Woot!

I can't wait to see the video Curiosity took while it was doing the landing sequence. That is going to be some of the most incredible footage ever.

Whoa, it was recording video? Can't wait to see it.

Yes, first ever video recording of an actual landing on a different planet. I am excited as all hell.

I was going to post, what about Huygens?, but I checked first and there is no video footage from the Huygens descent. Grrr. I loved Wonders Of The Solar System, but it needed to be much clearer about when it was showing actual footage and when it was showing CGI.

Peter

So far what's been posted consists of 297 blurry thumbnails of the last 2.5 minutes of descent. I suppose you can call a 2fps recording "video" when it's played back at over 4fps - I don't normally. It's kind of like really really bad claymation, shot from above, of a beige flat surface with a small puff of dust at the end. Definitely not worth the watching time as promised by Engadget.

But this image is pretty sweet:



So, does anyone have the URL we can visit to control this probe?

Haven't seen any info about the data rate they are getting between here and there. Perhaps those 297 blurry thumbnails will improve when the full images are downloaded? Certainly the first image was only 64x64 which then became 256x256 and then possibly more like the 600x450 one above. Pretty cool yes. Are they going to get colour images?

I can imagine it's probably a bit like downloading a Linux DVD iso via a 56k or worse dialup modem. They'll probably generate more data than they can send.

So I did a bit of research - well read some links from a CodeProject news email that just came in.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/13404...eme-with-wheels

It says the orbiter has a 6Mbps X band link back to here. That's pretty impressive speed for 250M miles. Doesn't say what rate from Curiosity (MSL) to the orbiter (MRO) though via UHF but can also talk directly to home.

The black and white images are simply because these are the guidance cameras. They call them "HazCams" according to the above.

How do I get a job like this?

Oh and I agree the descent video is nothing really to see. Concept is cool but nothing to see here.

The MRO can only do those high speeds at much closer ranges than it is now.

In orbit round Mars is it restricted to around 500 kilobits per second.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/commxband/

They are referring to that as the 'sneak peak', since the high-res video hasn't been transmitted back here yet. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=149974611

Still over 1500 times faster than my first modem. The latency's probably a little worse, though.

Though I assume you weren't trying to push hi-res images through that, and certainly not video of any kind...

That's the same speed we have here at work...

I'm not so sure. I remember trying to play Doom and Quake over a modem connection. There were times that I was certain the packets must have been going to Mars and back.

A bunch of high res images posted to the reddit link I gave above. Video soon, I guess.

What's with all the exposed wire. Is Mars really that benign?

Dust/sandstorms would be the only thing to worry about I think, and if it is more dust than sand erosion or sandblasting wouldn't be a concern. Temperature and radiation shouldn't bother the exposed wire bundles. We put our wire bundles here through a lot of abuse and different conditions, but it is a lot easier to repair them here than it is on Mars.

Of course, electricity and I mix as well as oil and water do, so I could be completely wrong.

I think it's more like, their wires are really that tough.

They had to save weight, and one way to save weight is to reduce the need for protective coverings by making some of the actual components tough enough so that they don't need the protective coverings.

My favorite site of the last few days is the Sarcastic Rover:

https://twitter.com/SarcasticRover

Comedic gold.

-jk

That's hilarious!

A better resolution video has been released. The only place I've seen it so far was Wired Science so I'm not sure if it is 'official'. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/hd-curiosity-landing/

That was awesome.

I was hoping they would have had cameras pointed out toward the horizon or something like 0deg-45deg angle from horizontal so there was more of a perspective on the descent. It was still amazing, though.

I bet they are wishing they had a camera on the crane.

yes, I too saw it on Wired first, before it was made available on NASA's website as well.
Amazing. I watched it over and over...