MSL now has a name...Curiousity

[EarthlingX]

www.planetary.org : Curiosity Cam: Watch Men and Women in White build a Mars rover live!

Oct. 22, 2010 | 11:33 PDT | 18:33 UTC

By Emily Lakdawalla

This is so cool. Yesterday the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they have put up a live Web camera on Curiosity, the next Mars rover, as it is being assembled and tested in the clean room, using Ustream. The camera is mounted in the viewing gallery above the clean room and provides video (but no sound; sound's not audible from that viewing gallery). Periodically, they'll have staff on hand to answer questions in the chat room. As I am writing this, there is a veritable pile of bunny-suited engineers working to re-mount the wheels on the rover, lots of discussion in the chat room, and 1400 people viewing. Awesome! Yay for JPL for inviting the public to watch our next Mars explorer get built.

Here is the live feed:

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If you happen to be reading this when the feed is not active, try coming in again a little later; most work will be done from 8:00 a.m. to early evening hours Pasadena time, though sometimes they work quite late in the evening. For those of you who are unlucky in finding live video, I'll repost this bit of fun, which was taken from the same perspective...

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[doublehelix]

Here's another link I found via Twitter:

Monday: More work on the rover and prepping the robotic arm for reattachment (Broadcasting live at http://ustre.am/25IX)
7 minutes ago via Ustream.TV Retweeted by 2 people
http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/statuses/28703131650

-dh

 

[EarthlingX]

www.federalspace.ru : US Mars Rover with Russian Payload to Measure Ice Layer on the Red Planet

:: 27.10.2010

US Mars rover Curiosity equipped with Russian payload DAN will develop a 3D-map of the ice layer in the soil of the Red planet, RAS official told Interfax.
The scientist said the DAN will carry out active monitoring of the circle of 20—40 km from the landing spot. This is the most interesting place of the planet.
The rover is slated for launch on Nov. 25, 2011; landing on Mars is to occur in August 2012. Mobile studies of the martian surface are to last for two years.

 

[centsworth_II]

http://www.federalspace.ru : US Mars Rover with Russian Payload to Measure Ice Layer on the Red Planet

Seems like a bad translation.

Better informationHere. And much more detailed information Here.

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.federalspace.ru : US Mars Rover with Russian Payload to Measure Ice Layer on the Red Planet

Seems like a bad translation.

Better informationHere. And much more detailed information Here.

Thank you, nice links.

 

[EarthlingX]

www.jpl.nasa.gov : Sensor on Mars Rover to Measure Radiation Environment

November 09, 2010


The Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, instrument (right) will aid future human missions to Mars by providing information about the radiation environment on Mars. It's one of 10 science instruments for the Mars Curiosity rover (depicted in the artist's concept on the left). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

About eight months before the NASA rover Curiosity touches down on Mars in August 2012, the mission's science measurements will begin much closer to Earth.

The Mars Science Laboratory mission's Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, will monitor naturally occurring radiation that can be unhealthful if absorbed by living organisms. It will do so on the surface of Mars, where there has never before been such an instrument, as well as during the trip between Mars and Earth.

RAD's measurements on Mars will help fulfill the mission's key goals of assessing whether Curiosity's landing region on Mars has had conditions favorable for life and for preserving evidence about life. This instrument also will do an additional job. Unlike any of the nine others in this robotic mission's science payload, RAD has a special task and funding from the part of NASA that is planning human exploration beyond Earth orbit. It will aid design of human missions by reducing uncertainty about how much shielding from radiation future astronauts will need. The measurements between Earth and Mars, as well as the measurements on Mars, will serve that purpose.

"No one has fully characterized the radiation environment on the surface of another planet. If we want to send humans there, we need to do that," said RAD Principal Investigator Don Hassler of the Boulder, Colo., branch of the Southwest Research Institute.

Whether the first destination for human exploration beyond the moon is an asteroid or Mars, the travelers will need protection from the radiation environment in interplanetary space. Hassler said, "The measurements we get during the cruise from Earth to Mars will help map the distribution of radiation throughout the solar system and be useful in mission design for wherever we send astronauts."

