One major thesis of MSL/Curiosity is that sample return missions are hard. Taking a jaunt over to Mars, collecting samples from various locations, then shipping them all back to Earth is not something we can accomplish right now - so Curiosity has been designed as the next best thing.
Take a look at the instruments section of that Wikipedia article. Curiosity is crammed with every sensor and analysis tool they could possibly fit.
I have Flash handy, so I just utilized the Resources tab in Chrome's Web Inspector to see the video resource Flash was actually streaming.
This approach works for a large percentage of CDN-based streaming video, which rarely has any unique authentication (as sharing any kind of per-user state with the CDN edges would be quite difficult).
Interesting, I tried doing the same thing and couldn't since it was getting it over rtmp from another cdn, which was how i found mine. Apparently NASA has more CDNs for video than others that i've run into.
If they pull this off I will be thoroughly impressed.
I keep googling to try to find where they tested the landing system altogether as a unit and there doesn't appear to be such an event, only individual components.
Can you imagine designing and testing the individual parts of a car, then assembling it and never testing the car as a whole unit and just hoping based on theory it works?
Is there anything left to be done by NASA HQ? For example, are they still controlling the trajectory of the probe to Mars or is that mostly done by probe's onboard computers?
I'm genuinely curious about what kind of things the HQ is doing right now. I've been watching the live stream and there's not much activity besides milling around screens and resizing windows on the huge screen.
"Mission control contemplated sending Curiosity one last "parameter update" on Sunday, hours before atmospheric entry, giving the vessel an exact fix on its position in space. But NASA engineers said they would likely forego that transmission because the vessel has varied so little from its ideal course.
Otherwise, controllers will have little to do but anxiously track Curiosity's progress as it flies into Mars' upper atmosphere..."
it is said, that 08:23:00 PM was the last time at which they could change the trajectory 'manually.' (So I assume, that they have just very good seats to watch the show in the HQ )
Plenty to do, since monitoring and understanding all of the incoming data is most of what operations is, but in this case, no commands were sent while the stream was live.
Take a moment to consider what you're actually seeing here: a truly historic event.
This mission is so expensive, and has involved the figurative blood and tears of so many extremely talented people, that it will probably always be remembered in the history of space travel, whether or not the landing itself will be successful.
(It could be argued that the value of having so many millions of people watch or follow this (whether now or later), and have the associated mind-expanding thoughts and possible subsequent ideas or decisions, is itself worth the price of this mission.)
I noticed on the NASA TV schedule that the "Public/Education Channels" have commentary, and that the "Media Channel" has a "Clean Feed with Mission Audio Only".
The clean feed is awesome: it is quite funny how banal some of the talk between the engineers really is: people reading out trace logs, complaining about IT problems, asking each other how to open console windows they accidentally closed, asking people to email them estimates, state machine changes...
One thing they mentioned is that one advantage to the sky hook is that it will be a soft landing - no dust will go everywhere and land on delicate instruments.
Isn't this easily solvable with some sort of skin it can just dispose of once the dust has settled?
They do have covers on the lenses that will be removed, but I don't think it would be practical to put removable covers everywhere. What would happen if the 'skin' didn't come off?
Most of the research to be made on extraterrestrial colonization can be done in the Moon for much cheaper.
The terraforming of Mars is also controversial at this point, while we still want to make sure about possible past (or present) life in Mars, so we won't export bacteria to Mars any time soon. We are pretty sure the Moon is devoid of biological life so the first colonies would be placed there.
Honestly the only point of sending people to Mars now would be to say "first!" pretty much as it happened when we first landed in the Moon to not come back in many decades.
It seems like every single person at JPL is teary eyed, this is awesome.
Edit: The crowd at Planetary Society started chanting "USA! USA!" and Bill Nye the Science Guy quickly made them change it to "JPL! Planet Earth!" freaking awesome.
