Live Link thread for all who want to watch The rover tonight..

Said before the landing.

"We are about to land a rover that is ten times heavier than Spirit and Opportunity and fifteen times the payload.
Pretty incredible feat we are about to attempt. Soo... we may not be successful...
What the.. what the outcome of this is we'll all know, but one of the things I wanna go back for all those inquiring editors out there....(audience laughing) Is the communications information and how.. and how will we know, what will we know and when will we know it."

I wonder if we will get to know that JPL lost contact with the rover.

-Hey boss, the rover just sent us a bepbeep... And a picture of a ship that just landed next to it.
-Ok, do as usual, say we lost the rover or that it crashed.


Fun info.
NASA likes to say they are federally funded and as far as they will go. but the truth is, they are a privately held federally funded company. They are not a federal agency.

Good to hear that the good camera is yet to be deployed..

I hope we are going to see some good high res pictures though im sick of seeing crappy pics that look like they were taken on an old cell phone theirs no excuse for it today,id also like to see a true colour picture and not tinted like previous mars pictures,anybody seen that pic with the colour coded dial in the picture which proves its been tinted red? what the heck is that about,then later they edited out the colour coder so theirs nothing to correct the colour ,stuff like that makes me wonder what nasas intentions are.

Originally posted by amurphy245
Good to hear that the good camera is yet to be deployed..

I hope we are going to see some good high res pictures though im sick of seeing crappy pics that look like they were taken on an old cell phone theirs no excuse for it today,id also like to see a true colour picture and not tinted like previous mars pictures,anybody seen that pic with the colour coded dial in the picture which proves its been tinted red? what the heck is that about,then later they edited out the colour coder so theirs nothing to correct the colour ,stuff like that makes me wonder what nasas intentions are.

Well, those first two images were taken less than 4 minutes after landing. You really can't expect the Rover (which had been folded away in a tiny cocoon in space for 9 months prior to the landing) to be 100% operational just four minutes after it landed.

To be honest, I think to have ANY image just four minutes after landing was quite a feat. Hell, when I wake up in the morning, it takes me longer than that to even do the simplest human task.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


My friend I do not understand you argument.
Does it matter if the cameras are colour and high-res or black/white and low-res regarding the startup?
The cameras which have been installed in the part starting first, will be the ones to go on first...

So the fact that the first picture came 4 minutes after landing does not effect the camera, it will be what is installed.
It is like saying; oh in the morning my car only uses half of its engine. I can not expect it to use the entire engine just 4 minutes into startup.

Those low-res pictures were the first because someone chose it to be so, not because the rover needed time to get the cameras "warmed up".


Btw, if someone spent Nearly $2.5 Billion to get you to work in the morning, believe you me that you would be spanked to lightning speeds of efficiency when it comes to leaving the bed

well if you put it that way.... its good to know about the engines/motors when stating that.
Engines and motors do not like the cold, sure your engine will start in the winter when its minus 10 but then again that's why your supposed to let the motor run up to operating temp before leaving your driveway.
I see the same thing with the rover, as much as the cameras are important, the most important parts are the parts for research the Chemcam, CheMin, the boom arm etc.

reply to post by nepatitan


Yes I see your point. but the entire motor still starts. It is not like just one random cylinder in a V8 engine will start and then some hours later the rest of the 7 cylinders will join. (unless you have one old shi**y motor)
What I mean is that the camera that have been installed for the startup will be the one to start.
If a bad camera start, that is because someone made it so. It is all for a reason.
Nothing is by chance or random in a case like this.

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
It is like saying; oh in the morning my car only uses half of its engine. I can not expect it to use the entire engine just 4 minutes into startup.

Using your car analogy, it would be like taking a car which has been stored in the cold all winter, then expecting it to run at 100 miles per hour immediately after being started for the first time in months. Heck, even the car's heater would be blowing cold air for several minutes after start up.

This rover was folded away in a coccoon during its cruise to Mars. The main hi-res camera (or "MastCam") is on a mast that must deploy itself after landing by unfolding and raising itself up. The hi-res close up camera is on the robotic arm that was folded away during flight...

... So I don't think it is reasonable to think that these hi-res cameras on the mast or on the robotic arm would be available for use four minutes after landing. they are probably still folded away.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


You are talking about the entire startup of the rover.
I am saying that there is a low-res camera in the beginning for a reason.
If they placed a high-res camera where the low-res is, we would have had better pictures in the beginning. They chose not to for different reasons.

