Eyes on the Solar System - Mars Curiosity Rover

[LiNuX]

As some of you may know, the Mars Curiosity Rover is due to land 6 hours from this post, in the meantime, Caltech and NASA set up this cool tool that actually simulates the solar system and Curiosity as it flies through space to Mars.

http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml

Note: You will need to run the Java app to view the tool.

Very interesting imo.

Good luck to Curiosity in its final hours of travel!

[thedeparted]

24 thousand miles to go :P

http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL

will go live at 1130 est

[paecmaker]

aha :), pretty cool.

[LiNuX]

Curiosity is now strolling through Mars, can't wait to see what it discovers.

[paecmaker]

Curiosity is now strolling through Mars, can't wait to see what it discovers.

A soviet flag :p

[Mizel]

A soviet flag :p

Hahaha, that's what I was thinking :P

This is really awesome though. I'd be a lot more excited if we weren't exploring planets in our own solar system. Don't get me wrong, this is amazing. I only say that because we already know that none of them contain life like ours. And how awesome would it be for Curiosity to be rolling along when all of a sudden an alien pops up in front of the camera! :P

[thedeparted]

i was watching the ustream, exciting stuff. hell yeah america

[LiNuX]

Hahaha, that's what I was thinking :P

This is really awesome though. I'd be a lot more excited if we weren't exploring planets in our own solar system. Don't get me wrong, this is amazing. I only say that because we already know that none of them contain life like ours. And how awesome would it be for Curiosity to be rolling along when all of a sudden an alien pops up in front of the camera! :P

It would be awesome if we could explore planets in other solar systems, but it takes literally tens of thousands of years to get to other stars, our solar system is the best we have of real time excitement.

Martians would be awesome! I think Curiosity will find traces of microbial life in the ground, I wouldn't be surprised, life is...strong.

[Trunks]

I always thought that too, all life can't be water based, their has to be something different out there.

Edit:

Video of the the first pictures


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCyMcQSzzks&feature=b-mv

[Mizel]

It would be awesome if we could explore planets in other solar systems, but it takes literally tens of thousands of years to get to other stars, our solar system is the best we have of real time excitement.

Martians would be awesome! I think Curiosity will find traces of microbial life in the ground, I wouldn't be surprised, life is...strong.

Oh, I have no doubt that Curiosity will find something. I'm very excited to see what comes of this ^_^

[LiNuX]

Here is the decent to Mars video from Curiosity. Wonder what it would feel like in person.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I

[nerdo]

It's undoubtedly exciting and reports claim that it will pave the way for humans on Mars by the 2030s:D