where Mars mineral-mapping from orbit has detected minerals that can indicate where a volcano erupted beneath an ice sheet. The site is far from any ice sheet on modern Mars, in an area where unusual shapes have been interpreted as a possible result of volcanism under ice.

When a volcano begins erupting beneath a sheet of ice on Earth, the _rapidly generated steam typically leads to explosions that punch through the ice and propel ash high into the sky_. Characteristic minerals resulting from such subglacial volcanism on Earth include _zeolites, sulfates and clays_. Those are just what the new research has detected at some flat-topped mountains in the Sisyphi Montes on Mars.











New Curiosity and Opportunity images


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## Drone (May 6, 2016)

Lots of Martian goodness for tonight






*Nili Fossae* located on the northwest rim of Isidis impact basin, is one of the most colorful regions of Mars. The colors over many regions of Mars are homogenized by the dust and regolith, but here the bedrock is very well exposed, except where there are sand dunes.






Opportunity rover today






The two linear depressions in this image form part of the *Elysium Fossae* complex, a group of troughs located in the Elysium quadrangle of Mars.






*Melas Chasma* is the widest segment of Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the Solar System. In this region, hydrated sulfate salts have been detected, and are found extensively throughout the canyon. These salt-bearing deposits likely indicate that water was present in the past.


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## Drone (May 21, 2016)

The valley networks on Mars are terrains eroded by flowing water billions of years ago.













Sand dunes cover much of this terrain, which has large boulders lying on flat areas between the dunes.






Spots form where pressurized carbon dioxide gas escapes to the surface.










New images from Curiosity


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jul 9, 2016)

These stunning images were taken in the Hagal Dune field just south of Mars' north polar cap.

According to operators of Hi-RISE, a visible light and near-IR camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a circular depression nearby is the cause of the patterns.

Probably an old and infilled impact crater, it has limited the amount of sand available for dune formation and influenced local winds. 

'As a result, the dunes here form distinct dots and dashes,' the organisation wrote.
















The smaller 'dots' (called 'barchanoid dunes') occur where there is some interruption to the process forming those linear dunes.






the combined effect of winds from two directions at right angles to the dunes, funnels material into a linear shape.


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## Drone (Jul 15, 2016)

new images from Curiosity and Opportunity


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## rhkcommander959 (Jul 15, 2016)

Amazing pictures, spent most of my morning going through pages of them.

This has probably been covered elsewhere, but with the lack of strong atmosphere and dynamo on Mars could the water have just evaporated and been blown away by solar winds? I looked online and saw potential theories along these lines after wondering this myself.


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## Drone (Jul 15, 2016)

rhkcommander959 said:


> ...with the lack of strong atmosphere and dynamo on Mars could the water have just evaporated and been blown away by solar winds? I looked online and saw potential theories along these lines after wondering this myself.



Yes, that's the most popular explanation atm. Martian weak gravity and lack of magnetosphere couldn't protect the planet from solar winds.
But it can be something else. For example, Glyn Collinson made a great discovery when he found that Venus lost its atmosphere because of its own potent electric wind.

Here's what he says:

*Just as every planet has a gravity field, it is believed that every planet with an atmosphere is also surrounded by a weak electric field. While the force of gravity is trying to hold the atmosphere on the planet, the electric force can help to push the upper layers of the atmosphere off into space*.


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## rhkcommander959 (Jul 15, 2016)

Interesting to think about.  I was daydreaming on some far-fetched ideas after seeing all the pictures...

I read up on terraforming Mars, since the planet couldn't support an atmosphere as it is I did some reading. I found some less scholarly theories on how the dwindling magnetic fields could be reactivated - NASA InSight mission found signs that Mars used to have stronger fields than Earth. Most popular ideas were launching asteroids into the planet to drilling into the core and supplanting nuclear fuels to make the core molten again, though how finding that much material is possible is beyond me. The other was that somehow drawing a large body into orbit as a moon would possibly melt the core and stabilize any currents we may ever hope to create.

I think it would be more feasible to use dome-like structures, as is a popular idea. The planet is covered in iron, we could have rovers refine the iron oxides and/ or 3D print/weld structures.

Fun to think about, I'll just stick to KSP . Either way, I hope I'm alive long enough to see manned missions, and I hope they do more than they did with the moon.


