Super cool interactive 360 Panorama from the Mars Curiosity Rover – looks like you could just step out onto the surface..
Interactive Panorama:
JPL Image:
From JPL: Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This color panorama shows a 360-degree view of the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover, including the highest part of Mount Sharp visible to the rover. That part of Mount Sharp is approximately 12 miles (20 kilometers) away from the rover.
The images were obtained by the rover’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 29,000 pixels across by 7,000 pixels high, includes 130 images taken on Aug. 8 and an additional 10 images taken on Aug. 18. These images were shot before the camera was fully characterized.
Scientists enhanced the color in one version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain. A raw version is also available.
Neil Armstrong, a quiet, self-described nerdy engineer who became a global hero when he made “one giant leap for mankind” with a small step on to the moon, died Saturday. He was 82. Multimedia
Mr. Armstrong died after complications from cardiovascular procedures, according to a statement from his family. The statement did not say where he died. He lived in Cincinnati.
Mr. Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century’s scientific expeditions. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.
Congratulations to the NASA/JPL-Caltech crew for successfully landing the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity Rover on Mars! Here are the first images taken by Curiosity on the red planet..
This is the first image taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT). It was taken through a “fisheye” wide-angle lens on one of the rover’s front left Hazard-Avoidance cameras at one-quarter of full resolution. The clear dust cover on the camera is still on in this view, and dust can be seen around its edge, along with three cover fasteners. The rover’s shadow is visible in the foreground. As planned, the rover’s early engineering images are lower resolution. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover’s mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA is back on Mars – and getting ready for the next mission to the Red Planet! After an astounding 154 million mile journey and a harrowing landing that demonstrated cutting-edge technology, Curiosity, the largest rover ever sent to another planet, is in place and ready to work. This robotic laboratory will seek answers to one of humanity’s oldest questions as it investigates whether conditions have favored development of microbial life on the Red Planet. The mission is a critical planetary science mission — and a precursor to sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030’s, a goal set forth by President Obama.
It’s another great leadership moment for our nation and a sign of the continued strength of NASA’s many programs in science, aeronautics and human spaceflight. It’s also important to remember that the $2.5 billion investment made in this project was not spent on Mars, but right here on Earth, supporting more than 7,000 jobs in at least 31 states.
With the retirement of the Shuttle program after its final flight in July 2011, some have suggested that NASA’s leadership in the exploration of space, including our extraordinary successes on Mars, was coming to an end. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Curiosity mission is only the latest in a long list of extraordinary NASA missions that established the United States as the undisputed world leader, and it will help guarantee that remains the case for many years to come.
When our Orion deep space crew vehicle takes its first test flight in 2014, it will travel farther into space than any spacecraft designed for humans has flown in the 40 years since our astronauts returned from the moon.
In 2017, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, will launch Orion.
We also reached a critically important milestone in May when SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft — the Dragon cargo capsule — to the International Space Station and return it with cargo intact. This successful mission ushered in a new era in spaceflight — and signaled a new way of doing business for NASA. And just a few days ago, we announced the next step in the Obama Administration’s aggressive plan to once again launch our astronauts from U.S. soil on spacecraft built by American companies.
As part of our commitment to maintain American leadership in the exploration of Mars beyond the Curiosity mission, NASA will launch the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter next year. Earlier this year, I directed NASA’s science mission director, along with the head of human exploration, Chief Technologist, and Chief Scientist to develop a more integrated strategy to ensure that the next steps for Mars exploration will support the nation’s planetary science objectives as well as our human exploration goals. They are looking at many options, including another robotic mission to land on Mars in this decade.
I am so proud of the NASA team that has made tonight’s challenging milestone possible. However, tomorrow we begin to plan for the next great challenge — and start compiling incredible scientific data from Curiosity. For the past 50 years, NASA has specialized in doing the hard things. Thanks to the ingenuity of our teams across America and the world, we are poised for even greater success.
For more information about Curiosity and NASA’s missions to Mars, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team in the MSL Mission Support Area react after learning the the Curiosity rove has landed safely on Mars and images start coming in at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Mars, Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012 in Pasadena, Calif. The MSL Rover named Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 6, 2012
Statement by the President on Curiosity Landing on Mars
Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history.
The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.
Tonight’s success, delivered by NASA, parallels our major steps forward towards a vision for a new partnership with American companies to send American astronauts into space on American spacecraft. That partnership will save taxpayer dollars while allowing NASA to do what it has always done best – push the very boundaries of human knowledge. And tonight’s success reminds us that our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth – depends on continuing to invest wisely in the innovation, technology, and basic research that has always made our economy the envy of the world.
I congratulate and thank all the men and women of NASA who made this remarkable accomplishment a reality – and I eagerly await what Curiosity has yet to discover.
Certainly my top photo set of the week – a complete photo album of the assembly and launch of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Very cool. Good luck on touchdown on Mars in a few days!
This picture of Apollo 17 Commander Eugene Cernan, covered in lunar dust after walking on the moon is great. Chilling in a capsule parked on the moon, covered in regolith. Simply awesome.
In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon, in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. Near the beginning of their third and final excursion across the lunar surface, Schmitt took this picture of Cernan flanked by an American flag and their lunar rover’s umbrella-shaped high-gain antenna. The prominent Sculptured Hills lie in the background while Schmitt’s reflection can just be made out in Cernan’s helmet. The Apollo 17 crew returned with 110 kilograms of rock and soil samples, more than from any of the other lunar landing sites. And after thirty years, Cernan and Schmitt are still the last to walk on the Moon.