RAD will monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles coming from the sun, from distant supernovas and from other sources. These particles constitute the radiation that could be harmful to any microbes near the surface of Mars or to astronauts on a Mars mission. Galactic cosmic rays, coming from supernova explosions and other events extremely far from our own solar system, are a variable shower of charged particles. In addition, the sun itself spews electrons, protons and heavier ions in "solar particle events" fed by solar flares and ejections of matter from the sun's corona. Astronauts might need to move into havens with extra shielding on an interplanetary spacecraft or on Mars during solar particle events.

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[EarthlingX]

http://www.planetary.org : I can't wait for MAHLI to land on Mars

Nov. 16, 2010 | 14:39 PST | 22:39 UTC

By Emily Lakdawalla

JPL has just released some test images from the camera that has just been installed on the end of the Curiosity rover's robotic arm. MAHLI, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, is included on Curiosity for the same reason as Spirit and Opportunity's Microscopic Imagers -- to take closeup views of the rocks and soils that it encounters. But there's just no comparing Microscopic Imager and MAHLI images. MAHLI is going to achieve incredible detail in absolutely beautiful color.

Here's one sample image, a closeup on some sand. Each sand grain is revealed to be a rock, many of them containing even tinier grains. As a geologist, I am just drooling over this picture. You can see crystal shapes. With the wonderfully subtle color, you can instantly tell what minerals are visible -- all those translucent ones are quartz, and I can see the pale peachy color of potassium feldspar, for instance. About those quartz grains -- they're better sorted than the other grains, a smaller and more consistent size. I wonder why that is...?

Test image from Curiosity MAHLI
A closeup on some rounded sand grains captured by MAHLI, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, built for the Curiosity rover. Most of the sand grains, which were taken from a sand dune near Christmas Lake, Oregon, are under a millimeter in diameter. Within the field of view are three manufactured steel balls, each two millimeters in diameter. Reflected in the steel balls are the four white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on MAHLI, which provide even illumination for the scene. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS

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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov: Camera on Curiosity's Arm will Magnify Clues in Rocks

November 16, 2010


Color Camera for Curiosity's Robotic Arm
The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera will fly on NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, launching in late 2011. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, will wield an arm-mounted magnifying camera similar to one on the Mars Rover Opportunity, which promptly demonstrated its importance for reading environmental history from rocks at its landing site in 2004.

Within a few weeks after the landing, that camera at the end of Opportunity's arm revealed details of small spheres embedded in the rocks, hollows where crystals had dissolved, and fine layering shaped like smiles. These details all provided information about the site's wet past.

The camera installed on the end of Curiosity's arm this month is the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. Its work will include the same type of close-up inspections accomplished by the comparable camera on Opportunity, but MAHLI has significantly greater capabilities: full-color photography, adjustable focus, lights, and even video. Also, it sits on a longer arm, one that can hold MAHLI up higher than the cameras on the rover's mast. MAHLI will use those capabilities as one of 10 science instruments to study the area of Mars where NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission lands Curiosity in August 2012.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager takes its name from the magnifying tool that every field geologist carries. Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, is the principal investigator for the instrument. He said, "When you’re out in the field and you want to get a quick idea what minerals are in a rock, you pick up the rock in one hand and hold your hand lens in the other hand. You look through the lens at the colors, the crystals, the cleavage planes: features that help you diagnose what minerals you see.

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[bushwhacker]

Love the picture of the sand EX.
And thanks for that line that said there were 3 steel ball bearings in there i was goin crazy trying to figure out what they were

 

[EarthlingX]

Love the picture of the sand EX.
And thanks for that line that said there were 3 steel ball bearings in there i was goin crazy trying to figure out what they were

That sand is a tricky picture
I spotted one bearing right away, but the other two are better hidden ( at 1, 3, and 6 o'clock). I don't expect they will find many steel bearings on the Mars, but there will very likely be 'blueberries', if they count