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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I think the tax payers of the United States deserve a round of applause from the rest of us for funding such a mission. It's not that other countries can't do this - we just don't want to pay for it...
Yeah, wish Australia would take a more active role in space exploration.
Great historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?
Great historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I liked that bit. Drove home the humanity of the people who had just accomplished something that only a few thousand years ago was thought to be in the domain of gods. That we as a species have come so far but still retain our sense of self is fantastic.
Hundred. A few hundred years ago.
It's times like this that I think everyone can be proud to be part of the human race.
Personally, I think the tax payers of the United States deserve a round of applause from the rest of us for funding such a mission. It's not that other countries can't do this - we just don't want to pay for it...
2.5 billion dollars to put Curiosity on Mars. That's is a little more than double of what NBC paid to air the Olympics[1]. Imagine what they could do if we doubled their budget from half a percent of the federal budget[2] to 1%.
1. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics-fans-ways-circumvent-n...
2. http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/622643main_FY%2013%20Budget%20Presen...
Great historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?
The HazCams also had clear lens covers in place to protect the lenses from all the dust blown around by the landing rockets. These were not yet removed in the very first images -- indeed, the reason they're clear is that even if for some reason a cover gets stuck, a dusty image is better than no image at all.
Moreover, as the first communications opportunity was rather short, and the high-bandwidth directional antenna is not yet unfolded, there was simply no bandwidth available to downlink very high-resolution images.
The mast of the rover, containing the high-resolution NavCams and MastCams, is still folded up. If all goes well, it will be raised in a couple of days and higher-res images beamed up in due course.
Here's a nice article on Curiosity's various cameras: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-226
Great historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, wish Australia would take a more active role in space exploration.
Some of the tracking stations for the project are in Australia, including the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex. Perhaps it's a small contribution but Australia is definitely involved.