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Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
- adolph 6y agoClicking on the solar system icon at the top of this page provides a JavaScript version of NASA's Eyes solar system mapping application. You can look up the Perseverance mission as "Mars 2020" right now. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/interactives/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/interactives/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tcpekin 6y agoCurrently watching it using Streamlink [0] to watch in VLC. This is so exciting! Wishing them, and the rover, all the best in the landing! [0] https://streamlink.github.io/ https://streamlink.github.io/
- Koshkin 6y agoA hacker on HN?
- rpiguyshy 6y agoi wish they would stream the video and audio from the craft live as it descends to the martian surface
- ryankrage77 6y agoThe bandwidth to stream video from mars simply isn't available. Once it's landed, perserverance must lock onto sattelites orbiting mars in order to send media back to earth.
- GeorgeTirebiter 6y agoActually, Percy has her own Mars-to-Earth radio. It's that the high bandwidth is UHF to MRO, MRO to Earth usually (as I understand it). My guess is they probably could manage a few FPS at low resolution directly from Percy - but probably wouldn't do that for power reasons. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...
- Shivetya 6y agoAlso on https://www.twitch.tv/nasa https://www.twitch.tv/nasa They were showing off a model of the rover, I did not realize just how large this one is!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tectonic 6y agoYou can also watch an EDL visualization in your browser: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/#/home https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/#/home And read about how it will use Terrain Relative Navigation to find a safe landing spot: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/a-neil-armstrong-for-mars-landing-the-mars-2020-rover https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/a-neil-armstrong-for-mars-land... Perseverance is phenomenally complex, its Sample Caching System alone contains 3,000+ parts and two robotic arms. So exited for all the sciencing this nuclear-powered, sample-drilling, laser-zapping behemoth can do when it joins its friends on the only planet (known) to be inhabited solely by robots. Edit: Percy is about to release its two 77 kg Cruise Mass Balance Devices (is this what NASA calls 'weights'?) to setup the right lift-to-drag ratio for entry. Mars InSight will be listening for the 14,000 km/hr impacts of these weights, providing useful calibration data. We wrote about this in this week's issue of our space-related newsletter, Orbital Index - https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-02-17-Issue-104/ https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-02-17-Issue-104/
- tectonic 6y agoAlso, InSight's SEIS seismometer is a true marvel: "We have been able to detect, at about 10 hertz, displacement of the ground of the order of less than 5 picometers…which is a fraction of the size of an atom." — https://eos.org/features/a-modern-manual-for-marsquake-monitoring https://eos.org/features/a-modern-manual-for-marsquake-monit...
- peter303 6y agoLIGO puts this shame with 10^11 better sensitivity.
- jvanderbot 6y agoAt sensitivity/gram insight wins. Per dollar probably not.
- WJW 6y ago> is this what NASA calls 'weights'? Well no, the Cruise Mass Balance Devices are intended to Balance the Mass of the spaceship during Cruise conditions. That these Devices are single-part and constructed out of a single chunk of metal each should not be construed as merely being 'weights'. :)
- drewblaisdell 6y agoWhen can we expect any imagery from Perseverance? The Curiosity photos were incredible.
- ryankrage77 6y agoProbably around 20-30 minutes after it's landed. Perseverance needs to lock onto sattelites that are part of the Deep Space Network for the bandwidth required to send media. It also takes 22 minutes to send a command and get a response back.
- comfydragon 6y agoWe actually got a picture like 3 minutes after landing. (Okay, a picture from shortly after landing.)
- someperson 6y agoProbably routed through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Maven and possibly Europe's Mars Express satellites, rather than a direct connection to the Deep Space Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN
- shadowgovt 6y agoIf I understood the livestream correctly, it's because they were able to (maintain|quickly establish) lock to the MRO after touch-down and zip a couple of images up through the "bent-pipe" UHF-to-high-power relay into the Deep Space Network.
- GeorgeTirebiter 6y agoIt would seem they had MRO in position to snap a few photos of the landing / descent as well as do the relay.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
- thisistheend123 6y agoHow much more time for EDL? Can't find that information anywhere!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- devb 6y agoI was wrong... estimated touchdown is 15:55 eastern time.
- whitehouse3 6y agoIt's great to see NASA livestreaming in similar quality/fashion to spacex. It reminds me of watching the NASA feeds on public television in the 90's but much more nicely produced.
- criddell 6y agoOn space shuttle launch days, my parents would let me stay home from school to watch TV. At the time I was an ungrateful idiot but now I realize my parents understood me better than I understood them.
