{oops that’s what I get for rushing - This belongs on the science board… yo Doug, if you have any time between fending off the spammers, maybe you could move this. Although I guess the funding is a political animal, but still.}
{oops that’s what I get for rushing - This belongs on the science board… yo Doug, if you have any time between fending off the spammers, maybe you could move this. Although I guess the funding is a political animal, but still.}
Done. No worries! Thanks for posting. Though I’ll certainly miss the landing, I’m looking forward to following it once it’s down!
It still blows my mind that we live in a world where there’s one group (scientists) who do mind-blowing things like land stuff on planets. And another group (any religions hardcore followers) who literally strive to do the exact opposite and make it so that others aren’t allowed to do mind-blowing things like the scientists. Just another example where I think god herself is sitting there scratching her head in wonder at how the latter group could have gone so wrong given this wonderful gift of a brain she gave us.
Just another example where I think god herself is sitting there scratching her head in wonder at how the latter group could have gone so wrong given this wonderful gift of a brain she gave us.
For those who want to follow this a little more closely NASA has a very cool program you can access from your browser at http://eyes.nasa.gov. Its a web based app that allows you to see a real time simulation of where the space craft is at any moment in time. What’s really cool is that its interactive. You can swivel and zoom the camera position to see what the environment around the craft looks like ( ie. you can swivel the camera to see the craft with Mars in the background and get a good feeling for what Mars would look like at this moment if you were a hitchhiker on Curiosity. You can also speed up the time line if you want to skip ahead and see something You can freeze it as well and then zoom in and out to examine parts of the spacecraft. Very cool stuff
For anyone who is wide eyed and looking for something to do at 1:30am EDT NASA is streaming the landing live. You can access that at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv or download the NASA Television app for you iPod, iPhone, or iPad through the app store. There does not seem to be a similar app for Android phones unfortunately.
Is there a program planed or allready running, for an unmaned mission which will be able to send back samples of rocks etc.?
I didnt hear anything going in that direction, maybe russia or china?
The planetary science decadal survey recommended a Mars sample return mission as the next logical step in planetary exploration. Unfortunately Obama with the advice of John Holdren his senior science advisor more or less gutted NASAs planetary exploration budget this year forcing them to cancel several missions including any big budget flagship missions for the foreseeable future.
Since the US is the only country that currently has anything close to the technology and experience needed for this there is no sample return mission scheduled by any nation at this time.
The planetary science decadal survey recommended a Mars sample return mission as the next logical step in planetary exploration. Unfortunately Obama with the advice of John Holdren his senior science advisor more or less gutted NASAs planetary exploration budget this year forcing them to cancel several missions including any big budget flagship missions for the foreseeable future.
Since the US is the only country that currently has anything close to the technology and experience needed for this there is no sample return mission scheduled by any nation at this time.
Have they mad a rough designe of a vehicle that could land on Mars and get out of the gravity well again? How much would it cost to build and get that to Mars.
Would robots prospecting the Moon be more useful? How much do we know about what is up there. Not for scientific purposes but for the industrial purposes. What is there that might be entorely mined and manufactured roboticaly?
Have they mad a rough designe of a vehicle that could land on Mars and get out of the gravity well again? How much would it cost to build and get that to Mars.
Would robots prospecting the Moon be more useful? How much do we know about what is up there. Not for scientific purposes but for the industrial purposes. What is there that might be entorely mined and manufactured roboticaly?
psiok
They’ve done quite a bit more than kitchen table napkin sketches on this. Here are a couple of links you may find interesting if you want more info.
I’m no expert but odds are if Curiosity cost $2.5 billion you could expect this mission to cost at least double that. NASA had been working with ESA on a path to share the cost and reach this goal by 2020. The ExoMars mission was to launch in 2016 as a first step in this process but NASA had to pull out this year as a result of the aforementioned budget cuts. ESA has declared that they will try to proceed with the mission on their own or with other partners (Russia ?China?), but its unclear at this point if that will happen.
Well guess we’ll only know after a while if it’s gone OK, perhaps a much as a day or two.
The communications feat of this thing is as incredible as the landing sequence.
