Almost 2 weeks ago now we enjoyed the ‘live’ broadcast of NASA’s Curiosity rover plummeting through the thin Martian atmosphere to be lowered on a crane to the surface. It wasn’t entirely ‘live’, of course, as signals took 7 minutes to reach us here on Earth. That meant its 7 minutes of terror
were actually over before we knew they’d started.
7 minutes of terror.
Still, it was remarkable thing to watch the live broadcast and follow the comments on Twitter. And Curiosity landed safely then almost immediately returned a couple of images to earth.
High def panorama on Mars
Now Curiosity has been there a few days and some wonderful things are appearing. For example, take a look at this: Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2. It may need an iPad 2 or later, and it definitely requires Flash on the Mac, so check it in Google Chrome if, like me, you’ve avoided installing Flash into Safari.
Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2.
If you’re looking at the panorama on an iPad try tilting and turning the device for best effect.
We’re NASA and we know it
One of the memes around the Curiosity landing was the guy in the NASA control room who not only had a mohawk haircut, but had stars and stripes cut and dyed into his hair too. Mohawk guy was in fact flight director Bobak Ferdowsi.
Now there’s a fun video featuring his look-alike:
Along for the ride
When I was a kid NASA landed people on the Moon. Between Star Trek and the NASA space program it was an exciting time and I was fascinated by all things space and astronomy.
Now, with Twitter, live broadcasts, apps, such as Be A Martian, YouTube and all the other engaging channels for connection, it’s a wonderful time to go along for the ride into the solar system and beyond — Voyagers 1 & 2 space probes have reached the edge of our solar system after a journey of 35 years.
If you haven’t checked out anything ‘space-y’ for a while, it’s a fabulous time to start.
