That's a New One, Blue Skies over Mars (Curiosity, not Total Recall)

Peccavi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmWAyQxqqs

Those crazy NASA scientists are at it again. The Curiosity is about to complete its interplanetary voyage, and the only think keeping it from being a $2,500,000,000 crater on Mars' surface is a Rube Goldberg-esque landing system. And best of all, we get to watch live (minus NBC's tape delay) as the rover crashes and burns. Coverage begins at 11:30 E.T., Watch all the excitement of NASA scientists worriedly staring at their monitors (for two hours, the actual landing doesn't happen until 1:30 AM E.T.) What will Curiosity find? Water? Martians? Gary Sinise???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-QNAiA7LA

Woo! Mars!

Peccavi

Where Can I Watch This?

Buy an X-Box 360, Buy X-Box Live, and watch on their stream. Or find the stream on the internet somewhere, maybe the NASA website, I dunno.

Peccavi

NASA people just clapped on screen. Possibly a good sign.

JayKaos

The NASA Tv link, courtesy of whoever posted it in the space thread, is here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Currently they're talking about space education or something so no point opening that for another half hour.

Peccavi

And now they are interviewing esteemed scientist will.i.am

The Betgirl

he's had a long time to study the gravitational pull of fergie's booty

satansfingers

it's nice that they interviewed him so early on because it instructed me that it was time to mute it and come back in a while

WeedLordVegeta

Today while we celebrate the beginning of a new mission, we can never forget the tireless efforts of Spirit and opportunity, who exceeded their expected mission window by 25 times its original length as a team.

Never forget.

Never... forget...

JayKaos

Yeah at 11:30 they said they'd be starting the actual mars landing coverage in half an hour, so it's pretty much gonna be celebrities and people talking about education until then. Beats the live feed of the control room with nothing happening in it... but not by much.

Peccavi

Hullis wrote: »

Today while we celebrate the beginning of a new mission, we can never forget the tireless efforts of Spirit and opportunity, who exceeded their expected mission window by 25 times its original length as a team.

Never forget.

Never... forget...

Maybe Spirit should've been more like Opportunity.

UnbreakableVow

I've been seeing things about this

Why is this a big deal, exactly?

Wasn't there a Mars rover thing like years ago?

No Great Name

JayKaos wrote: »

Yeah at 11:30 they said they'd be starting the actual mars landing coverage in half an hour, so it's pretty much gonna be celebrities and people talking about education until then. Beats the live feed of the control room with nothing happening in it... but not by much.

You're big into robotics right, I remember that from back in the day.

Peccavi

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

I've been seeing things about this

Why is this a big deal, exactly?

Wasn't there a Mars rover thing like years ago?

This one's harder, better, faster, stronger.

UnbreakableVow

The most depressing thing I can think of is constantly sending shit to other planets and never finding anything at all

Depressing, and a little funny

I'm not sure if I root more for us actually finding things or just realizing we're not going to find shit at any time in the immediate future

Ubik

what are these things we're not finding?

The Betgirl

hey, we'll never find anything at all if we don't look

I think it's a good idea to explore!

UnbreakableVow

What are things we are finding, is a better question

Besides things that just support theories

I want something fucking big and groundbreaking

Like in the '60s, you know, going to the moon, that was huge, it didn't really matter that there was nothing there

But after that it's like "well, we can take all these pretty pictures and we can speculate all day" but it feels like nothing major has really happened since then

WeedLordVegeta

uh, the shit we're finding on Mars is fairly important on a cosmological scale

just cause we're not trippin' over lightsabers and phasers and battlestars left and right doesn't mean that these excursions aren't finding stuff

JayKaos

No Great Name wrote: »

JayKaos wrote: »

Yeah at 11:30 they said they'd be starting the actual mars landing coverage in half an hour, so it's pretty much gonna be celebrities and people talking about education until then. Beats the live feed of the control room with nothing happening in it... but not by much.

You're big into robotics right, I remember that from back in the day.

Oh yeah, used to be way into it. Ended up going into more generic CS stuff but anything involving robots or space still gets me all excited.

And now they're talking about a curiosity rover iPad app. Fascinating stuff.

UnbreakableVow

Well

I'll come back when they find water, Martians or Gary Sinise

Bendery It Like Beckham

I think successfully launching something to mars is pretty successful... especially considering the budget NASA has.