Here’s another gem found in the course of my family VHS file digitization project.
In grade school, I went to US Space Camp along with a bunch of my classmates. The triumphant beginning of my lifelong love for everything space and science. My parents paid for not only Space Camp, but also to have this nifty video of me and my friends made – very 90’s, very awesome.
Thanks to Science journalist Ananyo Bhattacharya for this awesome infographic of past, current and future space vehicles, drawn to scale. Found via BoingBoing.
Looking for something to watch to disconnect from the family for a while? Here’s MSL Deputy Project Manager Richard Cook’s excellent lecture “From A to Z: Getting Curiosity to the Launch Pad“, in which he covers the entire process of designing and deploying the Mars Curiosity Rover, now on its way to Mars. Out of all of the amazing facts in this lecture, one that’s stuck with me is – the rover is the size of a Mini Cooper – that’s huge!
The Mars Science Laboratory, “Curiosity”, is the latest project in NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term program of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in late 2011, and arrive at Mars in August 2012, this rolling laboratory will assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life and conditions favorable for preserving clues about life, if it existed. The sky-crane landing system is remarkable, and the massive science suite is the most advanced ever used on a planetary surface, and will help us better understand whether life could have existed on the Red Planet and, if so, where we might look for it in the future. But such capability does not come without challenge. Tonight’s talk will cover some of the trials and tribulations the project members encountered while creating one of the most ambitious missions in history.
Hot on the heels of two previous posts on launching the space shuttle, as well as Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit around there earth, spacecraftfilms.com now gives us this ultra slow motion view of Apollo 11 lifting off the launchpad on its Saturn V rocket. An incredible amount of power – just watch the ablative paint layers burn completely off of all the launch pad structures, under the intense heat of 5 rocket engines.
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit around the earth, documentarian Christopher Riley gives us this film: First Orbit.
A real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin’s original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard.
Today, in commemoration of the Space Shuttle, NASA published this interesting infographic, and launched an interactive Space Shuttle site.
Since 1981, NASA space shuttles have been rocketing from the Florida coast into Earth orbit. The five orbiters — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — have flown more than 130 times, carrying over 350 people into space and travelling more than half a billion miles, more than enough to reach Jupiter. Designed to return to Earth and land like a giant glider, the shuttle was the world’s first reusable space vehicle. More than all of that, though, the shuttle program expanded the limits of human achievement and broadened our understanding of our world.
For more than 50 years the mad scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—aka DARPA, the outrageous research arm of the Pentagon—have been launching the most disruptive technologies on earth, living up to their mantra of “high risk—high payoff.” We have DARPA to thank for the personal computer, the Internet, the Berkeley Unix system, most of NASA, and countless crazy military innovations. Their mission is to think beyond the possible and forever be three decades ahead. In this talk we will dig into, and present the relevant parts of, DARPA’s $3 billion-dollar budget, pulling out the most amazing and most-likely-to-reach-fruition projects. Think electromagnetic bazookas, telepathic soldiers, ape-inspired robots, memory chips in brains, shapeshifting planes and boats. It might sound like sci-fi, but given its inspired history it seems that analyzing DARPA’s current projects will give us one of the clearest views into our future reality. Fasten your seat belts.
Ascent – Commemorating Shuttle is a new video from the NASA Glenn Research Center, and shows off incredible, slow motion footage from launching the Space Shuttle. This is possibly the most interesting collection of launch footage I’ve seen yet. Most of the footage is captured from “engineering cameras”, which site at strategic points on and around the launch pad, to capture extremely detailed, high framerate, high resolution footage of every aspect of launch. Usually, this footage is simply used to inspect for any launch issues, but in this video it’s used by Matt Melis to explain every detail of launch, in stunning slow motion.
Two interesting pieces of “News from the Moon” lately.
First, European Space Agency scientists, at a conference in Strasbourg last week, discussed the possibilities of building a “Lunar Doomsday Ark” on the moon. The concept is to have a repository of all the necessary information needed to rebuild civilization on earth, should a catastrophic event ever happen. Something like another asteroid hitting, Skynet going online, or mass viral outbreak. The ark would house data banks of information and a self sustaining broadcast faculty. The broadcast faculty would continuously broadcast the ark’s information back to earth. If anything happens, surviving humans could find one of the fortified receiving stations, and start rebuilding civilization. Sounds like a plan to me.
Second, the Bad Astronomy Blog is reporting that the Mythbusters are doing a special episode on the Apollo landing myths – figuring out if we actually really did land on the moon, and checking out all those “mysterious angles and shadows” in the pics. I’m interested to see how they tear apart the skeptics claims on this one.
Speaking of which – I just uncovered this from the archives – the cuff checklist (pdf download)the Apollo 12 astronauts wore during their moon walks. The booklet contained all the timings and procedures for their time on the moon, as well as a few “bonuses”, slipped in secretly at the last moment. Nobody knew the surprises until those pages were flipped to while walking around out on the Moon.
This weekend, I chilled in Washington DC… Saw Jason and Chris, went to the Smithsonian, Eighteenth Street Lounge, mopped, etc.. good, relaxing weekend. You might also note that I’m very into space and NASA and the Apollo program. If you look closely at the photo, you’ll notice I’m holding a Fisher AG-7 Space Pen, the pen that the Apollo astronauts used in spaceflight (for example, in the actual capsule in back of me, in space!). The pen is still used on all spaceflights today, and is in orbit in the ISS right now. And finally, for halloween ’04, I actuanlly dressed up as a Apollo 11 Mission Controller, complete with historically accurate ID badge.