Edit #2: Every. Single. One. of NASA's websites is offline and overloaded. I know it's a DDoS due to everyone trying to look at the images, but this is really a good example of 'Hey, maybe the company that just landed a fucking spaceship on Mars needs more funding.'
>The crowd at Planetary Society started chanting "USA! USA!" and Bill Nye the Science Guy quickly made them change it to "JPL! Planet Earth!" freaking awesome.
Wow! They made it... Great stuff happening and what a technological challenge!
Edit: even more impressive that they are already receiving some pictures
That's the second time in recent memory that I got chills watching a room full of really smart people erupt into applause. Congrats to everyone involved.
Why can't they ever take just one horizon photo of the scenery in front of the rover instead of the typical, "looking at the ground" photos that are common with these rovers? That would have been a far better shot to show live.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 80.6 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
Purpose of the MSL is:
* Determine whether Mars could ever have supported life
* Study the climate of Mars
* Study the geology of Mars
* Plan for a human mission to Mars
Take a look at the instruments section of that Wikipedia article. Curiosity is crammed with every sensor and analysis tool they could possibly fit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Instrum...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDqU2AFhwu8
EDIT: with rtmpdump and mplayer it can be done with the following apparently[1]
[1] http://stream-recorder.com/forum/play-watch-view-nasa-tv-hd-...;This approach works for a large percentage of CDN-based streaming video, which rarely has any unique authentication (as sharing any kind of per-user state with the CDN edges would be quite difficult).
I keep googling to try to find where they tested the landing system altogether as a unit and there doesn't appear to be such an event, only individual components.
Can you imagine designing and testing the individual parts of a car, then assembling it and never testing the car as a whole unit and just hoping based on theory it works?
I'm genuinely curious about what kind of things the HQ is doing right now. I've been watching the live stream and there's not much activity besides milling around screens and resizing windows on the huge screen.
"Mission control contemplated sending Curiosity one last "parameter update" on Sunday, hours before atmospheric entry, giving the vessel an exact fix on its position in space. But NASA engineers said they would likely forego that transmission because the vessel has varied so little from its ideal course.
Otherwise, controllers will have little to do but anxiously track Curiosity's progress as it flies into Mars' upper atmosphere..."
"We're all along for the ride," Seltzner said."
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-usa-mars-idINBRE...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardwar...
it is said, that 08:23:00 PM was the last time at which they could change the trajectory 'manually.' (So I assume, that they have just very good seats to watch the show in the HQ )
This is a great chance for NasaTV to advocate for more funding. /just saying
This mission is so expensive, and has involved the figurative blood and tears of so many extremely talented people, that it will probably always be remembered in the history of space travel, whether or not the landing itself will be successful.
(It could be argued that the value of having so many millions of people watch or follow this (whether now or later), and have the associated mind-expanding thoughts and possible subsequent ideas or decisions, is itself worth the price of this mission.)
The link given is for the public stream (http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv); the media stream is here (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-media-channel) and should be HD as well.
Isn't this easily solvable with some sort of skin it can just dispose of once the dust has settled?
Awesome
Awesome
The terraforming of Mars is also controversial at this point, while we still want to make sure about possible past (or present) life in Mars, so we won't export bacteria to Mars any time soon. We are pretty sure the Moon is devoid of biological life so the first colonies would be placed there.
Honestly the only point of sending people to Mars now would be to say "first!" pretty much as it happened when we first landed in the Moon to not come back in many decades.
Humanity rocks sometimes.
Edit: The crowd at Planetary Society started chanting "USA! USA!" and Bill Nye the Science Guy quickly made them change it to "JPL! Planet Earth!" freaking awesome.
Edit #2: Every. Single. One. of NASA's websites is offline and overloaded. I know it's a DDoS due to everyone trying to look at the images, but this is really a good example of 'Hey, maybe the company that just landed a fucking spaceship on Mars needs more funding.'
yet more evidence that scientists hate america
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-0...