- alach11 6y agoWatching the stream, it's striking the difference in employee age between NASA and SpaceX. I won't speculate on the reasons, but I wish the best to the Perseverance team!
- shironandon 6y agounsure why you think that is relevant, bub. Interested in their religion, political views, and sexual preferences as well?
- klohto 6y agoStop picking up fights, that wasn't the point of the comment at all.
- flyinglizard 6y agoIt’s also remarkable that the NASA workforce is 99% women, as evident from this broadcast.
- johnchristopher 6y agoI thought they were young people in the NASA video. Does that mean people at SpaceX are older ?
- dharmab 6y agoRemember that not all the staff could be at NASA today due to COVID policies. Most of the team is at home.
- avereveard 6y agoI don't think the video show a representative sample of the employee at either company; I suspect picks where selected for stage presence with a touch of preference for diversity.
- chasd00 6y agohah they probably don't let the kids near the really important buttons ;)
- ghoshbishakh 6y agoThank you for posting this. Let's witness what science and engineering is capable of achieve today. It is just amazing to think that a robot is roaming around in Mars, and a second one might be joining today.
- klohto 6y agoClean feed here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrbJ63qUc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrbJ63qUc4 EDIT: Congrats to the team! Great success
- johnohara 6y agoReading you 5 by 5. Thank you.
- distortedsignal 6y agoMy personal preference is the JPL raw feed (here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrbJ63qUc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrbJ63qUc4) but I think that more people watching space here is better! Great link!
- blach 6y agoFrom the JPL feed: "My computer was having trouble with Webex, I'll restart Webex and try the visualization again." Hope Percy isn't running Webex.
- yellowapple 6y agoI mean, I'd be pretty impressed if NASA managed to get Webex to run on a 133MHz PowerPC CPU and 128MB of RAM.
- winrid 6y agoAre those the hardware specs of this rover? EDIT: It's a 200mhz CPU alongside 256mb of ram. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/
- ortusdux 6y agoThey have a live telemetry animation web app, but I am currently getting a 503 from cloudfront. https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/ https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/
- shadowgovt 6y agoYeah, it was accessible until they mentioned it in the livestream. To their credit, I've watched NASA spend decades getting better at Internet services and generally being an online presence. Improvements year-over-year have been noteworthy. But I still have to chuckle a little bit that they triggered a DDOS protect by name-dropping themselves. Ad Internet Per Aspera, you crazy spacers ;)
- raylus 6y agoThanks!! Also wanted to mention, NASA is separate from JPL for the most part as far as web services go.
- shadowgovt 6y agoGreat work today.
- mhh__ 6y agoThe telemetry they have up on the wall is based off a project that they have open sourced too (Open MCT), or at least it looks like it.
- hikerclimber 6y agohope it crashes.
- WJW 6y agoIT LANDED!
- shadowgovt 6y agoUpright and in one piece. :) No, but seriously: amazing engineering and amazing work. So great to see the images streaming in already.
- WJW 6y agoThe skycrane system is just SO COOL. It's also one of those things that is super easy to explain but incredibly difficult to actually construct, let alone have it work well after flying all the way to Mars.
- tnorthcutt 6y agoThey're not that hard to make and fly... in Kerbal Space Program ;) (I'm totally kidding; what they've accomplished is incredible!)
- chasd00 6y agoi can't believe it works. Those thrusters making all that turbulence and racket. Then the cables have to unwind without getting tangled and at the same rate. Then, finally, at the end, they have to detach the cables and fly away. It's pretty nuts.
- dodge321 6y agoropes detached using a small wedge driven by explosive to cut cable.
- gillytech 6y agoWhat an accomplishment for mankind. Congratulations to NASA, JPL and the whole team.
- m4rtink 6y agoCongratulations!
- sidcool 6y agoTouchdown confirmed!! Congrats NASA.
