Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation

It takes about 14 mins for the signal from Curiosity to reach earth so by the time we're 'there'
it will have been dead or alive for about 7 minutes. (from the video in the one you replied to)

You said listening, not watching? I see different times but it seems it's about 3:30pm tomorrow here.

Update: um, ok lol it is NOW some half hour after the material above landed .. chuckle ..

LIVE: Watch the landing of NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’

6 August

On Monday 6 August, NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’ is scheduled to land on the Red Planet.

NASA's most advanced planetary rover is due to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work once it lands in the 154km-wide Gale Crater, named after Sydney astronomer Walter Frederick Gale (1865-1945).

However, getting the Curiosity rover to the surface Mars will not be easy.

Watch this historic moment at the Powerhouse Museum or Sydney Observatory, with live feeds direct from NASA. ‘Curiosity’ is due to land on Mars at 3.31pm and it is hoped that the first images will be available around 4.30pm.
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/whatson/curiosity_landing.php

F6, LISTENING, not watching? (still not 100% sure) .. on a NASA link, i guess?

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When NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission lands on the red planet, communication
antennas across Australia will be listening.

"Come in Curiosity. Australia is Listening"
Mars Science Laboratory - Entry, Descent and Landing
Landing Time: Monday, 6 August 2012 - 3:31pm AEST

On Monday, 6 August, antenna dishes across Australia are set to receive signals from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover 'Curiosity' as it lands on the red planet.

NASA mission scientists refer to landing on Mars as the 'seven minutes of terror'.

It's never easy to land on Mars, so the more ears/eyes you have pointing skyward, the better!

Australia's Vital Role in NASA's Mars Mission
Giant antenna dishes across Australia will be uniquely positioned to receive signals from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover called 'Curiosity' as it lands on the surface of the red planet, Monday, 6th August.

Listening to signals received through antennas in Canberra, Parkes and New Norcia (near Perth), mission scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will countdown through a period they call the 'seven minutes of terror' as the spacecraft plummets towards the surface at over 20,000km/hr.

The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC), which is managed on NASA's behalf by the CSIRO, will be the 'prime' tracking station for landing activities. CDSCC will listen for a series distinct tones directly from the spacecraft as various steps in the landing process are activated, such as; parachute deployment, heatshield separation, and the all important tone that confirms that the rover has landed safely on the surface.

At the same time, CSIRO's Parkes Radio Telescope will be used as a giant ear to receive and record the tones which are transmitted as a UHF radio signal, through the first few minutes of the spacecraft's entry into the Martian atmosphere. This data will be stored for later playback to the mission team.

Another smaller antenna managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) at New Norcia, near Perth will provide extra redundancy, also receiving signals from the spacecraft, as well as tones recorded through ESA's Mars Express satellite in Mars' orbit.

Landing Day - August 6, 2012
The exact landing time for the spacecraft is determined by several factors including descent time on the parachute, martian winds, and any powered-flight time for the spacecraft nearing landing. Earliest confirmation of a touchdown signal could be received on Earth at 3.31pm AEST.

As the spacecraft performs entry, descent and landing on Mars, all events are pre-programmed. The landing cannot be controlled from Earth due to the time it takes for a radio signal travelling at the speed of light to reach Mars and return to Earth. So the spacecraft has to do everything on its own.

The entire process from entry into the atmosphere to touchdown takes seven minutes. All the mission scientists can do is watch and wait. They call this time the 'seven minutes of terror'. (video) .. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1090

About the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
Managed by the CSIRO, the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) is one of three tracking stations in NASA's Deep Space Network. Separated by approximately 120 degrees around the world, the stations in Canberra, Australia, Madrid, Spain and Goldstone, California, provide two-way radio contact with dozens of spacecraft across the Solar System and beyond.

About the Mars Science Laboratory mission
NASA's latest mission to the red planet is the Mars Science Laboratory rover called 'Curiosity'. The 900kg vehicle will land at and explore Gale Crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. Curiosity is designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment suitable to support small microbial life forms.

After a 567 million kilometre, 8.5 month journey to Mars, Curiosity is aiming to land in an ellipse just 20kms by 7kms at the base of a 5km high 'mountain' in the centre of the crater.

MSL Website | MSL Fact Sheet (pdf) | MSL Landing Press Kit (5.46mb pdf)
About the MIssion | Instruments | MSL Gallery | MSL mission trailer (Youtube) [..links for others inside, insert yt video..]

http://www.cdscc.nasa.gov/Pages/Archive/2012_MSLEDL/msledl_roles.html

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Mars rover Curiosity on course to land Monday


The rover's descent .. Exploring the surface [..two short informative videos embedded..]

By Marc Kaufman, Sunday, August 5, 9:01 AM

PASADENA, Calif. — After a journey of 354 million miles, a spacecraft approaching Mars at 13,200 mph is on course to land inside its sweet spot early Monday.

The landing is one of the riskiest ever tried, and the descent is what NASA officials call “seven minutes of terror.”


