Curiosity Lander Thread

[Speed]

12 (too much erosion marks on that crater)

But what KIND of erosion is it? Those erosion marks appear to go uphill... doesn't look like water erosion to me...

:D

Edited August 16, 2012 by Speed

[marcos]

The ones with clouds are probably Earth.

[DEChengst]

I would say Mars:

 

#2: Gusev crater, possibly Husband Hill

#3: Meridiani Planum

#6: rim of Gale crater

#8: top of Burns cliff

#13: Mars Odyssey picture of possibly active gullies

[Pilotasso]

But what KIND of erosion is it? Those erosion marks appear to go uphill... doesn't look like water erosion to me...

:D

 

I may or may not be caused by water, wind causes erosion too and geology over the ages may change slope of the terrain, but heres another quirk: mars atmo is 1/100 th of the earths pressure, On mars craters last billions of years dating back to solar system late bombardment period, on earth they are recognizable maybe 500,000 or less, after that their round outer rim patterns have to be spotted by satelites.

[Bucic]

So many articles I've read and only arstechnica mentioned the C.'s mission time frame which is circa 2 years. This was the very first question that popped in my mind after the successful landing. On the same track - does anyone know the planned C. mission route?

 

Are there any topographical or quasi-3D maps of the C.'s vicinity?

 

 

Edited August 17, 2012 by Bucic

[DEChengst]

The plan for now:

 

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/msl/120817mslroute/

[Bucic]

The plan for now:

 

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/msl/120817mslroute/

Thanks. The picture in the article shows how valuable scale reference is.

[Speed]

I would say Mars:

 

#2: Gusev crater, possibly Husband Hill

#3: Meridiani Planum

#6: rim of Gale crater

#8: top of Burns cliff

#13: Mars Odyssey picture of possibly active gullies

 

Kinda spoils the game if you give away answers that are obviously right, instead of just "Earth" or "Mars" :(

 

Ok, these were the answers:

 

1) Earth

2) Mars

3) Mars

4) Earth

5) Earth

6) Mars

7) Earth

8) Mars

9) Earth

10) Earth

11) BOTH! Well, "Mars" is an acceptable answer too. This is a photo of Earth, taken from the surface of Mars, and what you would see with your naked eye looking up. Because Earth is interior to the Sun from Mars, it's an evening/morning "star". Yes, that "star" at the photo's upper center is Earth. In fact, if you examine the photo closely, you can even see the Moon- the Moon is that faint blip just below Earth.

12) Earth

13) Mars

 

I tried to be a little tricky, especially on the last two photos. Photo 12) is an impact crater on Earth that seems to be heavily eroded, but it's not possible to tell the erosion type- in fact, wind-blown dust is much in evidence in the photo. Photo 13) is of a crater wall on Mars that appears to have suffered from water erosion in the very recent past, a very intriguing possibility. Note how the "water" (if that's what it was) didn't seem to make it all the way to the bottom before disappearing... kinda what you would expect if it was simultaneously boiling, freezing, and sublimating.

[Speed]

I may or may not be caused by water, wind causes erosion too and geology over the ages may change slope of the terrain, but heres another quirk: mars atmo is 1/100 th of the earths pressure, On mars craters last billions of years dating back to solar system late bombardment period, on earth they are recognizable maybe 500,000 or less, after that their round outer rim patterns have to be spotted by satelites.

 

Actually, craters on Earth will often last a lot longer than that. The impact crater in photo 12) is in the hundred million year range, IIRC.

 

The point of photo 12) was to try to confuse you into saying "Mars" because wind blown dust is in much evidence in that photo, and it might be thought that the crater's weathered appearance is due to wind erosion.

[Speed]

The ones with clouds are probably Earth.

 

Mars supports lots of clouds.

 

These are images of some clouds at night, taken by the Phoenix lander:

 

More Martian clouds:

F-n4f8IwBnM

 

Later in that mission, it actually started snowing, but I guess it only snowed at night, so they didn't get any good images of it. They detected the snowfall with an on board LIDAR system.

[DEChengst]

Kinda spoils the game if you give away answers that are obviously right, instead of just "Earth" or "Mars" :(

 

Sorry about that. I spend so much time gawking at Mars I wanted the additional challenge of guessing where on Mars the pictures were taken.

[marcos]

Mars supports lots of clouds.

What are the clouds made of then?

[Speed]

What are the clouds made of then?

 

Water ice crystals. H2O. Mars has lots of it.

 

Lots of clouds on Earth are made of ice crystals too- cirrus clouds, for example. Mars has them too.

[EtherealN]

Marcos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_atmosphere#Water

[Weta43]

From the curiosity site.

[marcos]

I see picture quality is getting worse. That one looks like it's moving if you stare at it.

[Bucic]

Let us not forget that

On 15 June 2012, NASA scientists reported that Voyager 1 may be very close to entering interstellar space and becoming the first human-made object to leave the Solar System.[3][4]

[sobek]

Always makes me think of Star Trek...

[EtherealN]

The V'ger are coming!

[sobek]

Is that a viking with a X-Wing nacelle on its head?

[Bucic]

Always makes me think of Star Trek...

Funny thing is the episode with the V'ger was one of the few ST episodes I've seen, not being ST fan.

 

Back on topic - I really recommend the recent videos on YouTube Nasa/JPL channels.

[EtherealN]

Is that a viking with a X-Wing nacelle on its head?

 

Your Star Trek knowledge suffers catastrophically. You need to fix this... :P

 

EDIT: But Babylon 5 is superior, and Star Wreck is the best!

Edited August 20, 2012 by EtherealN

[Speed]

A few days back, the rover made it's first test drive on Mars:

 

Everything is working fine on the rover, except that one of the two wind sensors the rover carries was damaged in landing, probably by the pebbles thrown up. Supposedly, the only negative effect will be slight ambiguity in wind direction :)

 

Also, the high res landing video has now been released:

REnJZoxCLIw

 

In other space news, on Sept. 4, the Dawn spacecraft, currently in orbit around the asteroid Vesta, is scheduled to fire up its ion thrusters and leave Vesta, enroute for the largest object in the asteroid belt, the dwarf planet Ceres. Dawn is expected to arrive and enter orbit around Ceres in February, 2015 :)

 

Oh, and this is how we fix problem on Russian-American-ESA-Canadian-Japanese space station!:

QMMGiBffvII

Edited August 24, 2012 by Speed

[asparagin]

Some more pics for your desktops:

(hope I won't get banned for posting pics from other sims :D)

 

 

 

 

[aaron886]

Incredible. Those are jaw-dropping. Thanks for posting mate.