MERGED: Curiosity Mars Rover: UPDATES and RELATED STORIES

[Sand Man]

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Curiosity's Early Views of Mars

This image shows one of the first views from NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars the evening of Aug. 5 PDT (early morning hours Aug. 6 EDT). It was taken through a "fisheye" wide-angle lens on one of the rover's Hazard-Avoidance cameras. These engineering cameras are located at the rover's base. As planned, the early images are lower resolution. Larger color images are expected later in the week when the rover's mast, carrying high-resolution cameras, is deployed. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Behold Mount Sharp!

This image taken by NASA's Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover -- its main science target, Mount Sharp. The rover's shadow can be seen in the foreground, and the dark bands beyond are dunes. Rising up in the distance is the highest peak Mount Sharp at a height of about 3.4 miles, taller than Mt. Whitney in California. The Curiosity team hopes to drive the rover to the mountain to investigate its lower layers, which scientists think hold clues to past environmental change.

This image was captured by the rover's front left Hazard-Avoidance camera at full resolution shortly after it landed. It has been linearized to remove the distorted appearance that results from its fisheye lens. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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[Sand Man]

11.22.2011
Detail Observed from 10 Feet away with Curiosity's ChemCam
This image displays the type of detail discernable with the telescopic camera of the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover. The instrument uses a telescope for spectroscopic analysis of chemical elements in targets such as rocks or soil. The same telescope serves the instrument's camera, called the remote microimager. For this image, the remote microimager photographed a dollar bill from 10 feet (3 meters) away.

ChemCam was conceived, designed and built by a U.S.-French team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N. M.; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; the Centre National d'?tudes Spatiales (the French government space agency); and the Centre d'?tude Spatiale des Rayonnements at the Observatoire Midi-Pyr?n?es, Toulouse, France.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. This mission will land a rover named Curiosity on Mars in August 2012. Researchers will use the tools on the rover to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL

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[yokam888]

link to more pics from curiosity

Mars rover sends first incredible photos | Photo Gallery - Yahoo! News

[Code Talker]

OT: basin ma kit-an ni Rover Curiosity si John Carter sa Mars. lol. I hope naay promising finds si Curiosity. This will hopefully benefit future generations.

[xeoxander01]

break time..

[edoy]

MANILA, Philippines - A Filipino NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) engineer is part of the team that landed the ?Curiosity? rover on Mars Sunday.

Operations systems engineer Gregory Galgana Villar III was born in the States, although he went to the St. Louis University Laboratory High School in Baguio City, where his parents are from, according to the Huffington Post.

In an interview with ?one of NASA's youngest engineers on the rover mission,? HuffPost quoted him as saying that landing the rover on Mars ?was unreal.?

?I couldn't hold myself back - we were jumping up and down, hugging each other, tearing up,? he said. As soon as they received photos of the neighboring planet?s surface, ?We were just blown away once again!?

According to HuffPost, Villar, who works in NASA?s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, started his career with the organization with an internship during his junior year at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Of the mission?s success, he said, ?I hope that it will continue to inspire people and show decision makers in our government that these types of missions are essential to our progression as humans. And I hope the youth are inspired.?

Community news website Montrose-La Crescenta Patch also interviewed Villar prior to Curiosity?s landing, and asked him about what makes that particular Mars mission different from the rest.

?Curiosity is the biggest and most sophisticated rover that has ever been sent to Mars. [It] is the size of Mini Cooper and weighs almost 2,000 pounds,? he replied. The rover was ?placed on the surface of Mars using a very complex landing system.? It was also ?equipped with 10 scientific payloads, a total of 17 cameras, an arm, a drill, and a battery powered by heat from naturally decaying radioactive material.?

His job involved ?coordinating operational readiness tests for the different phases of the mission,? and ?making sure all of the tools, procedures, process and interactions between the teams function correctly, while under a flight-like timeline.?

Having dedicated ?about 4,000 hours? work? on the mission, Villar told Patch that it ?was time well spent.? Now that Curiosity has landed on Mars, he will be part of a team that decides ?what we want the rover to do next.?

source : What's 'Curiosity' without a Pinoy? Fil-Am engineer part of Mars rover mission - InterAksyon.com


kudos to Pinoys who are a part of the Curiosity Team !!!

[mio]

Nindot lagi ni na topic.

[harhar]

Pure pinoy unta to... ^^

[windshock]

although he went to the St. Louis University Laboratory High School in Baguio City, where his parents are from, according to the Huffington Post.

Pure pinoy unta to... ^^

Pure pinoy cguro bro ky tga bagyo mn daw iyang parents

[coolnezz]

Science is messy, check out why the Curiosity Rover is a Mars litterbug. [News] - Mars Curiosity 'Litter Bug' Spied from Orbit: Photos : Discovery News

Aug. 7, 2012 -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity was a bit of a litter bug as it wrapped up its 352-million mile (566-million kilometer) journey early Monday and headed toward a landing inside Gale Crater, an ancient impact basin that is home to a towering mound of sedimentary rock.
From a vantage point about 186 miles (300 kilometers) above the planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, known by its acronym MRO, surveyed the scene, providing documentation (in case NASA ever faces littering charges) of Curiosity?s discarded heat shield, parachute and sky crane.

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona