Mars: yes or no?

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
SarcasticRover is funnier, though. :)

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SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
Getting my software updated today! Not exactly sure what "Windows ME" is - but it'll probs kick ass.
8:22 AM - 10 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
PLAN 5 FROM OUTER SPACE: Russian Roulette - not with guns or anything, just take some cosmonauts to a casino. ALWAYS BET ON RED.
8:31 PM - 10 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
Not to brag or anything, but my mast is over 40 inches long when fully erect, and also, it has an atomic laser on it… ladies.
9:37 PM - 11 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
So beautiful… should have sent… a poet. LOL Kidding! This place is flippin' ugly.
8:13 AM - 12 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
Don't you people get it? I will NEVER SEE THE AVENGERS 2! Never! No amount of scientific discovery will make that okay by me.
7:56 PM - 12 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
Love my software upgrade! If you're a robot, I highly recommend getting SKYNET. It makes you feel… powerful.
9:00 AM - 13 Aug 12

SarcasticRover @SarcasticRover
PLAN 8 FROM OUTER SPACE: Everyone at JPL takes VOIGHT-KAMPFF tests until we find a replicant… my money's on Ferdowsi.
10:29 AM - 13 Aug 12

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Video of the descent:

which plays at 3 X real time. The heat shield crashes toward the lower left at :21. A real duration video, not as smooth but gives you time to see things:

Also cool, an interactive panorama of the tracks left during its first little test drive:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/photography/la-sci-bw-mars-curiosity
-pano,0,5525118.htmlstory

I can't help wonder about people who think this is faked. I've met some who showed me "evidence" that the moon landings were faked. It does make a entertaining story. I wonder what their fiction is about this.

ETA: Just to fully appreciate the fact that we are watching hi-def on Mars: the youtube page for the first video includes this "Fun fact: The first mission to Mars, Mariner 4 in 1965, returned a total of 634 kb of data, including 22 photos."

634 kB! Can you imagine?

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Quote:

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Originally posted by MAL4PREZ:
I can't help wonder about people who think this is faked. I've met some who showed me "evidence" that the moon landings were faked. It does make a entertaining story. I wonder what their fiction is about this.

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Poked around the Internet and found this:

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The supposed landing of the Curiosity was CGI and computer sound effects piped into mission control at JPL in order to fool the engineers, the invited guests, the media and the dumbed down public.

The real rover is in Nevada near Area-51 complete with a Hollywood backdrop standing in for the horizon and the color imaging being re-tuned to a red tint in order to make blue skies look pink and the brown desert soil look deep red.

(ETA: not giving a link because I don't want to encourage web traffic there.)

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So, according to this person, not only is the public being fooled about Curiosity, so are the workers at NASA! But they didn't give a theory as to why anyone would fake landing on Mars. Maybe it's similar to why the Moon landing was faked - making it look like we're winning the space race, making sure NASA keeps getting funds, and distracting from a war.

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Hey Mal4

Sorry if this has been in the news and it's old info - I've been info free for a while

curiosity-zaps-first-martian-rock

http://www.chromatographytechniques.com/news/2012/08/curiosity-zaps-fi
rst-martian-rock?et_cid=2807179&et_rid=290390323&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.chromatographytechniques.com%2fnews%2f2012%2f08%2fcuriosity-zaps-first-martian-rock

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Quote:

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Originally posted by REDREAD:
Poked around the Internet and found this:

Quote:

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The supposed landing of the Curiosity was CGI and computer sound effects piped into mission control at JPL in order to fool the engineers, the invited guests, the media and the dumbed down public.

The real rover is in Nevada near Area-51 complete with a Hollywood backdrop standing in for the horizon and the color imaging being re-tuned to a red tint in order to make blue skies look pink and the brown desert soil look deep red.

(ETA: not giving a link because I don't want to encourage web traffic there.)

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So, according to this person, not only is the public being fooled about Curiosity, so are the workers at NASA! But they didn't give a theory as to why anyone would fake landing on Mars. Maybe it's similar to why the Moon landing was faked - making it look like we're winning the space race, making sure NASA keeps getting funds, and distracting from a war.

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Ugh. I figured it was out there, but I haven't done any looking because I'm like to strain my skull muscles, what with all the eye rolling.

Kiki - that's cool! Thanks for the link.

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Curiosity, the NASA rover that landed on Mars last month, is sending remarkable weather observations from the Martian surface that are attracting interest from scientists.

“From a weather point of view, Mars is the most ‘Earth-like’ of the other planets in our solar system, and many features of the weather there are similar to Earth,” says Kevin Hamilton, a pioneer in the area of computer modeling of the Martian atmosphere.

Hamilton, who is Director of Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa’s International Pacific Research Center, notes that Curiosity is the fifth “Weather Station” on Mars. Over the last 35 years, a total of four NASA probes had reached the Martian surface and returned weather data.

“These earlier observations had shown a large daily cycle in temperature and air pressure on Mars. The atmospheric temperature near the surface of Mars generally varies by more than 100 F between day and night because of the overall thinner Martian atmosphere and lack of oceans and their moderating influence,” says Hamilton.

“The exciting new result from Curiosity is a regular and truly enormous swing in atmospheric pressure through each day. Measurements on Earth show a daily swing in pressure of only about one-tenth of one percent of the mean pressure, whereas Curiosity is measuring swings of almost 10 percent of the daily average pressure. We observe such a relative pressure change on Earth only with the passage of an extremely strong hurricane. At the Curiosity site on Mars, this enormous pressure swing occurs regularly every day!”

For Hamilton, these reports of huge pressure swings came as welcome news. Almost 20 years ago, he had predicted that the daily variation on Mars would be particularly large in two “action centers” on the equator located on opposite sides of the Mars. Unlike the earlier NASA probes, Curiosity landed right in one of the equatorial action centers, where another factor comes into play: a resonance in the Martian atmosphere.

"The idea of resonance is familiar in everyday contexts like pushing a child in a playground swing – if you synchronize your pushes with the natural frequency of the swing, it is easy to send the child high into the air,” Hamilton explains.

“In the 1980s, I calculated that on Mars the atmosphere could have a natural frequency with the period of one Martian day. The day-night forcing then could excite a very strong resonant response. Incorporating this idea into a sophisticated computer model, I showed that the effect of this resonant response would be most clearly felt in two equatorial action centers and that the pressure swings there should exceed eight percent of the mean pressure. The remarkable Curiosity observations provide strong confirmation of a resonant vibration of the global atmosphere."

Hamilton suggests that the daily resonant cycles could play a role in explaining a long-standing mystery on Mars, namely how the winds become sufficiently strong to lift enough dust from the surface to create the remarkable global dust storms seen every few years on that planet. “Now that my theory of a daily resonant oscillation seems confirmed, it might help explain the trigger for these dust storms," he says.

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