Mars photo mystery solved (?)

The distant blob seen in the view on left, taken by a Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover, may be a cloud created during the crash of the rover's descent stage. Pictures taken about 45 minutes later (right) do not show the cloud, providing further evidence it was from the crash. The bright spot at upper center, which is larger in the view at right, is due to image saturation from looking at the sun. These images are from the rover's rear Hazard-avoidance cameras. They are one-quarter of full resolution. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

PhysOrg

I did the normal search without finding this explanation.
Seems plausible I think.

Yep - I saw this today. I believe it. (Seriously).

Perfect timing on the image! I thought it was dust on the lens, but it's dust being thrown up from the sky-crane crashing! Awesome!

reply to post by impaired


Some of all the explanations given to us regarding topics like this one, are just stupid, but this one, I have a very hard time arguing against it.

reply to post by LiberalSceptic


Ok, I was on the fence about it, but now I feel they are lying.

Sofar they seemed extremely on top of things, I feel they should´ve known what it was right away, and even should´ve anticipated it.

It "was an amazing coincidence that we were able to catch this impact," said engineer Steve Sell of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission

Really? You know that the crane had to land somewhere in the vicinity, probably even knew the direction, and you have cameras on all sides of Curiousity, you know that such an impact could create a dust plume, yet it is a coincidence it was caught on camera and it took you days to come up with this explanation.

Not buying.

reply to post by DjangoPhat


I guess they had allot of other things to focus on. But since it has been a stir in the media about this, NASA felt that they finally had to comment on it.

Originally posted by DjangoPhat
reply to post by LiberalSceptic

 

Ok, I was on the fence about it, but now I feel they are lying.

Sofar they seemed extremely on top of things, I feel they should´ve known what it was right away, and even should´ve anticipated it.

It "was an amazing coincidence that we were able to catch this impact," said engineer Steve Sell of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission

Really? You know that the crane had to land somewhere in the vicinity, probably even knew the direction, and you have cameras on all sides of Curiousity, you know that such an impact could create a dust plume, yet it is a coincidence it was caught on camera and it took you days to come up with this explanation.

Not buying.

edit on 11-8-2012 by DjangoPhat because: (no reason given)

That is a VERY interesting point. However, I think LiberalSceptic nailed it. They're really busy, and they're updating their software right now for navigation purposes.

But things did seem to slow down. And one more thing that's been bugging me, probably due to my ignorance - if Odyssey only has an 8 minute window every so often, then how did it just happen to get images of the landing with all of the components labeled?

There is a lot of data that is being bottle-necked - or is it?

reply to post by LiberalSceptic


Perhaps, but that doesn't explain my point about how it is strange for them to be surprised by it and call it a coincidence that it was caught.

reply to post by DjangoPhat


17 cameras if I remember correctly, thats allot. But, I think it was Phage whom said that they all have a very narrow point of view. So the chance for any of those cameras, to by accident capture the impact, could still be rather small.

reply to post by impaired


You mentioned the software update.
A little bit more info here.

NASA update

reply to post by LiberalSceptic


Well, if they all have the field of vision the one in your OP has, and they are placed all around, I would think they would cover 360 degrees.

And they should've known beforehand where the crane would impact, roughly, and you would think they would have planned to capture it on cam.

But that's speculation.

reply to post by DjangoPhat


The bigger pictures are as far as I know put together from several small ones.
I do share your thoughts since I do not really trust NASA. As I said before, an governmental organization that keeps everything classified is not to put the biggest trust in.
If they really cared about giving us the truth, they would have open archives.

That said, it can safely be assumed that they (the higher-up government) KNOWS what is going on on Mars (and perhaps the rest of the solar system), but slowly lets NASA do their thing with their limited technology. It could be orchestrated like that or NASA really doesn't know much more than us (because of their so-called limited technology).

Or it can just be a rover honestly looking for something that we all don't know about yet.

reply to post by impaired


Or perhaps NASA just do not speak about some of the advanced systems they are incorporating. Until all the info being collected by said systems have been analyzed, used and patented for their own and governmental gain.

Ah dammit! I've been spending the past two days trying to figure out the orientation of the rover versus the fly-away to ascertain if that's what it could have been.

S+F OP. I always had this sneaking suspicion they managed to catch it in that image!

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic

I did the normal search without finding this explanation.
Seems plausible I think.

It's ok. I'm invisible.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by PW229


Yes well, why not, I find it to be a good explanation.
But regarding the pic below, anyone knows what the distances are between the markings?

reply to post by Pauligirl


Well to be honest, you were when I did the search
Here is the article you posted.
Impact hypothesis
I guess the reason I missed it was that the thread itself did not provide the answer to the impact in the beginning. So I did not read it through that much.

reply to post by LiberalSceptic

After landing, it cut the cords and the rocket stage flew out of the way, crashing 2,000 feet (610 meters) from the landing site. Read more at: phys.org...

Originally posted by LiberalSceptic
reply to post by PW229

 

Yes well, why not, I find it to be a good explanation.
But regarding the pic below, anyone knows what the distances are between the markings?

This is how it appears to have happened based on the image above:



The additions to the image are my own and NOT endorsed by NASA. Looking at the two dark areas (marked "Exhaust plume") either side of Curiosity we can comfortably gauge it's orientation. Bear in mind I'm presuming the orientation based on a fairly low resolution image but I'm fairly confident that what the rear left hazcam captured was the smoke from the impact of the descent stage.

Originally posted by Pauligirl
It's ok. I'm invisible.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Credit where it is due. My sincere apologies for missing your post and I'm sure most of us in this thread will acknowledge your findings. Star.