So I don't think it is reasonable to think that these hi-res cameras on the mast or on the robotic arm would be available for use four minutes after landing. they are probably still folded away.

This I totally agree about.

reply to post by LiberalSceptic


I am sure someone of more knowledge will correct me - but I thought that low res pics were taken because there was a limited time window to get the images back to Earth? Earth was below the horizon when Curiosity landed - hence it needed to transmit the data to Odyssey which was overhead. Given constraints and that high res images can be tens of megabytes seems rather prudent to get a quick snapshot done. Again, I'm an amateur so don't thake my word for it

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Spot on good sir. Said it better than I ever could

reply to post by Trebonius


Well I do take the logic of your word for it.
It sounds very plausible.

I think the reason low res first is because they are the collision avoidance cameras that are already in a fixed position and ready to start as soon as it touiches down. All systems have to be checked and cleared before startup just like your car at the end of the line and yes I have driven many trucks off the line

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

 

You are talking about the entire startup of the rover.
I am saying that there is a low-res camera in the beginning for a reason.
If they placed a high-res camera where the low-res is, we would have better picture in the beginning. They chose not to for different reasons.

It's also not unreasonable to have the main hi-res camera folded away for safety during landing. The fixed-mounted haz-cams are naturally protected due to there location on the Rover, but because of that protection, they can't take sweeping panoramas. If you put the highest-res camera where the hazcams are, the world would never get a good view of Mars.

It should be noted that the size of that picture was NOT just a function of the camera. the first image taken is actually a higher-resolution than the thumbnails that were transmitted four minutes after landing. The reason only the low-res thumbnail versions were transmitted had to do with the limits of the communication time and bandwidth.

The Landing site was on the side of Mars that was facing away from earth at the time -- it has no line-of-site with Earth. That means that the Rover can't send data directly to earth, but must first send that data to an orbiting satellite (The mars Odyssey Orbiter, which has been in orbit since 2001), and then that satellite, which DOES have a line-of-sight to earth, relayed the data back to earth.

The problem was that the Mars Odyssey wasn't going to be in position to receive data from Curiosity for very long -- even the four minutes was pushing the contact time. Therefore, due to limited bandwidth/upload rates, Curiosity only sent those small thumbnails in order to show some sign that everything is OK with its landing site.

More images will be sent today, but the higher resolution images take a while to download due to bandwidth limitations -- i.e., the higher resolution versions of those first thumbnail images don't download in a couple minutes.



...by the way, those big beautiful panoramic picture you are used to seeing in the news and online are a mosaic made up of dozens of smaller images. So, even if the hi-res MastCam was operational four minutes after landing, the first picture from it would not be a panorama. NASA takes a bunch of small pictures, then stitches them together for the big pictures the public usually sees (although the smaller raw images are still publicly available, but some people ignore them because they are small images that some find boring).

Non the less I am looking forward to some smashing high-res photos

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


Ok cool, thank you very much for the effort to find that exact info.

Whether it be navcams, hazcams or mastcam, if something really interesting is captured, like a fossil of a small-mouth bass, I doubt that we will see or hear about it for a very long time, if at all.

In any case, galactic-sized kudos to NASA and JPL on this incredible landing.

Im very glad I was alive and able to fully understand what happened last night. Even though I still think NASA is a huge waste of money, They did a good job helping me understand the whole process of what was gonna take place.

reply to post by Zarniwoop

Indeed.
NASA and JPL are surely not doing this for the benefit of the people, they do it for their own gain.
Thus keeping everything classified. If NASA/JPL truly did this for the benefit of mankind, it would be, open archives all the way.
I am very impressed by what has been done so far, but that does not change the fact that I still feel extremely left out.

reply to post by Diggz

And it will probably stay at "what was gonna take place", and not "what is going on", besides the basic tech-facts.

Wasn't it stated that transmission time to Earth was 14 minutes?

How can a picture taken at landing be here in 4 minutes (4 minutes after landing as someone said)?

reply to post by MoneyIsWorthless

This mission time is US west coast, that would be 9 hours west of GMT.



wwp.pacific-standard-time.com...

This is a link to GMT