11 ms·
Mars Curiosity's first images
- patdennis 14y agoMy god, the energy in that room was amazing. Just watching how happy they were was worth staying up late for.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago"Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"
- noonespecial 14y agoOr another world, as it were, in this case.
- JumpCrisscross 14y agoI figured a paraphrasing along the lines of "Do you want to sell shiny phones..." or "Do you want to work on ways to share cat pictures..." would be more appropriate.
- andrewfelix 14y agoSo glad I watched. Anyone else hear the F bomb and 'Holy Shit'?
- jlgreco 14y agoI liked that bit. Drove home the humanity of the people who had just accomplished something that only a few thousand years ago was thought to be in the domain of gods. That we as a species have come so far but still retain our sense of self is fantastic.
- mikeleeorg 14y agoI loved the humor from the MarsCuriosity Twitter account too. http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity You could totally they were having a great time there.
- mladenkovacevic 14y agoMy favourite one is "Cruise stage separation complete. So long & thanks for all the navigation."
- InclinedPlane 14y agoHundred. A few hundred years ago.
- mattdeboard 14y agoEven still you're overestimating the science education -- or even the willingness to believe the science education they did receive is credible -- of modern society.
- jlgreco 14y agoDepressing, but true.
- rhplus 14y agoThere must've been some cathartic cursing in NASA mission control in 1969, right? They just didn't stream it live... http://www.theonion.com/articles/july-21-1969,10515/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/july-21-1969,10515/
- mikeknoop 14y agoFrom the other thread: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-05%2022%3A38%3A06.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-0...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- artursapek 14y agoFrom a screen recording I took: http://i.imgur.com/C5Y6P.jpg http://i.imgur.com/C5Y6P.jpg I actually shed a tear. That was beautiful. Edit: Raw images being put on Twitter by NASA: http://p.twimg.com/Azl6LRUCMAAU1GK.jpg:large http://p.twimg.com/Azl6LRUCMAAU1GK.jpg:large http://p.twimg.com/Azl9hyXCEAE5_Hw.jpg:large http://p.twimg.com/Azl9hyXCEAE5_Hw.jpg:large http://p.twimg.com/Azl7LXOCUAAJT5z.jpg:large http://p.twimg.com/Azl7LXOCUAAJT5z.jpg:large
- damncabbage 14y agoIs that... a Tcl/Tk app being run in GNOME?
- hartror 14y agoThat was my thought as well as I was watching the coverage. Not surprising given there are a lot of old school engineers at NASA/JPL.
- mbell 14y agoHere is the answer, it was written quite a while ago judging by the missions it has been used on: http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/5697 http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/5697
- mbell 14y agoPretty sure the GUI toolkit is Motif, window borders do look like gnome though.
- raverbashing 14y agoMaybe the legendary Xv they used on Sojourney? (by the photo looks like something like it, stil...)
- duskwuff 14y agoPhoto says it's xvd. Some sort of custom tool: http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/vicar/vicar300/html/vichelp/xvd.html http://www-mipl.jpl.nasa.gov/vicar/vicar300/html/vichelp/xvd...
- fl3tch 14y agoIt's times like this that I think everyone can be proud to be part of the human race.
- arethuza 14y agoPersonally, I think the tax payers of the United States deserve a round of applause from the rest of us for funding such a mission. It's not that other countries can't do this - we just don't want to pay for it...
- alanfalcon 14y agoI saw a Twitter comment during the celebration suggesting that NASA run a $30B Kickstarter to fund the first manned mission to Mars. [Setting aside legal issues] would the human race come together and pay for it? I like to think "yes", it would be a successful funding effort.
- robryan 14y agoYeah, wish Australia would take a more active role in space exploration.
- flgb 14y agoSome of the tracking stations for the project are in Australia, including the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex. Perhaps it's a small contribution but Australia is definitely involved.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoAccording to some tweets I saw, the first images back came through Canberra.
- petitmiam 14y agoTime for a sequel to 'The Dish'.
- keva161 14y agoWell done to the whole team who made this happen! Now go find some aliens!
- cindywu123 14y agoI truly hope curiosity uncovers some new friends for us earthlings!
- Achshar 14y agohttp://pic.twitter.com/894ouNJt http://pic.twitter.com/894ouNJt http://pic.twitter.com/qSDmNS9H http://pic.twitter.com/qSDmNS9H The page has not been updated yet as of now.
- VMG 14y agothe Motif interface is a nice touch
- haeikou 14y agoI had the impression that the whole "control" room was nothing but show. Estimating the travelling times of a radio wave, nobody on earth could have had any control about the spacecraft, and none of the engineers in the control room could have done anything other than watch. So if anybody is more involved into the mission than I am ... is my impression correct, or were there actual fallback mechanisms that these people could have decided upon?