Ubik

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

What are things we are finding, is a better question

Besides things that just support theories

I want something fucking big and groundbreaking

Like in the '60s, you know, going to the moon, that was huge, it didn't really matter that there was nothing there

But after that it's like "well, we can take all these pretty pictures and we can speculate all day" but it feels like nothing major has really happened since then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover

Mission highlights include completion of the 90 Sol (90 Martian days) mission, discovery of an extramartian meteorite (Meridiani Planum), and over two years studying Victoria crater.

Opportunity has successfully investigated soil and rock samples and taken panoramic photos of its landing site. Its sampling allowed NASA scientists to make hypotheses concerning the presence of hematite and past presence of water on the surface of Mars. Following this, it was directed to travel across the surface of Mars to investigate another crater site, Endurance crater, which it investigated from June – December 2004. Subsequently, Opportunity examined the impact site of its own heat shield and discovered an intact meteorite, now known as Heat Shield Rock, on the surface of Mars.

like it's not all about finding alien artifacts

JayKaos

Okay at midnight they're gonna start the actual Curiosity landing coverage. Supposedly.

Viscount Islands

That 7 minutes video was like a ME prequel trailer

UnbreakableVow

Ubik wrote: »

like it's not all about finding alien artifacts

Well maybe it should be

Nah but this is cool though I guess

I thought NASA just basically stopped existing and got their funding pulled so good for them

#pipe

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

Well

I'll come back when they find water, Martians or Gary Sinise

Man they found water years ago.

Also it's interesting because Spirit was active for 6 years, but it only covered a distance of 25 miles or so. In a straight line. And Curiousity is landing in an entirely different part of the planet.

It's like exploring one third of Honalulu and wondering why theres any need to explore the rest of the Earth.

Barcardi

Is this on cnn or the nasa channel or what?

God i love this re-invigoration of NASA missions.

THESPOOKY

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

I've been seeing things about this

Why is this a big deal, exactly?

Wasn't there a Mars rover thing like years ago?

I mean, it's a greatly improved rover and all, but either way--we are putting a fucking ROBOT onto MARS

That will never stop being a big deal until we have human boots on Mars, and even then. Shit. It's a robot that can go from atmospheric entry to gentle landing on its own.

Tasteticle

cross posting this from my facebook:

I am watching people land a fucking robot on another goddamn planet on my xbox while eating shawarma that was delivered to my door. What a fucking age we live in.

JayKaos

Barcardi wrote: »

Is this on cnn or the nasa channel or what?

God i love this re-invigoration of NASA missions.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

And I guess there's apps and shit to watch it too.

GSM

The whole sky crane thing is so interesting. I'm going to go reinstall celestia and look for a plugin to show where curiosity is going to land.

Fencingsax

http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow

Weaver

Use eyes.nasa.gov

Gatsby

Tasteticle wrote: »

cross posting this from my facebook:

I am watching people land a fucking robot on another goddamn planet on my xbox while eating shawarma that was delivered to my door. What a fucking age we live in.

I love that moment of realisation with how fucking crazy our world and technology is right now.

Fencingsax

Ustream is better than the one I posted, I think.

Peccavi

At some point early in the broadcast I thought they mentioned a stream that was just the control room, without all the fluff of the main stream. Does anyone have a link for that?

Gatsby

Weaver wrote: »

Use eyes.nasa.gov

Here's a nice entertaining video showing it off. It's a wonderful way to view all of this stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlMenHQgdog&feature=g-u-u

Druhim

UnbreakableVow wrote: »

What are things we are finding, is a better question

Besides things that just support theories

I want something fucking big and groundbreaking

Like in the '60s, you know, going to the moon, that was huge, it didn't really matter that there was nothing there

But after that it's like "well, we can take all these pretty pictures and we can speculate all day" but it feels like nothing major has really happened since then

Maybe you shouldn't make assertions like this from a position of ignorance.

Druhim

Fencingsax wrote: »

Ustream is better than the one I posted, I think.

Yeah, I'm finding ustream is working really well.

Weaver

Gatsby wrote: »

Tasteticle wrote: »

cross posting this from my facebook:

I am watching people land a fucking robot on another goddamn planet on my xbox while eating shawarma that was delivered to my door. What a fucking age we live in.

I love that moment of realisation with how fucking crazy our world and technology is right now.

Once sat outside at a baseball game watching STS-125 work on the Hubble on my phone.

Weaver

Dudes how rad would it be in this rover had one of those little quadrotor UAVs