Ah yes, the 'social stream'... “One thing I do know. I’ve seen the stars. I have seen the universe, I have seen the human race become vast and magnificent and endless. And I wish you could see it, Oswald. I wish you could see that, too, because then you’d know how small you’ve made your life.” --Jack Harkness to Oswald, in Torchwood: Miracle Day Just when we start to perceive how big human life can become, some people show how small they make theirs.
Torchwood is awesome Yeah, there are some incredibly small minded people in this world, who almost exclusively also appear to make up a large percentage of the douchebags in the world. By the way, there is some pretty interesting footage of today's operations onboard the ISS on the NASA uStream channel at the moment. I've pretty much had the feed on the TV all day since 04:30
The Hirise camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a high-res snap during Curiosity's EDL phase: (There's a press conference being streamed on http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 right now, btw).
Ahem, I would like to link to you something of quite stupendously awesome levels. even though at first it doesn't look like much) That, ladies and gentlemen, is Curiosity - during it's descent in the parachute phase captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter many, many miles above it. Just think about that. A spacecraft during it's landing procedure on another planet being photographed by another spacecraft in orbit around said planet. EDIT: Damn ninja Anyway, mines bigger
Argh, I'm missing the press conference! Just stepped out to do a delivery. What're they talking about?
It's just an update of how the landing went, the data (and images) they have received so far, the schedule of when the next images are due back and when instruments will be deployed, etc... Mostly it's just press questions.
WIN! (totally true as well, by the way! I've been so unproductive today.... Not bothered though, it was worth it )
Woo! It's only going to take 2 bloody hours to upload lol.Will post when done of course. Really like the way it's totally come about accidentally
It's not exactly amazing but I think it's nice to be able to watch the simulation of the landing with the audio from mission control in perfect sync. Will probably be much easier for kids to understand what's going on too.
Here we go. Annoyingly something went awry during upload between 0:34 and 0:45 and there's a few bits here and there that are a bit pixelated (and I have no idea why ) but otherwise it's farily clear. I might see about reupping at some point to fix the bad bits. Anyway, enjoy
Good stuff in the briefing right now on http://www.ustream.tv/nasa. Showing images from during descent.
Time lapse photos of the last 2.5 minutes of descent as seen by the MarDI camera. Shows heatshield seperation, and in the last couple of frames you can see the dust been kicked up by the sky crane rockets. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=149974611
Cool! I had a quick look last night, and it looks fairly well sync'ed. Argh! Can't see it in work! I've seen the colour images sent back from MARDI & MAHLI on the NASA mission page; I can't wait until the full resolution versions are sent back...
http://www.cultofmac.com/183018/nas...y-has-the-same-brain-as-a-bondi-blue-imac-g3/ http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/04/21/comp_space/1
What winds me up about the discussion about computing power in space - and I'm not having a go at you or anyone else here, GOO - is that people assume it's all about raw computational power, and that their iPhone could run a space shuttle or a Mars rover. Low-earth orbit is somewhat more benign than interplanetary travel, but even then you're dealing with extemes of temperature, radiation, excessive g-forces, extreme vibration, dust, particles, etc, etc... Going to Mars, with it's famously dusty regolith, introduces a whole new set of problems. Even after it survived the violent take-off conditions and a 9-months worth of radiation exposure during flight to Mars, Curiosity hit the equivalent of 11-G's on Earth as it entered the Martian atmosphere; this is of course before it begins a two year mission, where it will regularly encounter some pretty nasty dust storms, extremes of temperature and even more radiation. Modern computers are largely inefficient: much of the energy they consume is wasted as heat, and there are countless layers of software before you even get to bare metal. When power (and heat) *really* counts, you need to be as efficient as possible; you'll be writing your code in a way that squeezes everything possible out of every single clock cycle (if not programming the bare metal then at least some form of assembly code). That simply doesn't happen in modern computers. When you're writing that efficiently - heat dissipation & power consumption issues aside - you really don't need that much raw computational power. What you do need however are tried and trusted systems that will not only survive the extreme environments but will also perform 100% reliably. Systems that will run a calculation a billion times and give you the same (correct) result a billion times with zero margin of error; modern processors are very good, but I can't imagine that they're designed with that sort of reliability and accuracy in mind. That's why the avionics and electronics weren't updated in the space shuttles: there was simply too much risk that newer systems wouldn't be as reliable. The last thing you want is the computer making the wrong decision during atmospheric re-entry, moving the craft too many degrees (or fractions of a degree) in the wrong direction and toasting the poor defenceless meatsacks inside. Computing hardware in space may seem old, slow or outdated, but you can bet your ass that no other systems in the world (pardon the pun!) can do the same work in the same environment and to the same degree of accuracy. NASA sure as hell aren't going to be running spacecraft with iPhones any time soon! Rant over! FWIW, that bit-tech article was actually pretty good - even if it is a little old .
