Mars rover Curiosity lands tonight

[EngineNo9]

Anybody else going to be watching as the Mars rover lands tonight?  It's supposed to hit down at 10:31pm Pacific, 1:31am Eastern and I guess you can watch it from your Xbox 360 or the NASA site. 

I guess this is pretty huge for NASA, and obviously with things like the 7 Minutes of Terror video they are trying to build some visibility and interest among the public.

Hopefully it doesn't crash.   

[metallicorphan]

yeah beta testers on the 360 can't watch it ,Major Nelson was meant to be getting back to us,but it doesn't look like its gonna happen,so if i am up i will watch it on NASA's site instead

352 million miles away that took 8 and a half months to get there,speeds of 8000mph until Gravity of Mars pulls it to 13,200mph 

[wonderpug]

 I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.

[CeeKay]

Is it real or fake like the moon landings?   

[Ironrod]

I'll be watching. I've been following this mission since it launched. NASA needs a success here if they hope to ever get funding for future big-budget missions (Curiosity cost $2.5 billion, compared to <$500 million for their Discovery-class probes). Plus it should answer the question of whether Mars was able to support life in the past, and possibly even whether it might still do so today. (It's not looking for life specifically, but rather conditions conducive to life.)

Yeah, I'm geeked.

[Fireball1244]

It's such a complicated landing. I hope it all works out okay. Seven minutes of terror indeed!

[EngineNo9]

yeah beta testers on the 360 can't watch it ,Major Nelson was meant to be getting back to us,but it doesn't look like its gonna happen,so if i am up i will watch it on NASA's site instead

I'm in the beta and I downloaded the thing to view it fine.  Countdown 2 hours until their event starts I guess.

[kronovan]

I've been following this for days on the 360. I just started to watch the live streaming about 20 minutes ago - very interested in how this turns out and hope its a success.

[EngineNo9]

Touch-down confirmed! 

[Jumangi]

Wow those crazy ass engineers pulled this massively complex landing off. 

[Ironrod]

Curio City congratulates Curiosity.

May the science prove to be as amazing as the engineering.

[EngineNo9]

It is a good night at the JPL:

 

Funny to think this was just across town, I wish I could go knock on their door and shake their hands.  

[Ragnarok]

Just watched it too. That was glorious.  To be in that room right now seeing those first images come down the pipes from Mars after a successful touchdown.  

[Teggy]

That was a lot of happy nerds. WTG.

[leo8877]

How come all I can see it people cheering?  I thought there was gonna be video!

EDIT:  I think pics are here, but the site is getting hammered:  http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

[EngineNo9]

Yeah, they've shown the two small B&W images, but quickly lost contact with it as it passed out of contact behind Mars.  They should have full color images tomorrow I'd reckon. 

first

second

An alternative link for images: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/first_images_mars.html

[Ironrod]

One of the rover's first jobs is to take a 360-degree false-color panorama and then spend the better part of a day transmitting it. True-color images will come later. But yeah, if everything's working right we'll see some awesome pics of rocks and sand in a couple of days.

[metallicorphan]

yeah beta testers on the 360 can't watch it ,Major Nelson was meant to be getting back to us,but it doesn't look like its gonna happen,so if i am up i will watch it on NASA's site instead

I'm in the beta and I downloaded the thing to view it fine.  Countdown 2 hours until their event starts I guess.

I was able to watch it on the Live Event App

It was all good,and it was really cool to get pictures back so quickly

Looking forward to see what else it can show us

[Harpua3]

I watched this live too. Well, I watched them watching it, kinda. Awesome stuff indeed. Obviously better than breaking bad I guess based on the inactivity of my thread based apon my interest in the phenominal television series. But yea, go team mars!

You see what I did there? unemployment and boredom go hand in hand!;)

[Razgon]

This is pretty awesome - NASA has some brilliant minds to be able to make something like this work. The reseach and the pictures coming over the next weeks will be quite interesting as well!

[PR_GMR]

I stayed up until very late last night to watch the landing. How exciting! It's an example that anything we set with our will out to accomplish, we can. Now, to get a manned flight out there!

[SkyLander]

[Bullwinkle]

[Roguetad]

That was a clutch performance.  They were under a ton of pressure and stress.  If the landing turned out to be a bust, that would've been terrible for NASA.  Instead, their engineers and scientists made it work.  After hearing about what needed to happen during the 7 minutes of landing, with such little margin for error in every step of the process, I'm cheering for NASA today too.

     

[Kagath]

I stayed up late with my brother to watch it on the 360 and it was totally worth it.

[Barrakketh]

What I find totally amazing is the MRO orbiter managed to take a photo of the lander with the parachute deployed, from above.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery-indexEvents.html

[EngineNo9]

This is pretty awesome, a high res panorama: http://www.360pano.eu/show/?id=731

[Crusis]

NASA Calls It A Mission As Curiosity Rover Fills Up Whole 2-Gigabyte Memory Card.

[metallicorphan]

[EngineNo9]

NASA Calls It A Mission As Curiosity Rover Fills Up Whole 2-Gigabyte Memory Card.

Haha, that's great! 

[Harpua3]

Wow............

[Destructor]

Wow............

BTW, that link is from the Onion, the source of the best fake news on the internet. Some of their articles are just so off the wall it's obvious that they're fake. Others, not quite as so.

[Soulchilde]

Simply amazing

[metallicorphan]

Simply amazing

Very Cool 

[heloder]

That page uses the gyroscope in mobile devices, by the way.

[metallicorphan]

another Mars mission on the cards



http://news.sky.com/story/975273/nasa-unveils-another-mars-mission-insight

The InSight lander will set out to discover how Mars was formed, which scientists say will give them a better understanding of how rocky bodies like the Earth were created.

While the car-sized Curiosity is looking for habitats where microbial life could thrive on the Red Planet, the new, smaller, probe will focus on what is happening deep inside the planet's core.

The mission launches in 2016 and competed against two other projects for $425m (£270m) of Nasa funding - one to explore a liquid methane lake on Titan, the other to measure how sunlight affects comets.

The lander will be designed to last two years.

[kronovan]

Uh oh. But what if there's aliens beneath the surface and that probe bores done and accidentally penetrates the womb of a female alien. Are we going to end up with some weird alien+NASA Marsprobe Xenomorphs!!  

[Ironrod]

As much as I like Mars exploration, the Titan probe was scientifically more interesting. But I guess that the Mars mission had the greatest likelihood of coming in on time and within budget.

It's a pity NASA can't do both; these Discovery missions are capped at $425 million. Chump change!