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## Drone (Jul 31, 2016)

New images from all missions (HIRISE, Curiosity, Opportunity)





















They're watching us


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## PopcornMachine (Aug 2, 2016)

It looks a roosting bird, but it's just a rock


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## Caring1 (Aug 3, 2016)

It's a scene from Star Wars, one of the sand people.


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## Drone (Aug 4, 2016)

Curiosity











HIRISE






These sand dunes are a type of aeolian bedform and partly encircle the Martian North Pole in a region called *Olympia Undae*. Unlike most of the sand dunes on Mars that are made of the volcanic rock basalt, these are made of a type of sulfate mineral called gypsum.






Region of *Xanthe Terra*


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## Drone (Aug 20, 2016)

7 MARS Mysteries










NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover at Murray Buttes (360 View)


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## Drone (Aug 26, 2016)

Fossilised rivers suggest warm, wet ancient Mars











Becquerel Crater, located in Arabia Terra






Top 10










New images from Curiosity














Top 5


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## Drone (Aug 28, 2016)

New image from HIRISE:







At the edge of Mars’ permanent North Polar cap, we see an exposure of the internal layers, each with a different mix of water ice, dust and dirt. These layers are believed to correspond to different climate conditions over the past tens of thousands of years. When we zoom in closer, we see that the distinct layers erode differently. Some are stronger and more resistant to erosion, others only weakly cemented. The strong layers form ledges.

New images from Curiosity:













25 facts


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## Drone (Sep 11, 2016)

Latest discoveries by Los Alamos National Lab




























Latest mind-blowing pictures by HIRISE team:






*Mawrth Vallis*






*Lethe Vallis*, an outflow channel that transported lava






*Kaiser Crater* hosts a large field of sand dunes. *Every winter the dunes are covered with a layer of seasonal dry ice*. In early spring the ice begins to sublimate.


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## Drone (Sep 13, 2016)

NASA released new Martian images taken by Curiosity and Opportunity rovers.





















Lol it's like entire Mars is made of sandstone


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## Drone (Sep 18, 2016)

New images from Curiosity and Opportunity


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## Drone (Oct 3, 2016)

This image from Curiosity's Mast Camera shows inclined strata at Zabriskie Plateau, about 0.5 km northeast of the 'Pahrump Hills' outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp, the central peak within the Gale Crater on Mars. These sedimentary rocks are inclined toward the south and are also interpreted as the deposits of small deltas building out into a lake.






This September 2016 self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Quela" drilling location in the scenic "Murray Buttes" area on lower Mount Sharp. The panorama was stitched together from multiple images taken by the MAHLI camera at the end of the rover's arm.






This 360-degree panorama was acquired on Sept. 4, 2016, by the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover while the rover was in a scenic area called "Murray Buttes" on lower Mount Sharp.



















Aug. 18, 2016, view of Mars' "Murray Buttes" region






The top of the butte in this Sept. 1, 2016 scene






This graphic maps locations of the sites where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover collected its first 18 rock or soil samples for laboratory analysis inside the vehicle.






This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in September 2016 at "Murray Buttes," and the path planned for reaching destinations at "Hematite Unit" and "Clay Unit" on lower Mount Sharp.






Chemistry that takes place in the Martian surface material can explain why particular xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr) isotopes are more abundant in the planet's atmosphere than expected.


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## Drone (Oct 6, 2016)

This image shows a transition from depressed to inverted channels in the Gorgonum Basin.






Tharsis region of Mars is covered in vast lava flows, many with channels. Some channels, however, resemble features that may have been formed by water.


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## micropage7 (Dec 27, 2016)

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is studying its surroundings and monitoring the environment, rather than driving or using its arm for science, while the rover team diagnoses an issue with a motor that moves the rover's drill.

Curiosity is at a site on lower Mount Sharp selected for what would be the mission's seventh sample-collection drilling of 2016. The rover team learned Dec. 1 that Curiosity did not complete the commands for drilling. The rover detected a fault in an early step in which the "drill feed" mechanism did not extend the drill to touch the rock target with the bit.

"We are in the process of defining a set of diagnostic tests to carefully assess the drill feed mechanism. We are using our test rover here on Earth to try out these tests before we run them on Mars," Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Steven Lee, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said Monday. "To be cautious, until we run the tests on Curiosity, we want to restrict any dynamic changes that could affect the diagnosis. That means not moving the arm and not driving, which could shake it."



