3 hours of video were uploaded to the NASA JPL Ustream account this week, because Curiosity just celebrated its 1st year on Mars. Curiosity 1-year on Mars, Part 1 - http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/36936287 Curiosity 1-year on Mars, Part 2 - http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/36936043
For those that don't know, a nova was spotted in Delphinius a couple of days ago, and it continues to brighten. It can be seen from a dark site with the naked eye, or from light polluted skies with a pair of binoculars. Universe Today has the details.
Curiosity Rover Report, 8/23/2013 Curiosity Rover Report, 9/19/2013 This last video demonstrates a historic accomplishment - auto-navigation on another planet in our solar system. It may sound like a trivial achievement, but humans can only receive and send data at lightspeed. It is a 15-45 minute round trip by light from Earth to Mars, depending on orbital positions, so we can't operate the rover in anything like real time. You'd need a human in a space ship in orbit around the destination planet, or somewhere near it, to command whatever probe was there in real time. As we send probes to destinations further from Earth, this problem gets worse. Auto-nav allows the rover to make transit decisions in real time, solving a major part of this problem. All future roving/mobile probes to other planets will have this capability, I think it's safe to say. Let the rover decide how to handle navigational hazards as they come up in real time with the auto-nav. Command the rover with lightspeed delay once it stops someplace interesting.
Science Gains From Diverse Landing Area of Curiosity Sept 26, 2013 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20130926.html Summarizes a lot of the results in the last year.
Live MSL Press Briefing from American Geophysical Union, Fall Conference, 2013. Video uploaded Dec. 9, 2013: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/41544332
Opportunity: 10 years on Mars (!!!) Video uploaded Jan. 16, 2014: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/42795898 Opportunity recently surpassed the distance record for all extraterrestrial driving vehicles. Source - http://www.astrobio.net/index.php?option=com_retrospection&task=detail&id=5930 This figure is out of date now, but it still serves to show the other vehicles for comparison. Source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/17/opportunity_sets_nasa_distance_record/
More cool stuff happening in space, the comet chaser 'Rosetta' should be waking up right around now (today if all goes well)~ ARTICLE HERE [Mod edit at Orson's request - article is here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rosetta-comet-probe-wakes-from-space-hibernation-1.2503303 ]
Your link is broken. Mars News Briefing, Jan 23, 2014: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/43015386 This is all coverage of Spirit & Opportunity's work on Mars, since they're still celebrating the 10-year anniversary for these rovers. They detail a study that was released in Science yesterday.
Waking up after all that time, and the nearest coffee is millions of miles away. That must be one grumpy space probe!
Cannot edit my link above, dunno if NASA links die or not *shrugz*, here's a CBC item on it, pretty darned cool little machine imho~ http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rosetta-comet-probe-wakes-from-space-hibernation-1.2503303
Rover and its trail seen from orbit. Photo taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Colors enhanced. Curiosity and Rover Tracks at 'the Kimberley,' April 2014 NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks from its driving are visible in this view from orbit, acquired on April 11, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover is near the largest butte in the lower left quadrant of the image, at about a two o'clock position relative to the butte. It appears bright blue in the exaggerated color of this image. The multi-layered location filling much of the left half of this image is called the Kimberley. Curiosity's science team chose it, based on other HiRISE images, as a potential gold mine for the rover mission. Black gold, that is, as organic material that, if found at the Kimberley could be a biomarker (sign of past life) -- the holy grail of Mars exploration. In December 2013, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger talked about what the mission had learned that year in a location called Yellowknife Bay, and why the team was planning to stop Curiosity and drill again at the Kimberley. Mudstones that Curiosity drilled and analyzed at Yellowknife Bay had been exposed at the Martian surface for less than 100 million years, which is relatively recent, geologically speaking. Scientists deduced that this was due to erosion of overlying layers by the wind, and that even younger exposure ages should be possible closer to an eroding scarp. This matters because Mars doesn't have a magnetosphere and thick atmosphere like Earth's, which protect us from energetic particles from space that break down organic material. Thus, rocks that have been near the surface of Mars longer (on geological time scales) are less likely to contain complex organic material. Complex organic material might be the remains of past life, or at least inform us about past habitability. Habitability is the potential to support life, whether or not life ever actually existed there. By late 2013, Curiosity had left Yellowknife Bay and wasn't going to turn around, but similar scarps lay ahead, on the way to the mission's long-term destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp (also known as Aeolis Mons). The team had already chosen Curiosity's next major target: the Kimberley. This location, where Curiosity arrived in early April 2014, has what appear to be geologically young scarps. This HiRISE image shows the rover close to one of the scarps. Curiosity entered the area included in this image on March 12, along the tracks visible near the upper left corner. The distance between parallel wheel tracks is about 9 feet (2.7 meters). The area included in the image is about 1,200 feet (about 365 meters) wide. More here - www.nasa.gov/jpl/mro/msl/pia18081/
Mars 2020 Rover Instruments Teleconferences: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/50763709 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/50758685 Mars Curiosity Rover Findings Teleconferences: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/51378391 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/56255521 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/56542725 Mars Comet Teleconference: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/53768387
NASA Rover Opportunity Completes Marathon Milestone on Mars PASADENA, Calif. — Mar 24, 2015, 6:04 PM ET The space agency said Tuesday the rover's odometer checked in at 26.2 miles — the distance of a marathon. The official time? Eleven years and two months. Scientists and engineers will celebrate Opportunity's achievement by holding their own marathon relay at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission. Last year, Opportunity broke the record for off-Earth distance traveled that was previously held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover. Opportunity and its twin Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 for what was supposed to be a three-month mission. Both uncovered geologic signs of ancient water. Spirit's mission ended in 2011 not long after it got stuck in Martian sand. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wi...ty-completes-marathon-milestone-mars-29880635
Space crabs! Oops, no. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...s-mars-images-premature-nasa/article26163337/
