Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Don't forget the Curiosity landing

Tonight (here in the USA) Curiosity will be landing on Mars. The landing will be carried "live" on NASA TV. If you have a high speed internet connection you can watch it on NASA Television in High Definition on UStream. The landing time will be 05:31 UTC (01:31 Eastern US time). That means I will be staying up late tonight. However, I don't have to stay up quite as late, since I am in the Central Time Zone and the landing will be at 12:31.

I say "live" because there is a 14 minute transmission delay between here and Mars, so we won't know what happened during the crucial 7 minutes until it is all over.

For some reason none of the TV networks, including the cable networks, here in the US seems to be carrying it.

Bill Gill

Great pics, but missed the landing, thanks to power cuts here.

Power has been off for over 8 hours. On and off for over 27 hours, and it's getting dark. I'm not going to pass any remarks about our power suppliers being French, in case I might be thought racist!

We were lucky here. I had the radio on the car at 3.30 when I was picking up my grandson (aged 6) from school. He told me they are learning about Space this term and he had painted a space picture. Together we heard the the robotic lander was down , and later in the 4pm news we heard it was safe, I dug out the morning's paper and he cut out the colour picture and article from the paper to show his mum, dad- and teacher today.

We were very excited and grubbed around to find maps, books etc. which had stuff about space in them. The globe even had an airing!

He is so excited about this feat and chattered happily about it and insisted on watching the news at home to see it. He was really interested, all the more so when we realised that the tracking station at Tidbinbilla has been dusted off to help in the mission.

Actually I am avoiding the TV and the internet at the moment, so we researched the old fashioned way. Apparently there is something going on in London which is being broadcast 24 hours a day, non-stop and here in OZ, sadly, we dare not speak its name!

Space is a much happier topic!

Today I saw an Australian woman win gold, and thought: "that should please Ellis".

Could I have been mistaken?

I too had tha car radio on earlier. I heard that the first picture had been recieved - of pebbles! Millions of miles, billions of dollars; lets hope they find something more breathtaking than pebbles.

Millions of mile, billions of dollars and pictures of pebbles. That is amazing in itself. Just getting there it to the right place and almost immediately getting pictures is astounding. When they get it up and running properly they will have some absolutely astounding science.

Bill Gill

Yes Bill S! Back to triumphalism and watching the glorious Olympics now that the women of Australia are dragging national pride up a notch or two. Of the now FIVE gold medals 4 were won by females!!!!

Isn't it an amazing thing to get the video almost immediately?-- and great to see that Mars looks much like the gibber* deserts of the outback. Is it true that NASA tints the photos (such as the ones we have seen from previous landings) to a shade of reddish-ness? Disappointing if its true, though I have to admit it looks like the Mars I imagine.



*gibber means pebble!

I believe the rather dull reddish pics are as received. One of the things NASA do is white balance the pics so that the look like they would in sunlight on Earth. This is done to aid identification.

Some good pics, and an example of white balance at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery-indexEvents.html

Bill, you are, of course, absolutely right. We need science to progress; people benefit from the progress of science. I sometimes wonder, though, if the people who will benefit from all the money spent on a mission such as this will be those who are starving and those who are dying of illnesses that could be prevented or cured if a bit more cash were channelled to the right place.

BTW; how long do you think it will be before some conspiracy theorist argues that these photos are of gibber deserts in the outback?

is that water in the background?

Surely the fact it looks like the Gibber desert confirms the theory that Mars and Earth have some common origins. The moon does not look like this.

I am a very firm non-conspiracy believer about the moon and Mars. We got there all right, and it's a shame that is where it stopped. Lying about it would be foolish.

Bill S- Thanks for those pics. I had heard about balancing the colour, and now understand it better. Certainly when you find Mars in the night sky it usually (perhaps always!) has a reddish glow.

...or a mirage?

Ellis



thats because it is the gibbers!
you guys were talking about the gibbers and
the picture I posted was taken in OZ in the gibbers desert
I was just wondering if that was water in the background of the photo.
I guess that was misleading,sorry

Bill

it may just be a mirage , but it certainly looks like water
doesnt it.

there must be underground water or its very humid there.

you see how easy a conspiracy starts.
if I would have left this alone and allowed it to progress
someone would have noticed the tracks in the photo.
then later found that the image url points to OZ
then they would be claiming that curiosity landed in OZ.

and we were just looking at pictures of the outback and
not at pictures of mars.

Ha! Ha! This is a very international site. :-)

Well, thar y' go!

How far do conspiracy theories go? Are there no mirrors on the moon? Has no one been into space? What about voyager? Where does it end? Perhaps it doesn't.

Oh no, not infinity again!

Infinity seems to have reached the point of going round in endless circles.

Time has run out, and time travel vanished.

Tectonic discussion has drifted into a forbidden land.

I wondered if a gently provocative comment might lead to the discussion of something that is not religion, philosophy or politics, but, no.

I suppose we could get into a discussion of the origin of gibber deserts; and whether they occur on Mars. Then, that could lead to someone suggesting that the Australians got there first.

That would be nice to have Aussies first as recently they have faltered slightly in that regard--- though here's the updated conspiracy theory-- It's Australian WOMEN!!!! on Mars, as they are better at being first.

That may well be a mirage, they are common in that sort of country, which is quite terrifying I think! As far as the eye can see there is a landscape which we were all willing to assume was Mars! Due to the recent rain in the Outback it could also possibly, but not likely, to be water.

Whilst you said that your post illustrates how easily conspiracy theories start, Bill, I do not think that you can claim a complete success as I made the gibber identification immediately. I have only been in that country a few times, and that was ages ago, but there are people who would be able to challenge you and even identify where the photo was taken.

But it does look Mars-ish doesn't it?

In fact, Ellis, you made the identification before Paul posted the picture.

Time travel?

Another first for Australian women?

Yay! clever me!!

Maybe its because I found the little bag of souveniers from Mars that I had hidden in the desk along with the little baton that the aliens gave me (a la Total Rekall-- the story not the film).

Good video at:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/space-technology-news/mars-curiosity-rover-vin/