- mikeknoop 14y agoThey committed ("non-reversible changes" on the livestream) to the landing about 20, 30 minutes prior to entry.
- ars 14y agoI think they were there in case of problems. Plus the post landing checklist, which they are doing now.
- lusr 14y agoWhat did you expect them to do? Go home and go to sleep and come back in the morning to check the logs? Come on. They'd hardly close their eyes for a second with all the excitement. They're all there monitoring the various systems because they're all responsible for various components of an incredibly complex piece of equipment. Assuming the landing goes well, they all still need to be there to continually monitor the operation of the systems they're responsible for and provide feedback if things don't like how they expected - it's not just about landing there. This is normal even when releasing a tiny piece of software; it's hardly surprising NASA do the same for a multi-billion dollar project.
- zerohp 14y agoThey made it very clear in the press conferences earlier in the day that they have no more control during EDL than the viewer watching it at home. I don't think the control room was "nothing but show." They certainly could have all gone home, but given the time and energy invested in this mission over the last decade, It was importent to monitor the event as it happened even if it cannot be controlled.
- 14y ago
- bfe 14y agoWhat a great achievement of heroic engineering! I can't wait to watch what comes next.
- joering2 14y agoI took those during landing sequence.. http://i45.tinypic.com/353eemc.jpg http://i45.tinypic.com/353eemc.jpg http://i46.tinypic.com/ej95s5.png http://i46.tinypic.com/ej95s5.png http://i49.tinypic.com/2qicoqq.png http://i49.tinypic.com/2qicoqq.png http://i50.tinypic.com/2hd8j13.png http://i50.tinypic.com/2hd8j13.png edit: its just fun to watch those. also, according to NASA there is 500,000 lines of code behind those 38 steps.. would love to see some parts of it!
- marvin 14y agoThat's really cool. Would love it if they had some video, or alternatively made a visualization of the entire landing sequence using received data. Like for instance a video of the telemetry you took screenshots of.
- joering2 14y agoyes. or at least upload full video-stream of those screenshots. hope to see this on yt soon!
- Wingman4l7 14y agoAn excellent, data-rich visualization was done for the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia08117.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia0811...
- marvin 14y agoExactly something like that I am looking for, thanks
- trafficlight 14y agoI believe there will be video from the perspective of the crane throughout the landing.
- marvin 14y ago
- glimcat 14y agoImages are up now on the raw feed. They're getting F5ed hard, so actually seeing anything may take a bit. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ Images are grouped by Martian solar days (sol 0 == day 0, length 24h 39.6m).
- jessriedel 14y agoHas anyone mirrored these yet?
- dfc 14y agoWhat is "F5ed"?
- trafficlight 14y agoPage refreshed.
- dchuk 14y agof5 is usually the keyboard shortcut to refresh a browser window
- mrpollo 14y agoprobably "refreshed", F5 is sometimes the shortcut for refresh on some Browser's
- kyberias 14y agoEveryone refreshing their browsers by pressing F5. :)
- angersock 14y agoDid anyone grab the image with some purple on it in a grid pattern? I didn't get a good look at it.
- jessriedel 14y agoDoes anyone know how close to their target landing spot they reached?
- keidian 14y agoI believe they said 232 meters at one point, not sure if that was 100% confirmed though
- iamdave 14y agoRemarkable accuracy, given the context.
- jessriedel 14y agoWow. According to Wikipedia, their elliptical landing zone was 20km by 7 km. That puts them in the center 2% of that zone.
- jessriedel 14y agoEstimating from this picture (image 7), they weren't quite that good: http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/NASA-Curiosity-rover-sends-back-1st-color-picture-3767621.php#photo-3293036 http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/NASA-Curiosity-rover-...
- smudgy 14y agoIncredible, congratulations NASA, what happened today was nothing short of miraculous.
- hybrid11 14y agoFrom NASA's twitter, you can see one of Curiosity's wheel in this one: https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232354875189628929 https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232354875189628929
- joshontheweb 14y agoWhat innovations from this vehicle can we expect to see trickle down into the consumer space?
- ars 14y agoFirst you need a time machine. These types of trickle down are not identified till much later. If you knew what it would be in advance you wouldn't need it to trickle down - you could just use or develop it directly.
- joshontheweb 14y agoI'm sure there are people in the HN community that are familiar with it's build and could make some predictions.
- rm999 14y agoI think the Curiosity team would object to your answer. They've been working on the project for almost a decade, have spent thousands (millions?) of man-hours on it, and have written 500,000 lines of code to control it. The dollar amount that has gone into building it is greater than the value of many fortune 500 companies! There are probably some awesome innovations that came out of such a large project, it's a great question to ask.
