It sure does look like the Mojave Desert.
I bet none of the mountains look like the Sierras.
@edgarblythe,
You don't even have to "bet" that one~!
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.
One image from the Curiosity rover as it landed on the fourth planet from the sun showed a "faint but distinctive" image on the horizon, the Los Angeles Times reported. However, a subsequent batch of images sent from the unmanned rover two hours later showed no trace of the blotch.
One theory put forth by space enthusiasts in the L.A. Times story is that Curiosity had somehow snapped a photo of part of the spacecraft that escorted the rover through the Martian atmosphere crash-landing a distance away.
But to capture that image "would be an insane coincidence," one engineer told the newspaper.
Others say more feasible possibilities would be simply dirt on the lens, or maybe a dust devil twisting far in the distance.
But as more images start to pour into NASA, more is being learned about the rover's pinpoint landing.
In what some are dubbing the "crime scene" photo of the landing zone taken by another satellite, Curiosity is seen on the ground along with pieces of the spacecraft that broke apart as planned on the way to the surface. The photo reveals the heat shield that protected the rover as it entered the atmosphere and the parachute that helped ease the vehicle onto Mars. Also seen are parts of the "sky crane," the spacecraft that carried the rover to the planet, the article noted.
Could the sky crane crashing be the blotch? From another L.A. Times story:
The crime scene photo showed that the sky crane had crash-landed, as designed, about 2,000 feet away—and in the same direction that Curiosity's camera was pointed when it snapped the first photo showing the blotch. The new satellite photo also showed that the sky crane, when it crash-landed, kicked up a violent wave of dirt that had scarred the surface of Mars.
Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins told the Times if it were the case, "it would be incredibly cool. ... A crazy, serendipitous thing."
Images from Mars have always fueled curiosity.
Remember what folks thought was a huge face on Mars? An image from Viking 1 in 1976 that appeared to show a rock formation with eyes, a nose and a mouth? Later high-resolution imaging and side-by-side analysis proved the "face" to be a mesa, like the flat-topped natural formations found in the southwestern U.S.
As the Curiosity rover readies to begin the scientific discovery part of the mission, maybe more interesting things will be revealed.
@edgarblythe,
That's the first alien contact!
@cicerone imposter,
My theory: It's the Wolfman.
@edgarblythe,
I could confirm that if I heard his voice.
@edgarblythe,
I took this picture at Yellowstone National Park. The similarities are uncanny!
Computerworld - With the Mars rover's software successfully upgraded, Curiosity is a big step closer to beginning its mission of finding out whether life has ever existed on Mars.
Curiosity, NASA's super robotic rover, has been on the surface of Mars for just over a week. Since Saturday, NASA has been working to update the software on the rover's main and backup computers, a necessary step before the Curiosity can begin roving.
Engineers jokingly dubbed the upgrade Curiosity's "brain transplant."
"I'm happy to say that we have completed the flight software transition," said Michael Watkins, a mission systems manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "It came off pretty much without a hitch."
The new software was uploaded onto Curiosity during its 350-million-mile journey to Mars. While the new software sat dormant, the spacecraft used flight software optimized to direct the spacecraft through the Martian atmosphere and safely land on target in the Gale Crater on the Martian surface.
The newly activated software is optimized to drive the rover, operate the robotic arm and scoop up and analyze soil samples. With that software successfully loaded, NASA engineers are back to testing the rover's various operational and scientific instruments.
When Curiosity first landed, scientists calculated that it would take several weeks to get the rover ready to roll; they hope to have it driving by early September.
Watkins noted that today was a hectic one for the programming team, which daily sends up new software commands to the rover. Until now, however, they have been able to use pre-coded commands.
"Today, they're building their code from scratch," said Watkins. "The first few days after landing, they had a pretty solid script. All that was on board and they activated it with small changes. Now, we're assembling all this from scratch on the ground."
He added that NASA is going with a light schedule of commands for the rover during the next few days to get the team practiced.
Ashwin Vasavada, a deputy project scientist at JPL, said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that Curiosity is scheduled to begin taking its first 24-hour weather reading this week.
The rover also is scheduled to continue to send by high-resolution, color pictures of the Martian landscape.
