Earth to Mars in 8 months.

USA Today

LOL, woman TV announcer claiming after a 8 month journey of 350 miles. Big Blooper forgetting to add Million Miles.

As for the Successful landing, I could not more excited over it. Can`t wait to see the images and video to come.

Or did it?....

Is it really on Mars? We will never know....

New discoveries of microbian life forms. Yay..

Watched it last night, what there was to see. Some very happy people in the control room! Went beautifully from the sound of it.

The life thing is interesting, even if it is small - mainly for reasons like will it have the same DNA? All life on Earth has the same root DNA, even the small slimey stuff. If Mar's life is different then that's really interesting, as it points towards the statistical chance that life could actually be everywhere (i.e. our sample size has now doubled) while if it is the same DNA origin then that's even more interesting - pointing at some early seeding pan-solar mechanism (a comet etc). Both results are fascinating.

Also, with both Venus and Mars being in the 'Goldilocks Zone' but now we think lifeless, then figuring out what happened to them could be significant for us.

I would think they will be using this landing style more now.

But probably nothing that the frikkin' laser on the rover can't handle.

That's because the space jockey Engineers designed it that way. And as far as the slimy stuff goes, don't get it on you!

Some early results:

Magnificent achievement. Congratulations to all those involved.

"I am in awe of what they did- I mean was that not the nuttiest idea on how to land that thing on the surface? Let's put a jet powered flying saucer on top of it, then slowly lower it to the ground on a rope, and then have the saucer take back off into space...who thinks of this stuff?"


It's funny because NPR asked one of the engineers that very question. His awesome response? "Yes, but I promise you it's the least crazy idea we can come up with."

Posted on another forum (QT3) that banned me long ago, but that I still read regularly. I thought the response was so cool.

isnt the studio about 350 miles west from Texas?

I'm not telling. They're watching.

*cue twilight zone music*

I watched it "live" on CNN

Assuming they don't change it, I thought the first photo of this slide show was pretty cool:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/tech/mars-rover-curiosity/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

It's a photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of the Curiosity coming in under its 'chute.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19150849



It would be very interesting if NASA had managed to take a sequence of pictures of the different stages of the approach and landing.

PS: Maybe we should get NASA to cover the Olympics?

http://i.imgur.com/udmAg.jpg

Just watched a BBC "re-enactment" of it lol, Cool.....Looked like something out of Sci-Fi film. Was nice to see the reactions of all the scientists who had worked on it, all hugging each other and overjoyed (8 years of hard work, you can understand their reaction and I was very pleased for them)

Well done.

Funniest quote I read this morning:

'Gold Medal for NASA in the 563 billion meters.'

I read a while back that forgetting hardware, there is over 500,000 lines of code for the landing sequence alone.

...and it still worked!-)

I want pictures!!!

Dammit, I paid for the project and I want some stinkin' pictures!!!

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup...al-picture.html


Best picture

The First Images of Life on Mars:






Sorry, couldnt resist..

I saw that movie!

Holy crap! that was funny!

Wheels

Watched an interview on the bbc last night, most of these NASA engineers will now become forced Martians, working & living according to Mars time.
Mind-boggling

Cheers,
Slug

I watched it live in the Simulation was VERY cool and Glad it came down succesfully.. Hopefully we will get some good Data from this probe for the amount of money we spent hope it was worth it..

Just watched an interview with the folks from JPL on the landing.

Seems they had a choice of a "first" picture. The Engineers wanted a picture from the front camera showing an unobstructed view.
The Scientists wanted a picture from the rear camera showing the wheel on the surface acknowledging the Engineers had done their job.

Pretty damn cool.

I didn't see this posted, so apologies if it was and I missed it:

No patch right after launch?!
Perhaps a title update a month after clearing the atmosphere?

They may have uploaded new code during the cruise to Mars.

However, this software tends to be written to very strict standards and tested in the same way - basically something that most companies could not afford to do for say a game, or every day use apps, or, apparently, the OS you're running.

Extensive testing is extensively expensive.

No DLC After launch?

And italian all around me keep wining about the billion dollars WASTED in silly stuff...

I want to leave my country.

OTOH GOOD JOB NASA!

Thank you Arthonon for the landing video, I had not seen that.

So how long before Howard gets it stuck in a ditch while trying to impress the ladies?

Lol saw that episode about a week ago. hehehe

The rover looks like something Nasa would build, but would look way cooler with one of these!

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=hawaiian+dashboard+doll&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=4390271775&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7870399391154732954&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_24lvpghpzf_b

New picture from Mars

A mysterious blotch that appeared along the horizon in a photo from the surface of Mars stirred speculation about what it might be, as two hours later it was gone.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/spac...-190419541.html