Mars Curiosity Landing, NASA doing awesome shit ITT

[tulip]

All I want to know is why did they send the rover with a black and white camera? It's the 21st century, it's a 2.5 billion dollar mission, could they not engineer a suitable colour camera? Or does the rover have two cameras and the color version hasn't warmed up yet?

They also couldn't take a nice picture right away due to all the dust in the air because of the landing, so the published one is with the dust protector on. They'll take it off soon. I'd like to know how long it takes to transmit a high resolution picture considering it takes 14 minutes for any information to reach the earth.

What kind of bandwidth do they give planetary rovers? I haven't read it anywhere but it would make sense for the skycrane to be burnt back into orbit and to act as a separate probe/communication relay.

Skycrane doesn't have fuel to go back up, nor does it have the thermic shield it needs. Mars has some satellites around itself that will transmit the images to earth due to their size and the power output of the satellites

So the crane was just a one use delivery system? Seems a bit of a waste, even if they just deliberately crashed it somewhere near and specific they could use it for kicking up deep(ish) sub-surface debris at a site then have the rover trundle over for samples once the dust has settled.

[Straight Hustlin]

All I want to know is why did they send the rover with a black and white camera? It's the 21st century, it's a 2.5 billion dollar mission, could they not engineer a suitable colour camera? Or does the rover have two cameras and the color version hasn't warmed up yet?

They also couldn't take a nice picture right away due to all the dust in the air because of the landing, so the published one is with the dust protector on. They'll take it off soon. I'd like to know how long it takes to transmit a high resolution picture considering it takes 14 minutes for any information to reach the earth.

What kind of bandwidth do they give planetary rovers? I haven't read it anywhere but it would make sense for the skycrane to be burnt back into orbit and to act as a separate probe/communication relay.

IIRC they said they began the fly away of the skycrane with 1.1kg of fuel remaining. Not sure what the total capacity was but you would need quite a bit to get back into orbit. But they didnt really need to do it anyway. The rover will be mainly using the existing orbiters as relays, but they can communicate with the rover direct via the DSN radio dish network, you can read a bit about it here http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission...tionwithearth/

As for the speed of the uplinks

The data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 500 bits per second to 32,000 bits per second (roughly half as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is selected automatically and continuously during communications and can be as high as 2 million bits per second. The data rate to the Odyssey orbiter is a selectable 128,000 or 256,000 bits per second (4-8 times faster than a home modem).

[Evelgrivion]

All I want to know is why did they send the rover with a black and white camera? It's the 21st century, it's a 2.5 billion dollar mission, could they not engineer a suitable colour camera? Or does the rover have two cameras and the color version hasn't warmed up yet?

They also couldn't take a nice picture right away due to all the dust in the air because of the landing, so the published one is with the dust protector on. They'll take it off soon. I'd like to know how long it takes to transmit a high resolution picture considering it takes 14 minutes for any information to reach the earth.

What kind of bandwidth do they give planetary rovers? I haven't read it anywhere but it would make sense for the skycrane to be burnt back into orbit and to act as a separate probe/communication relay.

Skycrane doesn't have fuel to go back up, nor does it have the thermic shield it needs. Mars has some satellites around itself that will transmit the images to earth due to their size and the power output of the satellites

So the crane was just a one use delivery system? Seems a bit of a waste, even if they just deliberately crashed it somewhere near and specific they could use it for kicking up deep(ish) sub-surface debris at a site then have the rover trundle over for samples once the dust has settled.

That's the reality of spaceflight; a lot of stuff gets thrown away when all you've got are chemical propellants. They also threw away the heat shield, backshell and parachute, cruise-stage, and an entire Atlas V (541 configuration) getting Curiosity to Mars.

[Qwert]

Reasons for low res B&W:

Good cameras are stowed/turned off.
The high gain (IE high bandwidth) antenna is still stowed, so they don't have much bandwidth.
The landing site puts Earth below the horizon, so we can't do direct Curiosity-Earth communications yet.
We therefore have to piggyback off of Mars Odyssey, MRO, and Mars Express in a pinch.
All of these orbiters orbit low to take good pictures, so they are over the horizon for very short periods.

