NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl

http://earthsky.org/space/view-lives...anding-tonight

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

They did it...a bunch of happy folks....and i saw Dave in the back ground

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

...so now he has ANOTHER car on Mars? (Is his first one still going?)

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Hello...Yes one of them is still going....Opportunity is still going after
8 years....Sadly Spirit stopped working in 2010 after 6 years. They were
designed to only last 90 days. Needless to say i think they exceeded that.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Well the first one was more of a matchbox car, this one is literally a car lol 900+ kg in size.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

His first one was Sojourner all the way back in 1997. It ran for about three months.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

This was my sixth Mars landing, fourth one with wheels.

And this was definitely the best one yet. :)

-dave



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Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Yep... I saw you in the background of the JPL control room. I was watching it with a bunch of friends while working on some engineering homework.

Since I worked for NASA before, they asked "Hey, do you know any of those guys." and I said, "Actually yea, I do." and I pointed you out.

Congratulations to all those involved. As a senior in computer engineering, I'm just beginning to understand the millions of man hours probably involved (spread over everyone of course) in this project.

By far the coolest thing was the skycrane. I couldn't even begin to imagine the person trying to pitch this idea.

It's one of those off the wall ideas where you chuckle at the person pitching the idea, but then once you think about it, it makes sense. Very cool to see this idea actually work (and quite impressively at that).

But yea, congratulations to all of those involved. It's quite an accomplishment for man kind. Why anyone would want to cut NASA's budget is beyond me. The work NASA does it out of this world (pun intended).

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Congrats Dave. Watching the tension in that room and then the joyous celebration was amazing (although work today will be rough.)

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I got up to watch at 1 AM. Congrats to your team on a pretty amazing autonomous programming cycle. I've never see a room full of engineers be so excited about a picture of a wheel :rolleyes:

Looking forward to seeing the first color shots later this week.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I've pitched and received crazy ideas in that mode before. "It'd be so easy if we could just lower the thing onto the surface from a crane. Hey..."

However, don't forget that sheer exasperation is the nagging grandmother of some inventions. In which case, the origination would've been more like:
A: I'm thinking we need a powered descent.
B: I'm just concerned about what that'll do to the landing site.
(Hour of back and forth
A: Look, the only way we're getting something this heavy to the ground is with a powered descent and landing.
B: A powered landing is going to bury us under a foot of Mars dust. Which I'm sending YOU to shovel off the rover.
A: Fine! We'll just drop the thing from orbit on cables so you don't have to worry about any scaaaary exhaust plumes disturbing your precious dust. Erm. Hold on a second...

Or, atleast, that's the movie script or FRC design session version of things in my head at the moment. I'll grant that the real process was likely a bit more staid and drawn out than all that. Thankfully, NASA has a bit more than 2 hours or 6 weeks to solve these little problems.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

How cool would it be to get the real story about how that idea formed.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Congratulations to you and your team, Dave. Watching mission control burst out in excitement on the rover's landing is one of the most inspiring things I have ever seen. Here's to the success of Curiosity and many more missions to come.

Thank you,
Tom

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Congratulations on turning 7 Minutes of Terror into 7 Minutes of Accomplish Mighty Things!
Makes me proud to be a human.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Nothing could be closer to the truth!

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

How cool! It was so exciting to see the pictures come back. I hope I can do something as awesome as Curiosity when I'm older..

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

For my senior design project we're making a blimp for autonomously navigation and mapping a building for use in emergency situations where human lives are at stake.

I guess that's a starting point, right?

This years design team is moving from a quad rotor to the blimp. It was a weird idea pitched to me which I don't initially like, but then I started to think of the air drafts in a building with non-consistent ground, or even buildings with doorways [SARCASM] and good thing those don't exist very much [/SARCASM] which create weird air drafts that make to UAV unstable. Plus the 12 minute battery life is abmyssal.

The blimp gets rid of the air draft problems, and we have much longer battery life.

It'll be cool to see the end result I this project. I just hope the rest of the team is ready to work at the pace I'm accostomed to with FIRST.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Time to start a used rover lot up there. Dave's Mars Cars maybe?

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Mazel Tov Dave and the Curiosity Team

from your friends at SSC

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I think a mechanic's shop would be better. Then Dave could have them install heated seats, a sunroof, and refurbish the old rover's so they don't need to send any more new ones!

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I don't even know how you would be able to figure out the best one but that would be an awesome problem to have.

Congratulations to all of you, Dave!

Jane

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Yeah! In your FACE, Great Galactic Ghoul!

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

It was the peanuts.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

"Is it time to open the peanuts?"
"You are go to break out the peanuts."
"Copy that."

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I got the chance to fly out to JPL and "attend" the landing. It was an AWESOME trip. Good to be there with good friends, watching history unfold.

I summarized my experience here:
http://blog.iamjvn.com/2012/08/curiosity-part-1.html
http://blog.iamjvn.com/2012/08/curiosity-part-2.html

Big congratulations to Dave Lavery, and everyone else at NASA on a successful landing. It was great to be there at JPL experiencing the energy of the event.

I hope everyone else had the same profound experience I did!

-John
#daremightythings

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Was this your first lunch ever?

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

I missed the lunch. I've still never been to one. ;)

-John

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Pretty jealous of anyone who was at JPL to share this excitement in person.

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Not gonna lie - as soon as the rover touched down, and everyone in JPL was standing up and cheering, I cried a little. This is what we really need, and I'm so happy that it happened the way it did. It's no moon landing of '69, but I'm sure the Curiosity landing of '12 will cause a similarly large spike in the interested of science and technology, something we've really needed for a long time.



I love NASA....

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Agreed... NASA's timing was off by 12 hours though - it would have been really amazing to have the landing happen in the middle of the day so millions of students across the nation could watch it live!

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

Pics from Curiosity so far






Hi-res ones to come

Panoramas from previous rovers

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimed..._half-size.jpg

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA05049.jpg

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/MarsPanoramaa.jpg

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

Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

It did happen in the middle of the day, or near enough anyway. Curiosity landed at right about 3:00pm LMST*.

-dave

* Local Mars Solar Time :)



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Re: NASA livestream - 'Curiosity' rover will touch down on Mars @ 10:31 PST
 

That kind of just made my day.

Anyways congrats on the successful landing, hopefully I have a cool job like that someday.