- mu_killnine 6y agoThe Nasa person they have helping narrate what's going on is so genuinely happy the landing went well. It made me kinda tear up. It's infectious just how excited all these people are about this project. Also, I was a bit worried he was going to pass out. 10/10, would watch again (and probably will with my kids)
- shadowgovt 6y agoThe audible whew from one of the crew members after maximum deceleration when the telemetry re-established was heart-rending. Years of work, and there's nothing anyone here can do eleven light-minutes away; it was either going to work or one of the thousands of things that had to happen correctly wasn't going to happen. Everything happened correctly. :)
- electriclove 6y agoThis guy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ&t=1h41m36s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ&t=1h41m36s That is Rob Manning, an absolute legend! Here is an interview with him from a few years back: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/2280/rob-manning/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/2280/rob-manning/ He also wrote this great book: https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Rover-Curiosity-Curiositys-Engineer/dp/1588344037/ https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Rover-Curiosity-Curiositys-Engin...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tomc1985 6y agoI love the fact that you could hear people saying things like "yes yes yes YES YES!" in the background as data came in. Like you say, very infectious
- huhtenberg 6y agoFirst surface photo is in too! https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg https://i.imgur.com/C2s1job.jpg
- gillytech 6y agoThe shadow features are fantastic!
- kaycebasques 6y agoN00b question: why is it black & white?
- handedness 6y agoThe world is a complicated place, Hobbes.[1] The lower "HazCams" hazard avoidance cameras (which captured those initial photos) are there to detect hazards (rocks, trenches, etc.). They are stereoscopic, lightweight, and high resolution. My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. Those cameras were also pre-deployed for the landing phase and likely transmit more quickly due to the lower data information. The other cameras were shielded for the landing phase. The navigation and other cameras are in color, and I expect we'll be seeing better images shortly. [1] This comes to mind whenever a question like that is asked: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAV...
- jxcl 6y ago> My guess is that using color sensors would have either increased the 3D mapping precision or added weight/power/bandwidth requirements, or otherwise been less robust in that environment. I think you meant to say decreased? In which case I think you would be correct! Camera pixels are made up of these things called photosites which don't by themselves record color, only brightness. In order to record color information, the photosites are placed behind a Bayer filter[1], which effectively reduces the resolution of the camera by 3, because in order to get the color of a pixel you need its red, green and blue component. Bayer filters also frequently have a small blurring filter in front of them to make sure that nearby photosites with different color filters get the information they need. If you're looking for the highest resolution image possible, black and white is the way to go! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
- tambourine_man 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ Live feed
- ggm 6y agoHere in oz its not live
- meepmorp 6y agoI guess technically it's on an 11 minute delay for the whole planet.
- ggm 6y agoWell yes, but I meant I watched continuously from 06:45 to 07:15 and it was replay of pre-recorded videos of the rover and no indication on screen it had landed.
- rablackburn 6y agoodd, I'm in Aus too and I watched the entire thing live with no issues (assuming you're in QLD on EST)
- ggm 6y agoI am. Maybe I turned away at the wrong crucial 30 seconds. (Edit) I checked the JPL clean feed and none of the last two hours of feed is what I saw being sent on NASA live. I got a walk around the robot, and social media about the kids who named it, and talking heads. Bizarre.
- fetacheese 6y agoI have serious doubts that this actually happened
- tristanb 6y agowhy?
- fetacheese 6y agowhy not
- bobbean 6y agoI have serious doubts you actually believe that
- thisistheend123 6y agoThis is so awesome. Go Nasa! I am amazed at what humans have been able to achieve in short time since the Industrial revolution. After all the negativity of last few months, this brings so much hope. Waiting for the first human foot touch down on Mars in my lifetime.
- koheripbal 6y agoThe pandemic has, in many ways, accelerated advancement and technological development.
- burrows 6y agoAll hail the shining twin gods, Advancement and Progress.
- garden_hermit 6y agoWatching these is always a stressful experience, I can't imagine what it would be like sitting in that room, praying that the object you spend years of work on is able to land by itself 7 light-minutes away. I'm looking forward to what Perseverance will teach us.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoYou know, in some ways its like any scientific endeavor. Hypothesis, funding, data collection can take years of effort. Then you look at your data and test hypotheses, and you have no control of the outcome. It can be terrifying, to be honest, which is why I support publishing of negative results. Of course crashing on Mars would be a terrible null result ;)
- spullara 6y agoRight now it is 11 minutes away!
- garden_hermit 6y agoI was still under the assumption of Curiosity's 7 minutes! Thanks for letting me know
- spullara 6y agoIt varies quite a bit as our orbit isn't synced with Mars. Anywhere from 3 minutes 13 seconds to 22 minutes 16 seconds. Along with the days out of sync by 40 min it must be hell on the team supporting it.