[Frug]

All I want to know is why did they send the rover with a black and white camera? It's the 21st century, it's a 2.5 billion dollar mission, could they not engineer a suitable colour camera? Or does the rover have two cameras and the color version hasn't warmed up yet?

They also couldn't take a nice picture right away due to all the dust in the air because of the landing, so the published one is with the dust protector on. They'll take it off soon. I'd like to know how long it takes to transmit a high resolution picture considering it takes 14 minutes for any information to reach the earth.

What kind of bandwidth do they give planetary rovers? I haven't read it anywhere but it would make sense for the skycrane to be burnt back into orbit and to act as a separate probe/communication relay.

Skycrane doesn't have fuel to go back up, nor does it have the thermic shield it needs. Mars has some satellites around itself that will transmit the images to earth due to their size and the power output of the satellites

So the crane was just a one use delivery system? Seems a bit of a waste, even if they just deliberately crashed it somewhere near and specific they could use it for kicking up deep(ish) sub-surface debris at a site then have the rover trundle over for samples once the dust has settled.

While a neat idea, i think their goal was to actually fucking land this giant rover on mars and not waste weight/time/money/resources on other things that could fail or cause the rover to fail.

[MortyM]

Thank with all your color picture talk, reminding me how many beautiful Cassini pics are black and white. Camera is of course also color. Why use so much B&W pics then? AFAIK its about (microscopically pathetically insignificant) bandwidth. So once in a while they take a full color pic or just a sample, and when they want a public release image they received as B&W they color it based on previous color pics of same or similar thing. Amounts of photoshop that all publicity astronomy pics get is depressing.

Also, the camera's on this thing are not necessarily there for nice picture but for all kinds precise measurements. I'm not too familiar with the particular applications here, but I know that for instance for robot navigation B&W cameras are often used because they provide better contrast, which you need for object recognition.

Amusingly, the way NASA does it is pretty similar to how our brain does it. The human eye ectually has very few receptors that can detect colors, and only in the very center of the field of view. The brain fills in the colors for the rest of your view based on what it has previsouly seen.

[Evelgrivion]

Thank with all your color picture talk, reminding me how many beautiful Cassini pics are black and white. Camera is of course also color. Why use so much B&W pics then? AFAIK its about (microscopically pathetically insignificant) bandwidth. So once in a while they take a full color pic or just a sample, and when they want a public release image they received as B&W they color it based on previous color pics of same or similar thing. Amounts of photoshop that all publicity astronomy pics get is depressing.

Also, the camera's on this thing are not necessarily there for nice picture but for all kinds precise measurements. I'm not too familiar with the particular applications here, but I know that for instance for robot navigation B&W cameras are often used because they provide better contrast, which you need for object recognition.

Amusingly, the way NASA does it is pretty similar to how our brain does it. The human eye ectually has very few receptors that can detect colors, and only in the very center of the field of view. The brain fills in the colors for the rest of your view based on what it has previsouly seen.

A digital camera takes pictures with a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) that functions as a linear photon counter. A CCD is not capable of identifying the color of the photon; a filter is needed to specify the range of photons that are captured. To achieve color in consumer cameras, a Bayer filter is used to create the color image. For scientific purposes, a Bayer filter would be counterproductive, which is why they end up with black and white images.

[RoemySchneider]

fuck you and your sad rover comic

[Doomed Predator]

Lets hope they find something interesting. Is the whole water on mars/life on mars in the past proven without a doubt or do they need more data?

[Mona]

Thank with all your color picture talk, reminding me how many beautiful Cassini pics are black and white. Camera is of course also color. Why use so much B&W pics then? AFAIK its about (microscopically pathetically insignificant) bandwidth. So once in a while they take a full color pic or just a sample, and when they want a public release image they received as B&W they color it based on previous color pics of same or similar thing. Amounts of photoshop that all publicity astronomy pics get is depressing.