Two among the set of possible causes being assessed are that a brake on the drill feed mechanism did not disengage fully or that an electronic encoder for the mechanism's motor did not function as expected. Lee said that workarounds may exist for both of those scenarios, but the first step is to identify why the motor did not operate properly last week.

The drill feed mechanism pushes the front of the drill outward from the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The drill collects powdered rock that is analyzed by laboratory instruments inside the rover. While arm movements and driving are on hold, the rover is using cameras and a spectrometer on its mast, and a suite of environmental monitoring capabilities.

At the rover's current location, it has driven 9.33 miles (15.01 kilometers) since landing inside Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012. That includes more than half a mile (more than 840 meters) since departing a cluster of scenic mesas and buttes -- called "Murray Buttes" -- in September 2016. Curiosity has climbed 541 feet (165 meters) in elevation since landing, including 144 feet (44 meters) since departing Murray Buttes.

The rover is climbing to sequentially higher and younger layers of lower Mount Sharp to investigate how the region's ancient climate changed, billions of years ago. Clues about environmental conditions are recorded in the rock layers. During its first year on Mars, the mission succeeded at its main goal by finding that the region once offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, if Mars has ever hosted life. The conditions in long-lived ancient freshwater Martian lake environments included all of the key chemical elements needed for life as we know it, plus a chemical source of energy that is used by many microbes on Earth.

Curiosity's drill, as used at all 15 of the rock targets drilled so far, combines hammering action and rotating-bit action to penetrate the targets and collect sample material. The drilling attempt last week was planned as the mission's first using a non-percussion drilling method that relies only on the drill's rotary action. Short-circuiting in the percussion mechanism has occurred intermittently and unpredictably several times since first seen in February 2015.

"We still have percussion available, but we would like to be cautious and use it for targets where we really need it, and otherwise use rotary-only where that can give us a sample," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada at JPL.




https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/curiosity-rover-team-examining-new-drill-hiatus


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## micropage7 (Dec 27, 2016)

*it's a news but too bad*

*Mars rover’s drill out of action*

The rock-coring drill fixed to the end of the Curiosity rover’s robot arm has suspended operations to allow engineers on the ground to diagnose, and officials hope correct, a problem traced to the mechanism that pushes the drill bit onto rocks to collect powder samples.

Rover controllers based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, first encountered the issue Dec. 1 when Curiosity was unable to complete a planned drilling on the lower flank of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high (5-kilometer) mountain the robot is climbing to study how the environment evolved on ancient Mars.

Managers decided to keep the six-wheeled rover in its current position — prohibiting driving and use of its robotic arm — until experts can determine the cause of the problem.

Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist at JPL, said the ground team believes the issue has been traced to a brake on the drill feed mechanism, which is supposed to extend and place the drill bit on the surface of the rock targeted for drilling.

“You press against the surface to keep the drill in place, and then a mechanism moves the actual drill up and down to do the drilling,” Vasavada said in a press conference Dec. 13 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “That’s called the drill feed. That mechanism exhibited a stall … and since then we’ve been running activities on the rover to diagnose that issue.”

Engineers originally thought the problem might be rooted in an encoder associated with electrical sensors that tell the rover’s computer how the drill is functioning. Vasavada said the problem apparently is with the brake, which is “very much internal to the motor itself.”

Vasavada said Curiosity’s team had “partial success” in unstalling the drill feed, but now the problem is recurring.

“It went away and we were very excited, but then it unfortunately has returned again in just the last day or so,” Vasavada told reporters last week. “We’re in the process of still figuring out how to go recover the operation of that drill feed.”





Curiosity’s drill works by boring into rock targets with a combination of a percussive, hammering motion and the rotation of the drill bit. Rock powder excavated by the drill goes into a collection chamber, where the material is sifted and sieved for delivery to miniature laboratory instruments on the rover’s science deck.

The target selected for drilling more than two weeks ago was to be the 16th rock drilled by the rover since it landed on Mars in August 2012. It would have been the seventh drilling operation of 2016, according to NASA.

Ground controllers programmed the drill to only use its rotating mechanism on the latest sampling attempt. The percussive mechanism that chisels into rock has had an intermittent electrical short since early 2015, and while that function is still available, officials prefer to avoid using it unless necessary.

