Curiosity? Nasa?! MARTIANS!!

[Bells]

Curiosity Closes in on its New 'Home'
Sat, 04 Aug 2012 08:20:24 PM GMT-0300

With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon, as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion system. As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).

I love how Nasa calls the final landing procedure the "7 Minutes of Terror" (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/uploads/infographics/10776.jpg)


So yeah! pretty exciting stuff, the best we have right now is about to land on mars and on the upcoming months we could learn a lot about nothing or nothing about a lot!

As of this post we're 3 hours away from the landing and about a first a week away from the first results, this is somewhat akin of landing on the moon actually, which is pretty cool. Except is not (yet) putting people up there.

But hey, maybe in our lifetime?

[phil_]

As of this post we're 3 hours away from the landingFour, sir.

I may or may not stay up and watch, depending on how the beer holds out. I'll be watching it here, on NASA's website. (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/nasatv/) Pregame apparently begins at 11:30pm EDT, or 0330GMT, or an hour-and-a-half after this post righ'chere, whichever is easiest to understand.

[Bells]

i don't know if people will be around, but that's totally something we could put a chat up for

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Would be pretty cool to see Mars up close. X3

[Aerozord]

I just want to know if these will be color images.


But hey, maybe in our lifetime?

I doubt we will ever go to mars. There is no profit in it (or atleast not enough to justify the risk) and those of us that feel "SCREW THAT ITS MARS" dont have that kind of money.

[Flarecobra]

http://news.yahoo.com/abc-news-live-stream-coverage-20120309.html They're streaming the landing.

And I do beleve we will go to Mars. With it's smaller gravity, it can be a great place for manufacture.

[Doc ock rokc]

Welp Lets just see where Curiosity will take us.

[Flarecobra]

And a textbook landing.

[Bells]

TOUCHDOWN!!!

We have landing, and a 50 billion RC card on Mars, Way to go NASA! This is awesome.

[phil_]

Thirding that we've totally given the Martians a functioning nuclear reactor. Footage of the decent should be online tomorrow. Kinda annoyed that my link ended up being useless; luckily there are bloggers on the inside.

[Bells]

Just go with the Nasa official Feed, is live and quite good

[Whomper]

Curiosity sticks the landing to a wild ovation! NASA has won Gold in the 563 billion meters!

[Aerozord]

And I do beleve we will go to Mars. With it's smaller gravity, it can be a great place for manufacture.

moon is closer with an even lower gravity.

[Flarecobra]

Yep, but one has to keep in mind the floatiness factor. Plus with Mars having all that iron oxide... which can potentally be refined...

[Ecks]

don't forget the polar ice caps, we wont have to ship water there

[Flarecobra]

Not to mention people who just want to live there, so they can call themselves Martians.

[Magus]

Not to mention the dystopian nightmare that is Total Recall.

[Bells]

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/673770main_PIA15982-43_800-600.jpg

This is the first "Highish" quality picture of the landing site, using the Hazard Cams, so it's angled down and B/W. The High Def color pictures should come in the next days.... probably takes a long time to upload a high quality picture from Mars...

What i thought was funny was this tweet

MarsCuriosity @scarlet_leather I'll be able to take self portraits with MAHLI. It's out on the end of my arm and I can turn it to face me

...So many Facebook Photo jokes...

BTW, Twitter feed at @MarsCuriosity

[Solid Snake]

Awesome Video.
The music really makes it.
So does the holy shit crazy magic science (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s&)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Not to mention the dystopian nightmare that is Total Recall.

Wait what. Mars was full of hookers and robotcabs to take you to the hookers. How is that dystopian.

[akaSM]

Yep, but one has to keep in mind the floatiness factor. Plus with Mars having all that iron oxide... which can potentally be refined...

OH MY GOD, you're right.

We'll have Mars hats soon!

[Shyria Dracnoir]

http://theplastichippo.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/alien.jpg

I dunno, aka, while "exposed brain" does make a distinctive fashion statement, it looks itchy.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

I'm hoping we'll be able to make first contact soon. Maybe once we pass the language barrier.

KTc3PsW5ghQ

[Aerozord]

so we get any color images?

[Bells]

First 360 panorama

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/675227main_pia16029-full_full.jpg

and a really nice one

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/675358main_pia16032-full_full.jpg

[Aerozord]

you know, it doesn't look all that alien even. Like if you showed me this out of context I'd probably just go "wow thats one heck of an overcast"

[Aerozord]

oh and I mean that as a good thing not a dig at it. Not saying "oh, thats it" I'm saying "yea, I could totally see terraforming this place"

[Flarecobra]

Looks a hell of a lot like some of the desert areas in Iraq.

[Whomper]

Yeah, it definitely doesn't seem so red once you get up-close and personal. I'm lovin' this stuff.

[Solid Snake]

Sign me up to terraform this hunk of rock. I've got little better to do.

[Bells]

I'm not well versed into the Atmosphere of Mars... is that in the Horizon there a dust cloud or there is actually something that makes the sky look blue-ish?

[Magus]

I'm not well versed into the Atmosphere of Mars... is that in the Horizon there a dust cloud or there is actually something that makes the sky look blue-ish?

Eh, isn't it's atmosphere pretty similar to ours, just without enough oxygen and thinner or whatever?

Looks a hell of a lot like some of the desert areas in Iraq.

Conspiracy theorists would probably have you believe that actually is Iraq.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah, it definitely doesn't seem so red once you get up-close and personal. I'm lovin' this stuff.