Obviously.

[Smuggo]

All I want to know is why did they send the rover with a black and white camera? It's the 21st century, it's a 2.5 billion dollar mission, could they not engineer a suitable colour camera? Or does the rover have two cameras and the color version hasn't warmed up yet?

They also couldn't take a nice picture right away due to all the dust in the air because of the landing, so the published one is with the dust protector on. They'll take it off soon. I'd like to know how long it takes to transmit a high resolution picture considering it takes 14 minutes for any information to reach the earth.

What kind of bandwidth do they give planetary rovers? I haven't read it anywhere but it would make sense for the skycrane to be burnt back into orbit and to act as a separate probe/communication relay.

Skycrane doesn't have fuel to go back up, nor does it have the thermic shield it needs. Mars has some satellites around itself that will transmit the images to earth due to their size and the power output of the satellites

So the crane was just a one use delivery system? Seems a bit of a waste, even if they just deliberately crashed it somewhere near and specific they could use it for kicking up deep(ish) sub-surface debris at a site then have the rover trundle over for samples once the dust has settled.

While a neat idea, i think their goal was to actually fucking land this giant rover on mars and not waste weight/time/money/resources on other things that could fail or cause the rover to fail.

This.

Also the landing crane is certainly not a waste. Until earlier today it was simply a theory that this would be a workable way to land the rover (based on sound scientific principles of course). No doubt the crane also sent back data about the landing which can be used to perfect this method, which should hopefully increase the success rate of future landers of this size or larger.

[Spawinte]

They have a video camera on it? Can't wait for those youtube clips.

[Nu11u5]

It's got hidef 3D cameras. They're certainly for scientific use but just wait for the IMAX.

[Don Pellegrino]

Lets hope they find something interesting. Is the whole water on mars/life on mars in the past proven without a doubt or do they need more data?

Abundant liquid water ~4.5 million years ago is confirmed without a doubt. Curiosity is about looking for traces of sulfur, phosphates and other signs that life might have existed during that time.

[Warpath]

Lets hope they find something interesting. Is the whole water on mars/life on mars in the past proven without a doubt or do they need more data?

Abundant liquid water ~4.5 million years ago is confirmed without a doubt. Curiosity is about looking for traces of sulfur, phosphates and other signs that life might have existed during that time.

Last I heard they reckoned there was plenty of water in either liquid or frozen form? but it was likely to be exceptionally salty?

[Warpath]

As for the speed of the uplinks

The data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 500 bits per second to 32,000 bits per second (roughly half as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is selected automatically and continuously during communications and can be as high as 2 million bits per second. The data rate to the Odyssey orbiter is a selectable 128,000 or 256,000 bits per second (4-8 times faster than a home modem).

Was a program on the BBC recently about this craft iirc? and they said they had to schedule slots on certain antennas to receive the data at certain times of day? as the antennas were busy at other times receiving data from other craft?

[Rans]

They've sent the rover to a part of the planet where they've discovered soil that's the most likely to have conserved signs of biological shit

[Don Pellegrino]

Lets hope they find something interesting. Is the whole water on mars/life on mars in the past proven without a doubt or do they need more data?

Abundant liquid water ~4.5 million years ago is confirmed without a doubt. Curiosity is about looking for traces of sulfur, phosphates and other signs that life might have existed during that time.

Last I heard they reckoned there was plenty of water in either liquid or frozen form? but it was likely to be exceptionally salty?

There is still frozen water under the poles, but the temperature there now is ~-60C and the planet is hostile to life due to many other factors, but it hasn't always been like that.

[Al Simmons]

So what's the timeline for Mars Base 1? I assume this rover is sent there to prospect for a good site?

[Loire]

They've sent the rover to a part of the planet where they've discovered soil that's the most likely to have conserved signs of biological shit

They landed it in the Gale Crater which is a large crater with a mountain in the middle (a geological oddity which possibly indicates that the crater was once filled by a lake). The mountain is layered with strata spanning (iirc) 2 billion years giving the rover access to a large part of Mar's history.