News of the Nifty: NASA is pestering Mars again
So, in about 9 hours. NASA's landing a new rover, Curiosity, on Mars, and everyone is invited to watch.
[Cool video of the simulated landing process embedded under the spoiler-cut]
[Further details and space-geekery.]
Aside from the awesome "How to get a Rover to automatically land itself on Mars in several steps that could go wrong several different ways and we won't even know for fourteen minutes when the signal gets here whether it worked or not, with bonus music from Inception" video, for this landing there is a live public-accessible video feed of the landing planned, broadcasting the landing as it happens (or rather 14 minutes after it happened, but still at the same time as NASA gets it), with a Q and A webchat and suchlike apparently which to me is SO AWESOME. Even though I suspect their servers will be overloaded, and I can't watch it anyway because my system isn't up to letting me access it, I thought I should pass the word along.
I'm hoping the landing is a success of course, but the planned live feed of something landing on Mars reminds me of Doctor Who, that bit in Christmas Invasion where they broadcast the feed from the Guinevere probe live.
Announcer: Let's see what images the probe is sending back from Mars. Kind of blurry...
Sycorax: GRR! ARGH!
Humanity: *freaks out*
Anyway. Fairly sure that won't be happening today.
The links to the live video stream which will start in a few hours (and some other things, like the Twitter feed and a simulation of the landing you can play around with) are available at the NASA Mars Science Lab: Participate page.
ETA: [Spoiler for the results]
Curiosity landed safely and started sending back pictures almost right away, and a room full of techs and geeks and engineers went completely bananas. They were jumping up and down, there was a lot of crying, and the hugging was epic. WOO! \o/
Honorable Mention - Hairstyle: Twenty-something tech with the multicolored mohawk and the yellow stars painted onto the sides, you rock.
[Cool video of the simulated landing process embedded under the spoiler-cut]
Click to view[Further details and space-geekery.]
Aside from the awesome "How to get a Rover to automatically land itself on Mars in several steps that could go wrong several different ways and we won't even know for fourteen minutes when the signal gets here whether it worked or not, with bonus music from Inception" video, for this landing there is a live public-accessible video feed of the landing planned, broadcasting the landing as it happens (or rather 14 minutes after it happened, but still at the same time as NASA gets it), with a Q and A webchat and suchlike apparently which to me is SO AWESOME. Even though I suspect their servers will be overloaded, and I can't watch it anyway because my system isn't up to letting me access it, I thought I should pass the word along.
I'm hoping the landing is a success of course, but the planned live feed of something landing on Mars reminds me of Doctor Who, that bit in Christmas Invasion where they broadcast the feed from the Guinevere probe live.
Announcer: Let's see what images the probe is sending back from Mars. Kind of blurry...
Sycorax: GRR! ARGH!
Humanity: *freaks out*
Anyway. Fairly sure that won't be happening today.
The links to the live video stream which will start in a few hours (and some other things, like the Twitter feed and a simulation of the landing you can play around with) are available at the NASA Mars Science Lab: Participate page.
ETA: [Spoiler for the results]
Curiosity landed safely and started sending back pictures almost right away, and a room full of techs and geeks and engineers went completely bananas. They were jumping up and down, there was a lot of crying, and the hugging was epic. WOO! \o/
Honorable Mention - Hairstyle: Twenty-something tech with the multicolored mohawk and the yellow stars painted onto the sides, you rock.