That's because a lot of photos of Mars are doctored to make it look redder, because people assume that the red planet should be, well, red. It really is just a dusky orange though.

Eh, isn't it's atmosphere pretty similar to ours, just without enough oxygen and thinner or whatever?


Eh, not really. Earths atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and the rest being a mix of all other gasses. Mars is like 90% carbon dioxide with small amounts (though much larger than earth) of argon, with nitrogen and oxygen being almost trace elements.

Then there's the fact it's thinner, has no magnetoshere and has about 1/3 the gravity.

Yeah, Mars ain't such a nice place to live.

[Aerozord]

Eh, not really. Earths atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen and the rest being a mix of all other gasses. Mars is like 90% carbon dioxide with small amounts (though much larger than earth) of argon, with nitrogen and oxygen being almost trace elements.

Then there's the fact it's thinner, has no magnetoshere and has about 1/3 the gravity.

Yeah, Mars ain't such a nice place to live.

theory is if we fill enough oxygen to equal pressure of the earth it would also make the ratio suitable for humans. Not actually earthlike though, they want tons of CO2 for a green-house effect just keeping it low enough it doesn't kill us.

I dont know if lack of magnetosphere is as much of an issue because its much further from the sun. I can see things like cronal mass ejections being a bigger deal. Aurora Borialus is the magnetospheres way of reminding you its the main reason your power grid doesn't explode.

Even a fully terraformed mars wouldn't be the best place to live but hey with nanotech, cybernetics and genetic engineering in 100 years you might not care.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It'll be alright once we find the ancient martian atmosphere making-machine.

[Magus]

Yeah but the handprint will only have three fingers and we'll all sit around dumbfounded for a hundred years, our best scientific minds intellectually tortured day and night, haunted by their inability to figure out how to adapt our own hands to this sophisticated alien design.

It'll basically be like this: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154728/running-some-tests

[Aerozord]

are we sure there is enough water there to be of much use to us though? Last time I checked (which was admittedly almost a decade ago) the "ice caps" were found to actually be frozen CO2 and they couldn't confirm another source of water.

[Whomper]

Yeah, people seem to be conveniently forgetting the "oh crap, we need water to live?" part of this equation.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I like to imagine it would be like Dune.

[Flarecobra]

Hence my comparison to a desert. Though there are some theories that say that it can have water underground.

[Aerozord]

know what I realized is the big issue with mars? Lack of hydrogen. If we had that we could just convert the CO2 into oxygen then just mix that with hydrogen to get water. Would also solve the lack of fuel on the planet

[Bells]

That's why they want to verify if Mars ever had water or if it has/had any ice now or ever.

That would be the "long shot holy grail"

[Mr.Bookworm]

are we sure there is enough water there to be of much use to us though? Last time I checked (which was admittedly almost a decade ago) the "ice caps" were found to actually be frozen CO2 and they couldn't confirm another source of water.

There's quite a bit of water on Mars, I don't know why people are acting like this isn't something we already know. Back in 2009, for instance, they estimated that the ice in the northern cap is equal to about 1/3 of the Greenland ice sheet. (http://onorbit.com/node/1524) So there's (very roughly) around 227,917 cubic miles of ice in the north ice cap alone.

know what I realized is the big issue with mars? Lack of hydrogen. If we had that we could just convert the CO2 into oxygen then just mix that with hydrogen to get water. Would also solve the lack of fuel on the planet

Ignoring the issue of how breaking apart C02 is actually fairly tricky, we can do this.

However, if your chemistry teacher back in high school ever performed this experiment, you might know what you need to combine the two (you can't stick atoms in a jar, shake it, and get a molecule).

Spoiler alert: It's fire.

http://www.otr.com/images/otrphotos/hindenburg1.jpg

[Aerozord]

There's quite a bit of water on Mars, I don't know why people are acting like this isn't something we already know.

cause I said last time I checked was over a decade ago, which was before 2009

Ignoring the issue of how breaking apart C02 is actually fairly tricky, we can do this.yea but its possible, I'm thinking long term here, small amounts over centuries

However, if your chemistry teacher back in high school ever performed this experiment, you might know what you need to combine the two (you can't stick atoms in a jar, shake it, and get a molecule).

Spoiler alert: It's fire.so?

Really I mean yea you get heat and water vapor. Granted its more violent then burning fossil fuels but we can even take that energy and use it to help power splitting CO2 molecules since that is an endothermic reaction

[stefan]

are we sure there is enough water there to be of much use to us though? Last time I checked (which was admittedly almost a decade ago) the "ice caps" were found to actually be frozen CO2 and they couldn't confirm another source of water.

This is incorrect. The last few probes and rovers directly sampled some of the ice and its confirmed to be water, and in fact the southern cap alone has enough ice that if you melted it down it would cover the entire surface with water with a depth of 30 feet.

What you're probably remembering is the discovery that the caps have a topcoating of frozen Co2, as during the martian winter it gets so cold that the atmospheric co2 literally freezes onto the surface.

The problem isn't getting water there, its getting it into a usable form; almost all of it is ice, and Mars' atmosphere is so thin that liquid water evaporates or freezes after a short time.

[RobinStarwing]

Slightly related but (at least to me) funny pic.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8bkbjOYCX1qfs78no1_500.png

Second, I think it would actually be easier to live under the surface of Mars. But then we open up the whole line of finding out if Mars is a gateway to Hell and then one of us has to take on the Legion with a chainsaw.