- tomjakubowski 14y agoThose 500k LOC are just for the EDL. Wonder what they wrote it in, presumably C? http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2012/july/0726-ss-msl.html http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2012/ju...
- iamdave 14y agoI've been hearing (sic: reading) a few folks suggesting actually python. This was in the ##curiosity IRC chat this morning during the landing
- 14y ago
- DanBC 14y agoThis is amazing. I hope that school children are given time to watch this. I hope that parents and teachers have the skills and knowledge to foster the Curiosity-driven curiosity of those children.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIf I had kids, I'd definitely let them stay up to watch this and skip the first half of the school day.
- hrayr 14y agoI've been watching for 3 hours, I accidentally closed my browser during the sky crane step, by the time I opened the ustream feed, they were already cheering... I missed out.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoIf it helps there wasn't really anything to see, so to speak. Watching it live was more of an emotional viewing than a technical one.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jon6 14y agoWhat are those pictures of? This one http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/workspace/apss/ORT-14/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397504842EDR_F0010000AUT_04096Z_-thm.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/workspace/apss/ORT-1... Looks like a building with a garage door on it and some random pipes sticking out.
- akash2005 14y agoSeems the picture is down, any mirror?
- shiftb 14y agohttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=FRA_397502305EDR_D0010000AUT_04096M_&s=0 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=FRA_39750... I see the same thing.
- icoder 14y agoIsn't this just its shadow?
- DanBC 14y agoThat image is taken with the front right Hazcam. Here's an image of Curiosity, so maybe you can work out the shadow form this? (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120803.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120803.html)
- ddfisher 14y agoI believe this is the shadow of the rover.
- jodoherty 14y agoThat's a photo of the ground with the rover's shadow projected onto it by some backlighting, suggesting that the specific camera that took that photo is facing away from the sun and down towards the ground. Because there's no sky present in that shot, the exposure is set so that the ground is bright and the shadow is darker. Meanwhile, if you look at the other photos with the horizon present (e.g. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=RLA_397502188EDR_D0010000AUT_04096M_&s=0 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=RLA_39750... ), the ground is dark because in order to capture the details in the bright sky, the exposure has to be adjusted so that less total light is captured (usually by using a faster shutter speed). Otherwise, you'd blow out the sky and get no details there. It looks like the dynamic range of these cameras is limited, so keep that in mind when looking at any photos that come out of them. Something that's bright in one shot might be extremely dark in another, depending on its relative brightness compared to other parts of the scene. Take a look at the last few rear camera shots with the sun in them: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=0 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?s=0 The sun causes all the sky detail from the previous rear camera shots to appear black, since its overwhelming brightness requires the exposure to be extremely brief. Anyway, I hope that gives you a better idea of what to expect from these cameras and how to interpret the photos.
- kooshball 14y agoThey're doing a live press conference now. http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/mars/curiosity_news3.html http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/mars/curiosity_news3.html
- noinput 14y agoOne I took as well. So fantastic http://instagr.am/p/N-bAAmrEhM/ http://instagr.am/p/N-bAAmrEhM/
- thomson 14y agoThis tweet reminded me of what's next: "RT @DanielBrian: I love that @MarCuriosity launched Nov '11 but @NewHorizons2015 launched '06 & won't arrive @Pluto til 2015! Space is huge!" https://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015/status/232362259475742720 https://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015/status/23236225947574272... New Horzons is the spacecraft currently on its way to Pluto--it's expected to be in range in about three years or so.
- shiftb 14y agoIs everyone getting an Unauthorized response now?
- qptopm 14y agovery interesting news about mars, http://www.qualitypoint.blogspot.in/2012/08/curiosity-rover-landed-on-mars.html http://www.qualitypoint.blogspot.in/2012/08/curiosity-rover-...
- erikstarck 14y agoThat's one small step for a robot, but a giant leap for robotkind.
- srik 14y ago"Far better it is, to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
- sean-duffy 14y agoFantastic quote, I think that symbolises what NASA have accomplished, and what inspiration it should bring to everyone who knows about it.
- shin_lao 14y agoAnd in a couple of days, if everything goes fine, we'll have a couple of color, HD pictures of Mars. I'm very excited about it.
- Nux 14y agoGreat historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?
- icoder 14y agoI was thinking exactly the same thing, kind of embarassed because it feels 'spoiled' (not the right word but can't find any better). Glad I'm not alone on this. My hopes are that this is simply my lack of understanding and that it's simply night there now (does it work like that?), or that not all systems are up and running yet.
