Living

Aug 9, 2012 2:48 PM   Curiosity's day 3 on the Gale Crater, Mars. All systems are running as expected. There is no sign of sailors fighting in the dance hall, cavemen or any freaky show, and here's the first natural 360-degree color panorama image to prove it. It's a clear day on Mars. You can see Mount Sharp ahead of the rover, in the distance. That's the mission final destination, at the center of the Galer Crater. It shows some details from the rover itself: These is the end of the robotic arm. It's like a Swiss Army Knife, containing multiple instruments like the APXS (Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer) and MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager). Here's the wheel of the rover. The marks of the sky crane's thrusters are clearly visible here. And here too. Here's the complete panorama—3653 x 755 pixels. Click to expand and see the whole thing: View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line w...

Great news keep coming from the red planet. Curiosity has opened her eyes for the first time. She took a good look around her and decided that life is good in Mars—albeit a bit lonely. Updated: New images coming in, including panoramas and high definition images from the descent. The Navigation Cameras—the eyes that will guide her around Mars—have been activated and they are beaming perfect images down to Earth. The left camera may have had a problem at the beginning, because at first the image was all dark and with a weird white artifact. It actually looked as if she had eyelids and was slowly waking up. This didn't happened with the right camera, which was sending perfect images from the moment it was turned on. I can imagine someone at mission control singing Oh You Pretty Things! in his or her head. "Wake up you sleepy head, put on some clothes, shake up your bed..." The first two images sent by the left Navcam—on the left—looked black and showed a weird artifact. T...