- sneak 6y ago> Watching these is always a stressful experience, I can't imagine what it would be like sitting in that room Sitting in any closed space like that one, with other people, masks or no, is stressful right now. It's a shame that NASA can communicate with a rover 125 million KM away but their staff have to all be crammed into one small enclosed space. You'd think we'd be able to communicate just as effectively over several kilometers. I imagine that people will look back on videos from this time period where ~3M people died (mostly unnecessarily) and wonder what on Earth people were thinking, carrying on like that.
- abalaji 6y agoI'm excited for the HD video of the landing that was promised.
- Nekhrimah 6y agoAnd audio as well!
- aembleton 6y agoHow are they getting audio without an atmosphere?
- gillytech 6y agoThere is a thin atmosphere on Mars and sound does exist. It's also how this lander was able to land.
- Ne02ptzero 6y agoNASA actually made a pretty informative page about it[1], with some simulation of sound on Mars, compared to Earth. Hopefully we won't need the simulation much longer! [1] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/sounds/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/sounds/
- vagrantJin 6y agoMars does have an atmos. Or are you reffering to something else?
- raphaelj 6y agoNASA's ability of succeeding at landing things successfully on the first try on foreign bodies since 1969 is mind-blowing. Meanwhile, SpaceX takes half a dozen tries before managing to do the same on a fully known environment on Earth.
- user3939382 6y agoYeah, c’mon Elon. It’s not rocket science!
- joe_91 6y agoNASA also requires 10-100x more money & time to do so. Both just have very different ways of working. Both work and there are pro's and con's to either way!
- raphaelj 6y agoHow could you know? SpaceX never landed or sent a craft on a foreign body.
- joe_91 6y agoHaha, good point - we'll have to come back in 4-5 years time when SpaceX have touched down on the moon and mars and check the cost. Considering their low cost & speed at getting things into orbit these days and the plans they have for starship I hope that the data will prove me right in a few years
- m4rtink 6y agoWhile this timeline might be optimistic, this is what came to my mind when I heard about the current timeline for Mars sample return - samples returning back to Earth in 2031. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission#NASA%E2%80%93ESA_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample-return_mission#NAS... Like it's nice to finally have a firmer timeline for that, but damn, 10 years from now. A SpaceX employee gathering the sample tubes into his backpack in a couple years time to be returned on the next milk-run flight back to Earth is just so much cooler! :)
- iexplainbtc 6y agoThat live stream was epic! It was great to see them so happy :)
- 0_____0 6y agoHard for me to imagine what it's like to spend years of your life working on a singular launch project. So much riding on what happens in a handful of moments, whether that's launch or EDL. Pretty sure I'd just start sobbing in the control room if that were me regardless of outcome.
- iexplainbtc 6y agoThese live streams are anxiety inducing for us, I can only imagine how they must feel!
- mrfusion 6y agoI thought they looked anxious and overheated.
- pupdogg 6y agoIt took them approx. 4,881 hours from launch to land approx. 127,770,000 miles away. Is it safe to say that the average speed of the mission can be calculated as 436 miles/hour?
- andbberger 6y agono. hohmann transfer, not a straight line. also there are no absolute reference frames.
- alkonaut 6y ago> also there are no absolute reference frames. "Well, officer, perhaps to you it seemed like I was speeding there..."
- mr_toad 6y agoJust, remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned A sun that is the source of all our power The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way - Monty Python.
- mikeyouse 6y agoI think you dropped a thousands somewhere.. 127.8M miles/4,881hrs = 26,000 mph.[1] But in reality, it obviously didn't fly in a straight line, Looks like it traveled closer to 292 million miles[2], so more like 60,000 mph.[3] [1] - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=127800000+miles%2F4881hrs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=127800000+miles%2F4881... [2] - https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/cruise/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/cruise/ [3] - https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=292526838+miles%2F4881hrs https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=292526838+miles%2F4881...
- pupdogg 6y ago
- runningmike 6y agoI never forget a great fosdem talk regarding living on mars. https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/living_on_mars/ https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/living_on_mar... unfortunately it turned out to be a hoax.
- Azrael3000 6y agoIt's a great achievement with some really interesting work done on the landing algorithms with terrain recognition and it seemed to have worked exceptionally well. Looking forward for the next landing in May of the Chinese rover and all the science these robots will produce. Also, the test of Ingenuity, the helicopter, will be very interesting to watch, that could really pave the way for a different exploration style in the future. And finally, maybe the next transfer window will already see some Starships, that would really change everything.
- jaegerpicker 6y agoIngenuity is maybe the most interesting and coolest advance for space travel. The idea of a remote drone to explore Mars is just rad! I can totally nerd out about that!
