Curiosity Mars mission launch - Soon...

[Chadford]

In about a half hour. Watch here...

Mars Science Laboratory: Watch Online

 

[Chadford]

5 mins to blast off.

 

[tele1962]

5 mins to blast off.

Nice launch and some great pics, cheers Chadford.

 

[Chadford]

Bonza

 

[EarthRod]

I understand it will take about 6 months to get to Mars, spend about a year mooching around the surface collecting stuff and then return to Earth with it's valuable cargo.

This is going to be very interesting and I hope all goes well.

 

[Mr Incredible]

8.5 months apparently. Neat animation of the early mission stages.

 

[DPinBucks]

I understand it will take about 6 months to get to Mars, spend about a year mooching around the surface collecting stuff and then return to Earth with it's valuable cargo.

This is going to be very interesting and I hope all goes well.

It's not coming back. All the analysis will be done by the machine itself, under some control from Earth. Only data will be returned.

 

[EarthRod]

It's not coming back. All the analysis will be done by the machine itself, under some control from Earth. Only data will be returned.

Ah - OK.

The TV piece I saw (Sky News) said the samples will be returned.

 

[Solar]

The two identical on-board rover computers, called "Rover Compute Element" (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles. Each computer's memory includes 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. This compares to 3 MB of EEPROM, 128 MB of DRAM, and 256 MB of flash memory used in the Mars Exploration Rovers.

It cost them $2.5 billion to send a 1998 PC to mars, I would have given them my 2011 gamer PC for less than half that

 

[Grangey.]

It cost them $2.5 billion to send a 1998 PC to mars, I would have given them my 2011 gamer PC for less than half that

Little confused by this statement (although I appreciate it was intended as a joke)... they havnt spent 2.5billion on a 1998 pc... theyve spent 2.5 billion GETTING a 1998 pc to mars....

I do agree though in the grand scheme of things they should have nipped to their local PC world and bought an ipad- im sure its just as advanced

 

[John]

Bet NASA is feeling a little smug this week
BBC News - What would Mars probe failure mean for Russian space?

 

[figoagogo]

Ah - OK.

The TV piece I saw (Sky News) said the samples will be returned.

That would have been Russias Phobos Grunt? Which is still stuck hanging around Earth somewhere.

If the NASA mission works (i.e. the "new" landing technology) then they have a plan to follow it up with a mission to collect samples and return them.

Interesting stuff, and getting us closer to (wo)man going to Mars, if only the USA/Russia/China/Europe etc could work together on it.

 

[figoagogo]

I do agree though in the grand scheme of things they should have nipped to their local PC world and bought an ipad- im sure its just as advanced

Too risky, an update from Apple may have killed it.