Curiosity was sent to Mars with a two-year mission to gather evidence that the planet is, or has been, capable of supporting life -- even in microbial form.
The car-sized, nuclear-powered robotic rover is equipped with 10 scientific instruments and offers the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on the surface of Mars, including chemistry instruments, environmental sensors and radiation monitors.
The payload is more than 10 times as large as those of earlier Mars rovers.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld.
NASA plans a first test-drive of its Mars rover Curiosity for next Tuesday, the start of a year-long trek to the foothills of a nearby Martian mountain.
The canyons and buttes of Mount Sharp beckon the $2.5 billion rover, some 5 miles away from the rover's Aug. 6 landing site. The rover is halfway through tests of its 10 science instruments, and has completed an "intellect upgrade" of its steering computers, says mission engineer Jim Donaldson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"I think it's fair to say that our science team, and our rover drivers, really everybody, is kind of itching to move," says mission scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. The rover now rests on gravel-covered bedrock inside Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide dent in the Martian surface with Mount Sharp in its center, separated from the rover by a pair of broad sand dunes.
"This is pretty spectacular terrain," Vasavada said Tuesday at a briefing. "We don't see many vistas like this on Earth."
On a two-year mission, the rover will investigate the habitability of the Red Planet, looking for chemistry that might suggest Mars once could have supported life. Although the rover will sample a few rocks on the way, its real target is the foothills of Mount Sharp. The mountain is believed to be made of clay topped by a layer of sulfur-laced rock similar to deposits that NASA's still-working Opportunity rover found in 2004 on another part of Mars.
First though, the rover will have to start rolling across Gale Crater. Mission engineers will activate its six wheels this weekend for a tentative test drive on or around Tuesday, its fifteenth Martian day, or "Sol."
The test drive will likely only cover a few yards and then back up, says mission planner Michael Watkins of JPL. The rover should travel about a football field's length a day as it heads for Mount Sharp.
Engineers are debating six paths to pass through sand dunes on the way to Mount Sharp. The rover will only need to climb part of the mountain to perform investigations with instruments that include a drill, laser and chemistry lab.
"We're trying to just keep our eye on the prize, finish these check-outs and get going," Vasavada says.
@edgarblythe,
Anything like quicksand on that terrain?
@cicerone imposter,
There are likely underground worms the size of Anacondas.
@edgarblythe,
For those folks who still have not connected with NASA.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:
Anything like quicksand on that terrain?
Quicksand is a function of water. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head if the rover found liquid water, only to be sucked up by it (before it could report its observations).
@rosborne979,
Yea, and I was wondering if that find is worth $2.5 billion.
Nasa's Curiosity rover is getting ready to zap its first Martian rock.
A small stone lying just to the side of the vehicle at its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater has been selected as a test target for the ChemCam laser.
The brief but powerful burst of light from this instrument will vaporise the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry.
Dubbed N165, the object is not expected to have any science value, but should show ChemCam is ready for serious work.
"I'd probably guess this is a typical Mars basalt - basaltic rocks making up a large fraction of all the igneous rocks on Mars," Roger Wiens, the instrument's principal investigator, told BBC News.
"A basalt, which is also common under the ocean on Earth, typically has 48% silicon dioxide and percent amounts of iron, calcium and magnesium, and sodium and potassium oxides as well. We're not expecting any surprises," said the Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher.
Curiosity touched down in its equatorial crater two weeks ago.
Hot spot
Its mission is to investigate the rocks at its landing site for evidence that past environments could have supported life.
The rover carries a suite of instruments for the purpose, but its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) experiment has probably garnered most attention because nothing like it has ever been flown to Mars before.
ChemCam sits high up on the rover's mast from where it directs a laser beam on to rocks up to 7m (23ft) away.
The spot hit by the infrared laser gets more than a million watts of power focused on it for five one-billionths of a second.
This produces a spark that the instrument observes with a telescope. The colours tell scientists which atomic elements are present in the rock.
ChemCam is going to be a key part of the process of selecting science targets during Curiosity's two-year mission.
If the laser shows up an interesting rock, the vehicle will move closer and deploy its other instruments for a more detailed investigation.