“We still have percussion available, but we would like to be cautious and use it for targets where we really need it, and otherwise use rotary-only where that can give us a sample,” Vasavada said in a press release.

Rock samples collected by the drill feed two of Curiosity’s main science instruments — the Sample Analysis at Mars payload and the Chemistry and Mineralogy package — to look for organic materials and measure mineral content.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/12/18/mars-rovers-drill-out-of-action/


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## micropage7 (Jan 14, 2017)

*Sols 1579-1582: A 4-sol plan*






After a 25-meter drive on Sol 1578, MSL is surrounded by more dark sand than usual, but there is enough rock exposed that we had a lot of science targets to choose from today.  Due to the US holiday on Monday, we are planning 4 sols today.  The first sol will include only REMS atmospheric observations while the rover recharges after the SAM methane measurement the night before, but the rest of the plan is packed!  Sol 1580 starts with ChemCam passive (no laser) measurements of the sky and calibration targets.  Then we'll use the laser to zap rock targets "Oak Bay" and "Rockport" and take Right Mastcam images of them.  Mastcam will also acquire a mosaic of bedrock exposures just west of the rover, measure dust in the atmosphere, and take another image of the rover deck.  Later that afternoon, ChemCam and Right Mastcam will observe disturbed sand at "Kennebec," an undisturbed ripple called "Spruce Top," and bedrock targets named "Traveler" and "Mars Hill."  Right Mastcam will also acquire a 3x1 mosaic of a more distant outcrop dubbed "Ogler Point."  

Sol 1581 is dominated by contact science, starting with full suite of MAHLI images of Mars Hill.  MAHLI will also take close-up images of nearby "Camera Hill" and acquire a 3-image mosaic of the layered outcrop target "Small Falls."  The APXS will be placed on Camera Hill for a short integration, then on Mars Hill for an overnight integration.  

On Sol 1582, Navcam will search for clouds and dust devils before the rover drives away.  After the drive, AEGIS will again be used to autonomously select a ChemCam target and acquire data, and MARDI will take another image during twilight.  Finally, the rover will get some well-earned rest overnight.

http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/mars-rover-curiosity-mission-updates/


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Jan 29, 2017)

The Curiosity rover has spotted a peculiar rock on the red planet that could be a rare iron-nickel meteorite.

A raw image shared on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory site reveals an unusual, dimpled grey rock with a metallic luster laying on the ground in the Mount Sharp region of Mars.
http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/


If confirmed as a meteorite, the object would be the third Curiosity has discovered since it began its mission over four years ago.







Among the telling signs that this could be a meteorite are the ‘dimples’ speckling the strange rock, Universe Today explains.

These could be regmaglypts – indentations created as the object plunges through a planet’s atmosphere, stripping it of some of its minerals.

Curiosity captured the image on January 12 at 11:21 UT using the colour mast camera, but shiny spots on the rock’s surface suggest it also used its ChemCam laser to investigate the object.

In this process, the rover fires a laser at the rock to vaporize part of its surface, allowing its spectrometer to analyze the resulting plasma cloud, Universe Today explains.

And, the shimmer seen in the image also supports the idea that the rock is made of iron-nickel.


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## Drone (Mar 21, 2017)

A FICTIVE FLIGHT ABOVE REAL MARS






Buzz Aldrin: Cycling Pathways To Mars


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## Ahhzz (Mar 22, 2017)

Broked....
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-mars-rover-wheel.html

"_A routine check of the aluminum wheels on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has found two small breaks on the rover's left middle wheel—the latest sign of wear and tear as the rover continues its journey, now approaching the 10-mile (16 kilometer) mark."_


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jul 16, 2017)

@Drone not sure if this was posted. Here is a HD landing of Curiosity @30 FPS


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## Drone (Nov 29, 2017)

NASA Begins Building Next Mars Rover Mission


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## Drone (Dec 8, 2017)

new 360° video!


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## Drone (Jan 30, 2018)

New video


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## Super XP (Jan 30, 2018)

Mars has great potential. These images look like Earth. NICE.