- kibwen 6y agoA great video where the host visits the drone, interviews its makers, and goes over the cool technical aspects of it and its mission: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
- suyash 6y agoMore about Ingenuity https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/aerospace/robotic-exploration/nasa-designed-perseverance-helicopter-rover-fly-autonomously-mars https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/aerospace/robotic-explor... and it's source code https://github.com/nasa/fprime https://github.com/nasa/fprime
- jvanderbot 6y agoThat is not Ingenuity's source code, that's the software framework used to link the various software modules. It's generic to any mission / instrument.
- suyash 6y ago
- jaegerpicker 6y agoSeeing the engineers and scientists celebrating the successful landing was one the best things I've seen in a LONG while. Very live affirming and inspiring to me!
- BurningFrog 6y agoIs part of the joy that they now have secure jobs for years to come?
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the engineers who worked on EDL move on to other projects in the coming weeks
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI think it's mostly the joy that their past decade or two of work wasn't wasted.
- jaegerpicker 6y agoMaybe but for me I think it would the joy of completing such a massive task so well. They literally just achieved something that no one else in history has.
- acomjean 6y agoIt is the fifth rover... But still super impressive feat, with years of detailed planning. I boogles my mind thinking about all the bits of engineering put together to make this happen. I can’t wait to see what it sends back. Always celebrate your successes.
- soheil 6y agoMost common assumption by outsiders is that they're happy that their many years of effort came to fruition, but I think a big part of is that they will be working on this mission for the foreseeable future as you point out. They get to tell their kids I worked on this mission, it was successful and then we made the rover do X, Y and Z in the next few years.
- notum 6y agoAny JPL/NASA HN users that could comment? That would be beyond awesome! Great job, mission!
- helmholtz 6y agoThey're all going to get wasted tonight, mate.
- throwawaygimp 6y agothats Mars 'tonight', of course
- raylus 6y agoJPL Engineer here, any questions I could convey to the slack I'll be glad to feed back to HN
- krysp 6y agoAwesome achievement! What was the part of the mission you were most concerned about / most likely to go wrong?
- vagrantJin 6y agoSick! Will this rover make contact with its forebears at some point?
- prox 6y agoI just want to thank you all for the wonderful time tonight, we’ve been watching with the family. Amazing accomplishment!
- michaelt 6y agoAwesome stuff. I couldn't help but wonder, while I watched the feed: What are the people in mission control doing during the landing? Obviously they're monitoring telemetry - but what else? Presumably the time delay precludes them triggering anything critical manually, and making post-launch software changes would be frowned upon?
- chrononaut 6y agoI included this the other day in the previous Perseverance thread but if you're excited for the Perseverance EDL video hopefully Doug Ellison's composite video of Curiosity's landing (from a single camera) can tie folks over in the mean time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZioPhfxnSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZioPhfxnSY
- dtjohnnyb 6y agoHave we any idea when that video will be released (roughly).
- MisterBiggs 6y agoNASA works.
- chasd00 6y agofricken awesome! i love being able to watch these things live. now i have to get back to work making pixels light up at the right time and the right color all day long.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crubier 6y agoSpace exploration is unlike anything else. Perfect combination of exploring unknowns + badass robots + science.
- nelsonmandela 6y agoApparently the copter was made with off-the-shelf parts. I wonder if I can cop a replica somewhere, and how it would fly considering it is built for martian air
- kibwen 6y agoHere's a really excellent video that answers all your questions: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM TL;DW: Martian atmosphere is so sparse that it's equivalent to flying at 100,000 feet on Earth. (The altitude record on Earth is 85,000 feet, set by the SR-71.) In order to fly at all the blades have to spin at nearly the (Martian) speed of sound. The drone wouldn't fly on Earth because the atmosphere is so dense that the blades would never make it up to speed.
- dralley 6y ago> (The altitude record on Earth is 85,000 feet, set by the SR-71.) The A-12 Arkangel flew higher (95,000 feet) and faster, but was short-lived and so highly classified that it doesn't hold any "official" records. And a MiG pilot flew up to 123,000 feet, but only on a ballistic trajectory, it wasn't a sustainable altitude.
- ggreer 6y agoIf it was made with off-the-shelf parts then it's a testament to how wasteful NASA has become. Building that helicopter took them 6 years and $80 million.[1] 1. See page 20 of the launch press kit: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/mars_2020/download/mars_2020_launch_press_kit.pdf https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/mars_2020/download/...
