Curiosity Rover on Track for Monday Landing
Curiosity, the car-size, one-ton rover is bound for arrival on Mars at 1:31 a.m., EDT on Monday, Aug. 6.
The landing will mark the beginning of a two-year prime mission to investigate one of the most intriguing places on Mars.
› Everything You Need to Know About Landing
› What to Expect From The First Pictures
Also check out this link for more interesting information: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
Comments
Ellison It would be pretty bad to go to Mars step out of the space ship and squish the last remaining Martian life form clinging for survival making it extinct.It will be interesting to see .What happens to Human life form on this planet in the next 20,000 years? Each of us is only on this planet a meer 100 revolutions around the Sun totally insignificant in Astrological terms We can't get any higher than 30,000 feet with out some means of life support
We are prisoners on the planet Earth .The way we are going we are either going to pollute the planet to the point life is impossible or we are going to blow it up unless the Earth Rumbles and we go out the way of the dinosaurs
Our only chance of survival in the long term is freeze some sperm and embryos along with some "nanny robots"
(with Ardupilot aboard ) and shoot them off to some distance star with sensors aboard that can detect a habitable planet and start us over again.
I don't think they want to contaminate the planet with our form of life, Carl. The point is not to colonize it yet. They want to try and figure out first if there's life independent of earth on Mars. I mean realistically, if they wanted to colonize Mars, it could be done with some concerted effort.
Thanks for the info Richard Thy need to bring along some plants and create some oxygen or maby even as an experiment Have a good day!
Ellison your scope is more than adequate Like I said before It doesn't matter how big it is Binoculars are just fine it is if you actually go out and use it . I built the dome for Light pollution .My telescope weighs 300 pounds and takes an hour to set up Before the dome I would go to star parties set up and there were children there with small telescopes I would help them orientate them and they could see every thing I could see and I never turned any body away the chair with the 3 books came along so little ones got a chance to take a look Through the big telescope.
@Carl - the Martian atmosphere is pretty much pure CO2, with a bit of Nitrogen and Argon.
(Traces of other things)
We're not going there anytime soon, need to be confident that the astronauts would (a) survive the trip there, (b) have enough supplies to do useful work on the surface and (c) survive the trip back.
We've more or less figured out (a), however (b) and especially (c) remain unknown, as we've never brought anything at all back from Mars. IIRC, the 2018 mission is intended to return some samples - that will be seriously cool.
Now I'm having adequacy issues, with my little store bought 8" Schmidt. But, I find with these scopes, portability is a big issue. Especially since I live in the city, the skies are just too bright, and i have to be able to put it in the car. I actually found I did more with a 6" than I ever did with the 8".
Munroe I bought the mirror and Eye pieces from "Cosmic Connections " and built the rest in 21 days designing as I went along . not to long before that the only way you could get a large mirror was to grind it.I have found it doesn't matter how big your telescope is you can see just as much with a good pair of field glasses . But you need the ability to raise your head up and look above the trees! And what I like about DIY Drones people here are doing just that !
Munroe ! a Quad Rotor at 100,000 feet ! What were you going to use for a motor? I was wondering if the
chemistry of the atmosphere on Mars is breathable if they could boost the partial pressure so the oxygen could
get through to our lungs or would it have to be "cleaned" first sort of a breathing apparatus using Martian air?
!After watching the David Rant with the accompanying Annimation Jack Crossfire commented on I wish them well It all seems a little of "Star Warsey " a lot is happening in a short time ! I am Glued ! I am going out and geting a red suit,renting a red car buying red popcorn red table cloth cream soda and watching the landing through red sun glasses!
their own! Good Post! My boys are 6 and 8 in the Pix now they are 25 and 27 . Have a Great Day!
I have been a Space Buff for years ! Back in the day I built a 12 inch Newtonian reflector telescope and "mini observatory for Hally's Comet and we had star parties 30 people at a time would come I could only get 14 people in the dome at a time. Any time any thing remotely astronomical is going to happen I get a knock at the door .I built a satellite receiving system tapped into NASA and watched the last MARS Mission And Many Shuttle missions Real time Now with the inter net and DIY Drones I can watch the Mars mission and communicate with other people around the World that are doing really "Exciting Stuff "of
NASA has dodged the issue of why it had to be so big. It may have been the only affordable way to have something mobile at a polar latitude. Solar panels wouldn't last long enough at a polar latitude to justify the distance something could travel in that time. The radio isotope generator is heavy & requires a lot of shielding. Any women who are single at my age will tell you mobility is hard.
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