Fire marks
Assuming the test with the 7cm-wide N165 object goes well, ChemCam will move on to its first science target.
This will be rock exposed on the ground next to the rover by the rocket-powered crane used to lower the vehicle to the crater floor.
Goulburn Scour: The descent crane blew away pebbles and grit to expose underlying rock
Exhaust from this descent stage scattered surface grit and pebbles to reveal a harder, compact material underneath.
The crane made four scour marks in the ground - two either side of Curiosity. These have been dubbed Burnside, Goulburn, Hepburn and Sleepy Dragon.
The names, all related to fire, are taken from ancient rock formations in Canadian North America.
Goulburn Scour will be zapped by ChemCam.
"There's bedrock exposed beneath the soil with interesting patterns of colour," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity's project scientist.
"There're lighter parts; there're darker parts, and the team is busy deliberating over how this rock unit may have formed and what it's composed of. We'll aim the ChemCam [at Goulburn Scour], as well as taking even higher resolution images."
The science team has decided to send the rover to the intersection of three geological terrains
Curiosity has not moved since landing on 6 August (GMT). That is about to change.
The rover is going to roll forward briefly to test its locomotion system in the next few days. A reverse manoeuvre is planned, also.
Researchers want eventually to drive several kilometres to the base of the big mountain at the centre of Gale Crater to study sediments that look from satellite pictures to have been laid down in the presence of abundant water.
This journey to the foothills of Mount Sharp is going to have to wait a few months, however, because the science team intends first to go in the opposite direction.
Several hundred metres to the east of Curiosity's present position is an intersection of three geological terrains.
Again, this location has been given a name - Glenelg. And, again, it is taken from the geology of North America.
The intersection is intriguing and a good place to compare and contrast with the bedrock exposed in Goulburn Scour.
In addition, it may provide access to older, harder rocks. These could make for a first opportunity for Curiosity to use its drill.
"Even though it is in the opposite direction from the path to Mount Sharp, it's the one place we can go to to capture a lot of the information that's persevered in our landing [location]," Prof Grotzinger told BBC News.
Before beginning the 4.3-mile (7-km) trek to the base of Mount Sharp, a journey expected to take months, the six-wheeled Curiosity will visit a relatively nearby site named “Glenelg,” which caught scientists’ interest because it includes three types of terrain.
The name was selected from a list of about 100 rock formations in northern Canada. Scientists realized Glenelg was a palindrome — a word that reads the same backward — and particularly suited as the name for Curiosity’s first destination since the rover will have to come back through the site to head to Mount Sharp.
The road trip to Glenelg depends in part on how well Curiosity cruises through the rest of its instrument checkout. Early next week, the rover will test-fire its powerful laser to pulverize a bit of bedrock uncovered by exhaust from Curiosity’s descent engine.
A small telescope will then analyze the vaporized material to determine what minerals it contains.
The combined system, known as Chemistry & Camera, or ChemCam, is designed to make about 14,000 measurements throughout Curiosity’s mission, said lead instrument scientist Roger Wiens, with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“There’s a high-power laser that briefly projects several megawatts onto a pinhead-size spot on the surface of Mars,” Wiens said. “It creates a plasma, or a little ball of flame or spark.”
The telescope, which can observe the flash from up to about 25 feet away, then splits the light into its component wavelengths.
Scientists use that information to determine chemical composition.
Travel to Glenelg, located about 1,600 feet away from Curiosity’s landing site, should take a month or longer, depending on how many stops scientists decide to make along the way.
“Probably we’ll do a month worth of science there, maybe a little bit more,” lead mission scientist John Grotzinger told reporters during a conference call on Friday. “Sometime toward the end of the calendar year, roughly, I would guess then we would turn our sights toward the trek to Mount Sharp.”
CAPE CANAVERAL (Reuters) – (By Irene Klotz; Editing by David Adams and Xavier Briand)
@edgarblythe,
I hope when the pulverize the rock, it doesn't destroy some important information.
@cicerone imposter,
It's likely the lynch pin to the whole planet, CI. Be prepared to duck the flying debris in a several months.