- josso 14y agoWe'll get better hi-res images, in color, later. They did after all just exclaim "We got thumbnails!" when the first image arrived.
- Sharlin 14y agoThese images are from a couple of the four pairs of Hazard Avoidance Cameras (HazCams) installed around the body of the rover. Their function is primarily to provide stereoscopic images for the rover's machine vision to analyze, enabling the rover to autonomously steer itself to a degree and halt if an unexpected hazard (for instance, a large boulder) comes up during movement. The HazCams also had clear lens covers in place to protect the lenses from all the dust blown around by the landing rockets. These were not yet removed in the very first images -- indeed, the reason they're clear is that even if for some reason a cover gets stuck, a dusty image is better than no image at all. Moreover, as the first communications opportunity was rather short, and the high-bandwidth directional antenna is not yet unfolded, there was simply no bandwidth available to downlink very high-resolution images. The mast of the rover, containing the high-resolution NavCams and MastCams, is still folded up. If all goes well, it will be raised in a couple of days and higher-res images beamed up in due course. Here's a nice article on Curiosity's various cameras: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-226 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-226
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Bjoern 14y agoThe Curiosity rover runs on VxWorks. Does anyone know what gives VxWorks an edge over other (embedded) RTOS systems out there that qualifies it for tasks like this? Particularly open ones?
- wglb 14y agoNot specifically, but it has been used for many years by NASA missions, so there is a lot of experience and knowledge behind it in this kind of thing.
- tocomment 14y agoTwo billion dollars and they couldn't put a color camera on it :-(
- chucknelson 14y agoThey have at least one color camera that "is like a consumer point and shoot" on the mast. The pictures released are from the very technically-limited hazard cams, which are really only for the drivers to see what they have to deal with. Within a week we should see some full-color images coming in.
- jasonlotito 14y agoThere is a color camera on it. It's just not deployed yet. https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232412416728788992 https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232412416728788992
- steauengeglase 14y agoAs I understand they do, but even if you had it been deployed seconds after it touched down, the wait for returning images would have been a while. Packet radio from that distance is no joke. From Earth I'd rather have a few crappy thumbnails to confirm that the vehicle wasn't upside down or something in a few minutes than something National Geographic worthy in a few days.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cs702 14y agoI can't help but share the headline in The New Yorker's Fake News & Political Satire section: "Mars Rover Should Not Get So Much Attention, Say Higgs-Boson Scientists."[1] Humor aside, this is a sign that we're living in interesting times: two major human achievements occurring within a few weeks of each other. All I can say is, wow. I love it. -- [1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/08/mars-rover-should-not-get-so-much-attention-say-higgs-boson-scientists.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/08...
- mattbanner 14y agoMore news Here: http://goo.gl/325Mu http://goo.gl/325Mu
- goatforce5 14y agoAs an aside, their Twitter account mentions that it was an observatory in Australia that was relaying the signals from Mars: http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232337630711382017 http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232337630711382017 As it happens, it was an Australian observatory that relayed the first video of Armstrong walking on the moon. There was a fun movie made (made by the D-Generation/Working Dog guys) based on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish
- mchusma 14y agoInteresting quote from NASA about the cost of these images: “This movie cost you less than seven bucks per American citizen, and look at the excitement we got,” Dr. Elachi said.
- dgdg 14y agoLooks like the webpage was created by the Mars scientists themselves. They should entrust that job to a web designer.
- cutie 14y agoScientists were making web pages when you was in diapers, kid. I was there, working at Rockwell in '94.
- dgdg 14y agoThat's what I'm saying, they were. They shouldn't. Like CERN announcement in Comic Sans.
- cutie 14y agoThe promise of the web was the democratization of publishing... anyone could do it, cutting out the middle-men. Now you tell us a "professional" has to be involved, no thanks. As long as its readable I'm happy. I look at a lot of these professionally designed sites in the way you do this one, too much. I'd prefer the traditional black Times on a grey background.
- nitrogen 14y agoIn 3D: http://i.imgur.com/PyxeK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PyxeK.jpg Edit: colorized version as it might look on Earth, with significant artistic license taken (the Martian sky is less interesting [0]): http://i.imgur.com/oRCVX.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oRCVX.jpg (updated with wheel colors) I've distorted and level adjusted the images to my aesthetic taste, and assembled the rear hazcam images into a stereo pair for RDS-style viewing. Zoom out in your browser or image viewer, get close-ish to the screen, then look through the monitor until the red dots (or any other parts of the images) are in alignment. Continue to zoom in or out until your eyes are somewhat comfortable. It is a privilege to be one of the first human beings to see this section of Mars in 3D photos. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_surface_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_surface_color
- nitrogen 14y agoCorrection: I used the front hazcam images from http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]