- vietjtnguyen 6y agoThey can't exactly procure a bunch of parts and then call it a day. Lots of the cost is tied to the verification and validation. Then there's the system design, requirements engineering, trade studies, system integration, engineering models, simulation, software, environmental testing, launch costs, ground command and data systems, interfacing with the rover, etc. Paying engineers to do all that is what makes it so expensive.
- tectonic 6y agoA super exciting and well-executed landing with years of practice ahead of time to make it look easy. Things I'm looking forward to: - Sample collection and caching for pickup by a future sample return mission - Flying an experimental helicopter on Mars - Gauging the habitability of its landing region (Jezero Crater, a paleo-lakebed with preserved river delta and sediments) and hunting for ancient microbial biosignatures (with lasers!) - A drill (that can cut intact rock cores, rather than pulverizing them like Curiosity) - An ISRU experiment that makes oxygen from CO2 - Way more advanced autonomous navigation
- hedgehog 6y agoI read that the design life of the helicopter is five flights. Does anyone know what the limiting factors are? The brutal cold and abrasive dust both seem like they could contribute but I am curious what the real answer is.
- dmurray 6y agoThe "design life" figure is something like the 5th percentile, if previous rovers are anything to go by. As in, they can estimate a 95% chance it makes it through 5 flights. I'd bet on it making 20+ at evens.
- m4rtink 6y agoIf we go by MER Opportunity standards (surviving 55x times its design timespan) we might go up to 275 flights! :D
- bluescrn 6y agoDust on the solar panel seems likely to be a problem after the first landing, unless it's got a clever way to keep it clean. And its got to be tough conditions for the battery, low temperatures and probably deep discharges to make the most of it.
- joeyh 6y agoIt's powered by plutonium. Rovers with solar panels deal with the dust by waiting for a storm to blow it away.
- bluescrn 6y agoPerseverance is powered by an RTG, but the Ingenuity, the helicopter, is powered by lithium-ion batteries recharged via a solar panel. I'd expect it to kick up a fair bit of dust on landing. But I suppose that's something else that'll behave a bit differently on Mars to what we'd expect in Earth's atmosphere.
- 6y ago
- davidw 6y agoI love space science and engineering! It's such a beacon of hope and a demonstration of what we can do when we work hard and innovate. And it's pretty interesting in its own right.
- jaegerpicker 6y agoYes, especially during the Covid pandemic and the political unrest in the US. Space exploration has helped keep me sane and to have some hope for mankind.
- me_me_me 6y agoHelicopters on Mars, what a time to be alive!
- sixothree 6y agoShout out to the team member with the "This is fine" plush dog on their desk.
- inspector-g 6y agoWatching the live feed was a blast. When they said they received the exact landing coordinates I was extremely curious to see it plotted vs their targeted landing zone, but unfortunately they haven't shown it yet. However, I could audibly hear an engineer in the background say "Oof, well, we'll take it!" Anyone seen anything about the precise location yet?
- tectonic 6y agohttps://twitter.com/jccwrt/status/1362514739671298051 https://twitter.com/jccwrt/status/1362514739671298051 > UNOFFICIAL but it looks like Percy landed right on the edge of the Mafic Floor Unit, with older (probably sedimentary) rocks that were buried by it only a short drive away.
- dylan604 6y agoIn one of the previous threads about Mars missions, one of the comments was how we have gotten to the ability of "land it close enough, and we'll drive the rest of the way". Seems pretty accurate for this mission.
- rpiguyshy 6y agoim really sad to say that NASAs website is an absolute dumpster fire... does anyone know of a simple repository of all the images and videos captured by each mission? i just want to flip through the pictures perseverance has taken so far without sifting through cancerous news sites. edit: the closest thing ive found is data.nasa.gov. how hard is it to just generate a fucking simple html website with chronologically ordered images? this is bullshit edit: ok, here is almost exactly what i wanted: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ the internet really sucks compared to what it might be... go to nasa.gov and click percy mission from the drop down and it takes you to a part of nasa.gov thats filled with eye-cancer tiles and javascript with sensor imaging mixed in with PR images and promotional material. but they tuck the (sort of) clean, organized data into some other website basically? maybe its a small gripe but this way of doing it is disorganized and infuriating. edit: wow, this website is fucking amazing! you can see the real-time position of all nasa mars vehicles 3D google earth style: https://mars.nasa.gov/explore/mars-now/ https://mars.nasa.gov/explore/mars-now/ anyone who has not looked around in mars.nasa.gov should bookmark that right away curiosity shots: https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895098/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895098/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/896437/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/896437/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895971/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895971/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895971/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895971/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895077/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/895077/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/891625/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/891625/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/888957/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/888957/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/887028/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/887028/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/886343/?site=msl https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/886343/?site=msl
- ashton314 6y agoPart of me is sad that I’m too young to have seen the moon landings. But stuff like this gives me a taste of the thrill of those days. Congratulations to everybody at NASA. Thank you for this inspiring endeavor!
