Posted by David Bostedo on August 6, 2012 at 1:33 PM
The NASA Curiosity rover landed on Mars last night bringing with it an array of scientific instruments including several cameras... Details on all the instruments are here :
I, personally, am waiting to see what the footage from the MARDI descent cam will look like once it's available. It could be amazing. There's also a macro cam with built-in focus stacking, and the mast cam, which has an interesting story and capability :
This landing was an inspired and astounding achievement! My hat's off to NASA and JPL!
Our space program has given us so many things and a fund of knowledge whose value is truly inestimable. This country seriously needs a space exploration goal that inspires a response similar to that of the Apollo program. I think Curiosity is a step in the right direction!
--P
Posted by Keith Bauer on August 6, 2012 at 8:05 PM
That video is absolutely mind blowing! Great stuff. Congrats to all the brilliant minds who made this successful.
Loved it that NASA accomplished this. The video was awesome. My hat is off to everybody who worked on this project in any of its many aspects.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 7, 2012 at 9:17 AM
And now a stop motion video made of 297 frames taken during the descent... the heat shield falls away at the beginning, and at 45 seconds the dust starts to swirl from the final rockets kicking on... High def video should be coming eventually, hopefully including the rover lowering.
Discussion
6 replieshttp://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/
I, personally, am waiting to see what the footage from the MARDI descent cam will look like once it's available. It could be amazing. There's also a macro cam with built-in focus stacking, and the mast cam, which has an interesting story and capability :
http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/Mastcam/
And if you haven't seen how the rover landed, this video is amazing and definitely worth watching :
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1090
(On a non-photography note, I'm proud to say that I helped design the processors that control the spacecraft and rover.
Our space program has given us so many things and a fund of knowledge whose value is truly inestimable. This country seriously needs a space exploration goal that inspires a response similar to that of the Apollo program. I think Curiosity is a step in the right direction!
--P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I