Mars Revisited - Curiosity (6 Aug 2012) - Let's roll!

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Has the Mars Rover Sniffed Methane?
"NASA's Curiosity rover is poised to settle years of debate on the question of atmospheric methane on Mars, which would be a sign of microbial life. With parts per trillion sensitivity, it's not so much a question of whether the rover will be able to smell trace amounts of methane, but rather a question of how much. NASA has announced that Grotzinger's team will discuss atmospheric measurements at a briefing on 2 November. If the rover has detected methane at sufficiently high concentration, or exhibiting temporal variations of the kind that suggests microbial activity, then it will surely motivate a desire to identify and map the sources."

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Op donderdag 9 augustus 2012 22:03 schreef LXIV het volgende:
Wat ik zo vreemd vind is dat er allerlei kabels e.d. gewoon los op het dek zitten. Het lijkt mij toch betrouwbaarder als dat onder een kap zit. Zeker met extreme omstandigheden. Er zal wel over nagedacht zijn.

Ik heb wel de nasa een mail gestuurd waarin ik om opheldering hierover vraag. Ik laat het antwoord wel weten!

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Op donderdag 9 augustus 2012 23:02 schreef nietzman het volgende:

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Ik hoop zo dat je een mailtje terugkrijgt met de mededeling "Fuck, we zijn de kappen vergeten." waarna ze je een baan aanbieden. Wel blijven posten als je de volgende missie mag leiden hè.

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Hi Lxiv,

Thank you for your question! As you suggest, the main concern is dust, which can coat instruments and camera lenses. Curiosity has been designed to handle that in a few different ways. Wires are protected by coatings and the entire rover is made out of robust materials. For the cameras specifically, the engineers knew that landing was likely to be a dusty endeavor, so the hazard avoidance cameras (hazcams) were outfitted with spring-loaded, clear dust covers that were removed after landing (for a cool example of why this was a good idea, check out these before and after hazcam images: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4214 http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=4238). The Navcams gained protection from the stowed position of the remote-sensing mast during the landing; they do not have lens covers. When the Navcam and Mastcam cameras are not in use, the RSM (Remote Sensing Mast) is positioned so that the cameras are pointed downward (to prevent dust from settling on the optics). As on the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, small amounts of dust will likely accumulate on the camera lenses over time. However, the amount of dust that accumulates on the lenses is not large and therefore only has a minor impact on image quality. And because it gets windy on Mars from time to time, the Martian wind often “cleans” the lenses, and removes the larger dust particles.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) is located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm and because MAHLI is frequently placed near the ground, and is near the drill, etc., it has a cover to protect the lens from dust and other debris. Other examples of how the system is designed to cope with dust include the Mastcam color-calibration target on the rover deck, which has magnets to keep the highly magnetic Martian dust from accumulating on portions of color chips and white-gray-balance reference chips and the Dust Removal Tool on the rover arm, which is a metal-bristle brushing device used to remove the dust layer from a rock surface or to clean the rover’s observation tray.


Thanks again for your question and your interest in Mars exploration!



All the best,



Mars Outreach

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What "Earth-Shaking" Discovery Has Curiosity Made on Mars?
"NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument. The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. 'We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting,' says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity. Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. 'This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good,' he says."

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"We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down," says Grotzinger. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good"

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2012 19:07 schreef -CRASH- het volgende:
Meteorites reveal warm water existed on Mars

Martian And Terran History Finding a common denominator

Melt water on Mars could sustain life

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Op dinsdag 9 oktober 2012 16:56 schreef xzaz het volgende:
Als we vanavond een persco krijgen kan het wel eens lachen worden!

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Op woensdag 21 november 2012 21:44 schreef Pizzakoppo het volgende:

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haha idd ik ga dubbel liggen swa

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Op dinsdag 20 november 2012 23:41 schreef Quyxz_ het volgende:

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Maar dat is al een paar dagen bekend, dus misschien is er iets anders?

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Op woensdag 26 september 2012 20:41 schreef Pek het volgende:
Er is ook kleur hoor

[ afbeelding ]

En die twee steentjes onder in beeld zijn volgens mij dezelfde als bij Yuri boven in beeld, er zit beweging in

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Op vrijdag 23 november 2012 17:28 schreef Draganta het volgende:

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Volgens mij worden die foto's naderhand in kleur gemaakt, toch? Ik meen ergens gelezen te hebben dat het niet eens de echte kleuren zijn, het zou meer aarde-achtig uitzien, google maar eens naar Mars real color (vermijd de conspiracy websites, die kom je dan ook tegen).

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Op woensdag 16 januari 2013 20:35 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
.NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover Report - January 10, 2013 (door NASAtelevision)

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover Report - January 10, 2013