The TRUTH is out there. I WANT to believe …
I’m sorry there is no update. Just lots of speculation. Because of the way it was initially presented to the media and subsequent backtracking by NASA it’s impossible to know if we should be hopeful or cynical: [Read more…]
Update: NASA isn’t saying what it is, still. But they have scheduled a presser for 3 Dec. Talk about firing up the rumor mill. By then Fox News will probably have a graphic up showing Obama-esque Martians coming for your guns.
Is this it? We don’t know. No one’s saying what it is outside of the instrument that reported the find: [Read more…]
Mars Curiosity landed in the right place alright! Just a few steps from touchdown the one ton rover snapped this image showing what planetary geologists (Areologists?) say is a lead pipe cinch for an alluvial fan, i.e., freely flowing water: [Read more…]
The creator of this one provides some details at TPM. Amazing pic of the sun below [Read more…]
The penny in this image is part of a camera calibration target on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on Mars September 9, 2012. Credit AFP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems
After a nail-biting entry and descent followed by firing off a few breathtaking images inside Gale Crater, Curiosity is about to begin the mission it was designed so well for. Prospecting for ancient biotic gold: [Read more…]
Souped up frame rate thanks to interpolation! Yay math!
Click pic for large image, 946 X 710, at NASA/JPL homepage
Mars Curiosity is like a super hero probe compared to her less endowed peers and this week she began proving it. While I’m not planetary geologist, that looks like the spittin image of marine strata exposed by some kind of erosion: [Read more…]
And not just any old wimpy office presentation pointer laser, either. No, Cursiotiy’s ChemCam system includes ba serious, rock vaporaizing weapons grade zap gun intended to examine samples at the molevular level. Or fend off tentacled monsters with a thirst for human blood: [Read more…]
Hint: the wheels have ‘randomly’ placed holes …
Mars Curiosity is quite a machine, a lander, rover, mobile chemical laboratory and robot geologist. But its designers were human, so hidden in the wheels is a geeky tech-y joke. What is it? [Read more…]
Don’t worry, Mars Curiosity the rover is alive and well and on the verge of beginning the mission it was so ably designed to do! There’s every reason to expect Curiosity will perform brilliantly, and that’s good, because there’s nothing much slated for Mars after it. When Curiosity finally seizes up, likely frozen in place, starved for power and heat and mobility while examining an undisclosed ancient, dusty lakebed, and the mini sat network above stops talking to its creators, it is an end of sorts to our curiosity, until we do something about it: [Read more…]