Video
The Washington Post’s Marc Kaufman, author of “Mars Landing 2012: Inside NASA’s Curiosity Mission,” explains why the Curiosity mission to Mars is being hailed by NASA’s chief scientist as the “mission of the decade.” [not neg., just not much in that one]

Gallery



NASA’s Mars Curiosity: 11 things you may not know:?A multibillion dollar gamble, a most scary landing and possibly learning whether Mars once could have supported life — briefly, that’s what’s at stake in NASA’s Mars Curiosity mission.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasas-mars-curiosity-11-things-you-may-not-know/2012/08/02/gJQA2VCYSX_gallery.html

Nonetheless, the spacecraft carrying the Mars rover Curiosity is on target “to fly through the eye of the needle” and touch down within its five-by-13-mile landing elipse, said Arthur Amador, mission manager of the Mars Science Laboratory. “We’re .?.?. in as good shape as we could hope for.”

Yet with so much riding on the $2.5 billion mission, he said at a news conference, “we’re often reminding each other to keep breathing.”

The spaceship is on course to enter the Martian atmosphere at 1:24 a.m. Eastern time on Monday.

Because the rover is so much larger, more complicated and more ambitious than earlier models, it has to land in a new and far more hazardous way. The landing, which could never be tested in full on Earth, includes a hovering rocket stage, a kind of sky crane, to lower it to the ground. NASA’s chief scientist John Grunsfeld has said that because of that heightened landing difficulty, in addition to the unprecedented sophistication of the instruments on board, Curiosity is “the most important NASA mission of the decade.”

Anxious engineers and scientists will be waiting for a touchdown “beep” — which comes as computer code — that will report a safe landing. It could come as early as 1:31 a.m.

Several hours of silence from Curiosity are quite possible, officials said, since the rover’s signals can be received only if the Mars orbiters that will relay its messages are in precisely the correct location.

But if nothing is heard from the orbiters or through the Deep Space Network after about 18 hours, said MSL deputy project manager Richard Cook, then it’s time to start worrying about the fate of the mission.

The Curiosity landing is shaping up to be an international spectacle. Formal “landing” parties have been scheduled from South Australia to Rome, from Israel to Crete; and in the United States from Atlanta to Seattle, Milwaukee to Honolulu.

NASA also has helped organize a landing gathering in New York’s Times Square, which will feature a large screen that will beam the streaming news from atop a building and high above the crowd.

Reaching, orbiting and landing on Mars is notoriously hard. In addition to the European Space Agency, nations including the United States, the former Soviet Union, Russia, China and Japan have sent missions to Mars since the late 1960s, but only about one-third of them have succeeded.

The United States is the only nation to land a vehicle on Mars and complete its mission, having done it six out of seven tries.

The Soviet Union was the first to touch down on the Martian surface, but that 1971 mission ended 14 seconds later when all communication ceased.

NASA’s confidence in the mission is reflected in the aggressive way it’s trying to bring it to the public, from landing-based X-box games to those many parties.

But reflecting the ever-present possibility of failure, Mars Exploration program director Doug McQuiston said: “If we’re not successful, we will have learned from it. We’ll pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and do it again.”

The first Mars pictures expected from Curiosity will be relatively primitive fish-eye black-and-white images that will have been transmitted either within the first few minutes after touchdown or two hours later, when the orbiting Odyssey satellite again passes over the landing site.

Higher-resolution and color images from other cameras could come later in the week, and a video filmed of the last minute of the landing from the vehicle will be released weeks later, because it will take longer to download.

Curiosity is not only the most expensive and ambitious mission ever sent to another planet, but it also has a formal goal unattempted by NASA since the Viking landers of the mid-1970s: a search for the building blocks of extraterrestrial life. The rover carries three chemistry labs that will search for carbon-based organic material and Martian habitats where life once may have flourished.

An army of 700 engineers and scientists is converging at the Jet Propulsion Lab to watch and tweak the landing, and then to hopefully begin the slow process of getting the rover ready for operations.

The earliest tests will begin within a day of landing, but moving, digging soil and drilling rocks won’t take place for weeks or months, agency officials said.

Curiosity is the first rover to land any place on Mars other than a flat plain. Because of advances in landing technology, it will touch down instead in Gale Crater, a large and ancient hole in the ground about three miles deep.

At its center is Mount Sharp — named after California Institute of Technology planetary scientist Robert Sharp — which will offer geologists and planetary scientists their first opportunity to observe and analyze the history of the planet as laid down in its exposed rock layers.

Temperatures in the crater are expected to range from 10 degrees during the day to 100 degrees below zero at night. The rover has a nuclear-powered battery that it uses to create the heat needed to keep the rover from freezing and the electricity to move its wheels and to operate its 10 instruments.

As the landing approaches, a potentially disruptive dust storm in southern Mars being monitored by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter appears to be dissipating, according to JPL’s Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for Curiosity. “Mars is cooperating by providing good weather for landing.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2012/08/04/896a28c8-de3b-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_story.html

Ok, about 3:30pm here. Wouldn't it be HOT if
Curiosity tells us, "Hey guys, Mars has supported life!" LOL