The pre-landing buzz for NASA's next Mars rover, nee Mars Science Laboratory with its newish, friendlier Curiosity moniker is reaching hornet's nest intensity.
The complex series of rocket firings, sashaying heat shield-gauntlet, parachute flutter, and final knuckle-whitening skycrane...
The pre-landing buzz for NASA's next Mars rover, nee Mars Science Laboratory with its newish, friendlier Curiosity moniker is reaching hornet's nest intensity.
The complex series of rocket firings, sashaying heat shield-gauntlet, parachute flutter, and final knuckle-whitening skycrane hover topped by a delicate final winch maneuver. That's just to get to work, from space to red soil. The drama unfolds through the late night and very early morning of August 5-6. Advance stories are piling up.
As a personal aside, as described here before I've resigned from tracking as a member of MIT's staff with my last day Friday. But I will keep on blogging often as an outside (freelance, sort of) contractor. I've also accepted invitation to give a talk Mon. Aug 6 to the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in Tucson that's making me nervous as a cat. I'll do my best to get something in about coverage of the landing (or...
Bon voyage Curiosity, daughter of Mars...
Bon voyage Curiosity, daughter of Mars Science Laboratory, the big wheeled bruiser of a rover that NASA hopes to get off the ground Saturday. The aim is to land next August in ancient, gnarly Gale Crater not far south of the planet's equator. It is about 100 miles (154 km) across. Its midsection sports a pile of debris about as high as the Andes. The pic shows just part of the crater's complex terrain, gathered from orbit by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and its THEMIS imaging system. Grist has a link to the whole eye boggling gallery. The jumbled edifice, it appears, is a bit of a geologic mystery other than that an impact made it early in Mars's history, sediments buried it, and erosion has slowly re-exposed it...
For more than four years the PBS-NPR public TV and...
For more than four years the PBS-NPR public TV and radio operation in San Francisco, KQED and KQED-FM, has been edifying and entertaining the locals with top-flight science programming including radio spots and features and each year 20 new half-hour episodes of a high-def TV show. The polish of its science unit, called Quest, has not escaped notice. Last month it received a grant for nearly $1 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to train teams from six more PBS stations to provide such professional, local...
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