- unanswered 6y agoSomething I don't understand: when they say "X is 1 minute from happening", does that mean it's really 1 minute from happening or does that mean "in 1 minute we'll receive the signal that X has happened"? Maybe my question makes more sense in the case of "X is happening right now", because then I should either understand "we infer that X should have happened right about now" or "we have confirmed via signal that X has happened", and that's a big big difference. I know in some cases they explicitly say the latter, so I guess my real real question is, do they just keep the communication delay implied in all countdowns & references in discussion, to avoid confusion? (ETA: No need to let me know about simultaneity problems in relativity — earth and mars are, relative to c and to macroscopic time scales, essentially not moving relative to each other AFAIK, so that simultaneity is essentially well-defined. My question was about a much more boring classical-universe problem.)
- Sharlin 6y agoYes, those are all Earth Receive Time, that is, when they were saying that eg. entry interface is two minutes away, in reality the rover was already sitting on the surface and we were just waiting for the radio signal to get here.
- unanswered 6y ago> Earth Receive Time Ah great, that's a great phrase to make everything clear and provide a kind of "frame of reference" to think & communicate in. Always need these abstractions.
- m4rtink 6y agoThe local Czech stream (20k viewers!) I watched went over the events in real time and then commented how events were happening as signals were received on Earth - with the final confirmation of successful landing coming first via Twitter, no less! :) Still a very nice yet nerve wrecking idea to do it like this - you know the lander is on Mars now. But is it safely on the ground or is there a third Shapirelli crater now ? You don't know! A huge relief in the end. :)
- matt-attack 6y ago
- pjfin123 6y agoExciting time to be alive!
- pklausler 6y agoI very much enjoyed learning a new acronym: SUFR ("straighten up & fly right", if I remember rightly).
- Daho0n 6y agoI stopped watching videos like these when they started chanting like some crazy cult when things went well (USA! USA! USA!). No wonder we can't just get along.
- Ftuuky 6y agoI'm not american but still enjoyed the landing very much. They sent a freaking nuclear-powered jeep to the surface of another planet, they can gloat all they want.
- Daho0n 6y agoI'm not saying anything bad about the landing. It was a great feat. I just find the chanting often done in US videos disgusting.
- frabbit 6y agoCertainly took away from the experience for me. Also the constant clapping was irritating along with the guy going "yes, yess" towards the end. Not enough info, too much "personality" and "team work". Waste of time watching it really.
- sabujp 6y agocan't wait for the choppah
- sethbannon 6y agoThese accomplishments are so damn inspiring. Reminds me of this West Wing clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2HzHSeV9v8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2HzHSeV9v8
- skapadia 6y agoGreat, humans are starting to accumulate trash on Mars before we even step foot. Descent stage, heat shield. Pile it up!
- chasd00 6y agoheh my 11 year old quipped "i bet the martians are like 'these guys!? again??'". it made me laugh pretty hard
- rnikander 6y agoI wish they'd put a robot like this on Europa. Something that could drill into the ice and look for life in the (possible) ocean underneath.
- ilrwbwrkhv 6y agoIt brings tears to my eyes. When the touchdown happens, these people experience a level of joy and satisfaction which I can only dream of while doing my job of optimizing ad clicks and profile photos.
- ckosidows 6y agoI can't find this information online... There were four cameras capturing video of the descent. Do we know when that footage will be available? Days? Weeks? Months?
- aaron695 6y agoI don't get why they had to bring the children into this asking questions constantly. Do we really want to reinforce this is just for children? SpaceX doesn't do this. They are always top quality. Adults doing professional things in space, that to me is more inspiring to children and young adults. Can't they have an adult stream and one dumbed down for the children if they really think these things should be dumbed down. It was better than ESA I guess
- science4sail 6y agoI wonder if it's a case of misaimed audience? Even though "children asking questions" may be less appealing to children than "adults asking questions", the former might get aired anyway because it's more appealing to the adults that make children's programs.
