Pete M Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 aaaaannnnnnnndddd we've got a new rover on Mars. good stuff. looking forward to some sweet photos.
Jesse J Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 just watching this. pretty sweet in my opinion. the fact that we can huck a thing at a planet and hit it and have that thing running around doing things. and drones as well!
87MJTIM Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 We can get a rover on Mars safely and in the targeted location.... and I am still waiting for mail sent two months ago.
derf Posted February 18, 2021 Posted February 18, 2021 I caugh it "live". Of course, it takes several minutes for the signals to reach us so it was down for a while before we confirmed it. Looking forward to the high res photos. And, of course the photoshops with Marvin the Martian or Matt Damon.
fiatslug87 Posted February 19, 2021 Posted February 19, 2021 I remember when Viking 1 &2 landed on Mars back in 1976! I wrote to NASA and they mailed me photos the landers took of the Martian surface. It wasn't as easy as typing in a url and seeing all the pictures.
A-man930 Posted February 19, 2021 Posted February 19, 2021 Can't wait for video/audio of the landing.
mjeff87 Posted February 19, 2021 Posted February 19, 2021 I watched the JPL live feed of that yesterday (I tried to watch the NASA feed, but it was too "pop culture" for me to handle, lol). Simply amazing. Like Jesse said, we hucked a one-ton contraption/hunk of very expensive parts 128 million miles away, and landed it in a spot smaller than my driveway. LIKE.A.BOSS. I listened to the person in charge of the operation on a radio interview this morning, and he was discussing the mission of the Rover. It's job is to scour the surface and take bore samples (about the size and shape of a piece of chalk) and deposit them on the Martian surface. Later, another mission is going to launch to go pick them up and assemble them into a return vehicle. That vehicle then, they plan, will blast off from the surface and return to Earth. That will mark another first for the space program, actually launching a vehicle from a planet (or moon) surface via a rocket, remotely. We are living through history here. edit: I also learned that NASA/JPL's official phrase for when things are going perfectly on a mission is "nominal". They are true masters of understatement. Also, there are bags of peanuts in every control room during operations like this as a superstition/good luck charm. I didn't hear the whole story, but it goes back to an old launch director or some other higher up that liked to eat peanuts and pass them around as a snack. Thought that was kinda funny, and heartwarming at the same time.
derf Posted February 19, 2021 Posted February 19, 2021 What makes this landing unique was that the vehicle used cameras and image processing to choose its own landing site. And it did this with no outside intervention. It was entirely autonomous. We only got exact coordinates after the landing.
mjeff87 Posted February 19, 2021 Posted February 19, 2021 There was about a 7 minute window from the point of computer detected touchdown until actual visual confirmation. Talk about crapping nickels..... Here's some info on the "lucky peanuts" https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/10022/what-are-nasas-lucky-peanuts/ It's not mentioned there, but the guy was saying on one failed mission (that peanuts weren't in the room) back in the day involved the spacecraft missing the moon.......completely. Talk about an "ooops" moment.
mjeff87 Posted February 22, 2021 Posted February 22, 2021 Live update going on right now, some incredible photos so far:
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