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Mars Curiosity's first images

mars.jpl.nasa.gov

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Re: Mars Curiosity's first images

#11

Post by haeikou »

I had the impression that the whole "control" room was nothing but show. Estimating the travelling times of a radio wave, nobody on earth could have had any control about the spacecraft, and none of the engineers in the control room could have done anything other than watch.

So if anybody is more involved into the mission than I am ... is my impression correct, or were there actual fallback mechanisms that these people could have decided upon?

Re: Mars Curiosity's first images

#13

Post by joering2 »

I took those during landing sequence..

http://i45.tinypic.com/353eemc.jpg

http://i46.tinypic.com/ej95s5.png

http://i49.tinypic.com/2qicoqq.png

http://i50.tinypic.com/2hd8j13.png

edit: its just fun to watch those. also, according to NASA there is 500,000 lines of code behind those 38 steps.. would love to see some parts of it!

Re: Mars Curiosity's first images

#15

Post by mikeknoop »

haeikou wrote: post #11

I had the impression that the whole "control" room was nothing but show. Estimating the travelling times of a radio wave, nobody on earth could have had any control about the spacecraft, and none of the engineers in the control room could have done anything other than watch. So if anybody is more involved into the mission than I am ... is my impression correct, or were there actual fallback mechanisms that these peop…

They committed ("non-reversible changes" on the livestream) to the landing about 20, 30 minutes prior to entry.
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