- simonlang 6y agoA few years ago I made a mars rover image viewer for a job interview question. Will have to update it if images from Perseverance become available through the NASA Open APIs. https://simon-lang.github.io/mars-rover-image-viewer/#/collected https://simon-lang.github.io/mars-rover-image-viewer/#/colle...
- soheil 6y agoSo where are the images? (not the black and white fisheye)
- FredFS456 6y agoIt will be a while before they get better images downlinked. The radio link is unbelievably slow by modern internet standards[0]. Note that the faster 2 Mbps link is only available when one of the orbiters is overhead (4-6 times/martian day[1]). They also have a lot of work to do checking out the rover systems making sure everything is healthy, etc. [0] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio... [1] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/communications/
- perryizgr8 6y agoI must say that this mission is highly disappointing. No risks, no major progress, no pushing the limits. What does NASA have to show for a decade of work, since Curiosity landed in 2012? A toy helicopter, a drill that poops pellets. Billions of dollars and millions of man-hours later, this is the only progress. The truth is NASA has become extremely conservative and slow. Compare this to the moon landing. NASA went from one man in Earth orbit in 1961 to people walking on the moon as a matter of routine in 1969. That is the pace needed for serious technological progress in space. We must let NASA die, and let others pursue these feats, people who have a real passion for space exploration. If NASA had only a bit of passion, they would have sent men on this mission, based on all the learnings from Curiosity. Defund NASA.
- ssijak 6y agoIt is just mind boggling that something so far away is autonomously landing on a another planet in such a complicated manner and reporting back to us. Humans can be amazing, this kind of achievements always make me tear up from joy.
- jb1991 6y agoI can't find any articles that highlight what that component that "flies away" after the landing is going to do next. Does it just get dumped somewhere? Does it go back into orbit?
- Plutoberth 6y agoIt GTFO with its remaining fuel and then crash lands. Going back to orbit would require enormous amounts of fuel.
- ncmncm 6y agoIt's funny that they never say. (My mother-in-law asked if it would go back to orbit, too.) Saying "it flies far enough away to be sure it won't hit the lander when it crashes" would sound funny. They never seem to drive over to check it out, either, AFAIK. It started with ~800 lbs of hydrazine fuel on board that had to slow tons moving at 200 mph to a dead stop, and then hover for 10+ seconds while the lander spun down; and then boost away and crash. ("Crash-land" sounds like entirely more control than what really happened.)
- solipsism 6y agoIt flies either forward (with respect to the rover) or backward -- whichever is closer to North -- and crash lands on the surface some distance away.
- justforfunhere 6y agoThey have put onboard, microphones for the first time, two of them. We should be able to get some recorded sounds of Martian surface soon. The EDL phase was quite complex this time. The cameras took pictures of the surface while landing and compared them to the maps it had from orbital missions. Using these two, it decided in realtime, which place would be the best of the its landing. This made it possible for it land in a more difficult terrain, like the crater where it landed.
- JebusAustralia 6y agoPlease donate ethereum to this address as I am being kept hostage by a psychopath called Satoshi Nakamoto. He has scattered all of my personal information and economical research all over youtube, cnbc, techcrunch, the local mainstream media in the netherlands. https://ibb.co/74qYknK https://ibb.co/74qYknK
- mam2 6y agolive or fear.. you have to chose
- happy-go-lucky 6y agoAn exceptional feat of the human intellect. Bravo!
- wiz21c 6y agoI'm a bit surprised that NASA doesn't communicate anymore since they landed the rover. I thought other pictures would come today in the morning...
- throwaway542 6y agoFun fact: The rover used software from Bellard's FFMPEG.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoSome shower thought: Mars is outside all jurisdictions. Crime on Mars is not possible at the moment. There are no governments on Mars. Meaning, no taxes either. Mars may become some sort of tax haven, and companies will move their HQs to Mars to avoid taxes. But then, you won't be able to receive correspondence on Mars. Then, extradition from Mars would be so expensive it would not be even feasible.
- leshow 6y agoI feel like NASA really stepped up their game with the telecasts, learning lessons from SpaceX. SpaceX has been making an effort to make the livestreams much more accessible.
- playingchanges 6y agoI saw a video on tiktok a girl uploaded of her dad who was somehow involved in the project. His reaction to the successful landing was so emotional I found myself a little envious. Like the dude had just won the Super Bowl of tech. And didn’t he? What a feeling, congrats to everyone involved!