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## Drone (May 24, 2018)




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## micropage7 (May 29, 2018)

*Sol 2063-2066: Sample drop-off testing*






Some of the Duluth drill sample was dropped into CheMin on Sol 2061, but not enough for a proper mineralogical analysis. So the top priority for today's plan is to again test the new drop-off procedure. Since the drill feed mechanism became unreliable over a year ago, drill samples can no longer be sieved and processed in CHIMRA, as they were earlier in the mission. Instead, portions of the sample must be dropped from the tip of the drill directly into the analytical instruments. This new Feed-Extended Sample Transfer (FEST) procedure will be repeated on Sol 2064, over bedrock and over the closed SAM inlet cover. Mastcam images will be taken both before and after the drop-off in both locations, to allow the size of the sample portion to be estimated. The results of these tests will be used to inform future drop-off planning. 

We're planning 4 sols today so that the tactical operations team can take a day off for the Memorial Day holiday. More change detection observations are scattered throughout the plan, with Right Mastcam images of dark sand ripples at "Noodle Lake" and the Duluth drill tailings on Sol 2063 at 11:00, 15:00 and 17:00, on Sol 2064 at 7:00 and noon, and on Sol 2065 at 7:00, ~11:00, noon, and 15:00. The goal of these observations is to constrain the frequency of wind gusts that are strong enough to move loose material. The Rover Planners also requested multiple Right Mastcam images of the sample drop-off location on nearby bedrock for the same purpose; these are scheduled in the afternoons of Sols 2063, 2065, and 2066. ChemCam will also be busy this weekend, measuring the chemistry of a bumpy bedrock target named "Brule Mountain" and layered bedrock targets "Devil Track" and "Devilfish Tower" on Sol 2063. The latter two targets will be captured in a single Right Mastcam image soon afterward. On Sol 2064, ChemCam will observe some pebbles dubbed "Paupores" and Right Mastcam will acquire a single image covering both Brule Mountain and Paupores. Early on Sol 2065, Mastcam and Navcam will measure the amount of dust in the atmosphere, and Navcam will search for clouds. Later that morning, Right Mastcam will take a picture of a nearby bedrock block dubbed "Deerwood." In the afternoon, Mastcam will image the Sun and sky to measure the scattering properties and size distribution of dust in the atmosphere over Gale Crater, with supporting Navcam imaging. 

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/mars-rover-curiosity-mission-updates/

just found something that interesting




A selfie on Mars, taken by NASA's Mars rover, Curiosity, on January 23, 2018, or Sol 1943, using its Mars Hand Lens Imager. Image stitched together from a series of panoramic images; sky artificially extended 





Two sizes of wind-sculpted ripples are evident in this view of the top surface of a Martian sand dune. Sand dunes and the smaller type of ripples also exist on Earth. The larger ripples—roughly 10 feet (three meters) apart—are a type not seen on Earth nor previously recognized as a distinct type on Mars. The mast camera (mastcam) on NASA's Curiosity rover took the multiple component images of this scene on December 13, 2015, during the 1,192nd Martian day of the rover's work on Mars.The location is part of Namib Dune in the Bagnold Dune Field, which forms a dark band along the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp 





This image was taken by Curiosity's mastcam on Sol 1648, or March 26, 2017 





Curiosity pauses at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called "Buckskin" on lower Mount Sharp in this low-angle self-portrait taken August 5, 2015, and released August 19, 2015. The selfie combines several component images taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 1,065th Martian day of the rover's work on Mars 





Curiosity recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day, on April 15, 2015, from the rover's location in Gale Crater, Mars. 





On September 9, 2012, when it was just starting out, a close view of two of the left wheels of Curiosity. In the distance is the lower slope of Mount Sharp 





Years later, on April 18, 2016, NASA used the MAHLI camera to check the condition of the wheels once again. This image of Curiosity's left-middle and left-rear wheels is part of an inspection set taken during Sol 1,315. Holes and tears in the wheels worsened significantly during 2013 as Curiosity was crossing terrain studded with sharp rocks on its route near its 2012 landing site to the base of Mount Sharp. Team members are keeping a close eye for when any of the zig-zag-shaped treads, call grousers, begin to break. Longevity testing with identical wheels on Earth indicates that when three grousers on a given wheel have broken, that wheel has reached about 60 percent of its useful mileage. Curiosity's six aluminum wheels are about 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. Each of the six wheels has its own drive motor, and the four corner wheels also have steering motors 



https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/01/2000-days-on-mars-with-the-curiosity-rover/551984/


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