I'm completely brain-dead from lack of sleep today, but still exhilarated by the events of last night/this morning. So incredible. Basically, this is me today:
http://xkcd.com/1091/
And also this:
http://sci-ence.org/touchdown/
Wow. Just... wow.
And now I get to spend the next several years looking forward to July 2015, when the New Horizons probe reaches Pluto!
Showing posts with label Mars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mars. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2012
Curiosity Landing...
It's closing in on 1a, and I've had my 5-hour shot, and my Amp energy drink, and I've still had a difficult time staying awake this late. (Damn, I feel old.) But I'm awake now, and I'm watching the live feed from Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity's Mission Control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. I've decided to live-blog the proceedings from now until I finally go to bed.
12:57a - MC crew conducting one of the last series of flight checks, each station announcing status of its particular system, one at a time.
1a - they're passing jars of peanuts around MC. Apparently a good luck tradition since the Ranger mission.
1:08a - approximately 20 mins. from landing, Curiosity ~3,400 miles from Mars, the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team takes over and begins to run through their checklists, to make sure everything is ready to go.
1:12a - EDL has announced that pyros are enabled. Pyros are used to separate the stages of the landing vehicle.
1:15a - EDL has announced successful crew-stage separation. Curiosity now ~2,200 miles from Mars. In about a minute, Curiosity's EDL systems will "wake-up" in preparation for atmospheric entry.
1:19a - EDL has announced Curiosity is ~6mins from entry, and is broadcasting "heartbeat" tones; all is good, and as expected - nothing to do now but wait. Curiosity is currently traveling at ~5km/sec. (Remember, all this information is ~14mins old by the time it gets to us. So, by now, the rover is on the surface, one way or another.)
1:22a - MC crew just sitting around, waiting; all looking nervous, anxious, and excited. EDL announces ~2mins to entry, and Curiosity is on-target to land ~2.3meters from the target site.
1:25a - Curiosity now less than 400miles from Mars, and has successfully switched to the special antenna it will use for atmospheric entry.
1:26a - Curiosity has entered the atmosphere of Mars!
1:27a - MC receives word that Martian Odyssey satellite is tracking Curiosity's descent.
1:29a - Curiosity is decelerating, going ~Mach 2.4 and falling, preparing for parachute deployment.
1:30a - Parachute has deployed! Speed dropped to less than half of Mach 1 and falling. Preparing for sky-crane seperation.
1:32a - Sky-crane rockets have fired!
1:33a - TOUCHDOWN! Curiosity is safe on the surface of Mars!! MC crew goes wild - cheering, crying, hugs and high-fives all around! I haven't seen this many nerds crying since the end of Dark Knight Rises.
1:35a - the first image comes down from Curiosity! And, of course, I can't see it, because my internet connection cuts out all of a sudden.
1:44a - finally got my internet back and powered-up the feed again. Everyone at JPL MC still partying as the first images are coming down. Everything is covered in dust thrown up by the sky-crane's thrusters as it launched away from the rover after touchdown. First visible image is of Curiosity's wheel on the surface of Mars.
1:48a - everyone is settling back into their seats. Let's do some SCIENCE!
1:50a - crew going through post-landing checks, making sure everything is still intact and working after that fast and furious fall.
2:01a - post-landing poll almost finished. At that point, control will be shifted to the ground team, who will be responsible for the rover from this point on.
2:03a - well, I wanted to wait until the post-landing poll had been completed, and it was confirmed that everything was working satisfactorily, but NASA just cut their feed in preparation for the press conference in about twenty minutes, so I guess that's my cue to go to bed. What an amazing thing to have witnessed. I'm so glad I had a chance to be a part of it. We are absolutely incredible, truly. The things we can do!
I cannot wait to see what Curiosity can teach us.
12:57a - MC crew conducting one of the last series of flight checks, each station announcing status of its particular system, one at a time.
1a - they're passing jars of peanuts around MC. Apparently a good luck tradition since the Ranger mission.
1:08a - approximately 20 mins. from landing, Curiosity ~3,400 miles from Mars, the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team takes over and begins to run through their checklists, to make sure everything is ready to go.
1:12a - EDL has announced that pyros are enabled. Pyros are used to separate the stages of the landing vehicle.
1:15a - EDL has announced successful crew-stage separation. Curiosity now ~2,200 miles from Mars. In about a minute, Curiosity's EDL systems will "wake-up" in preparation for atmospheric entry.
1:19a - EDL has announced Curiosity is ~6mins from entry, and is broadcasting "heartbeat" tones; all is good, and as expected - nothing to do now but wait. Curiosity is currently traveling at ~5km/sec. (Remember, all this information is ~14mins old by the time it gets to us. So, by now, the rover is on the surface, one way or another.)
1:22a - MC crew just sitting around, waiting; all looking nervous, anxious, and excited. EDL announces ~2mins to entry, and Curiosity is on-target to land ~2.3meters from the target site.
1:25a - Curiosity now less than 400miles from Mars, and has successfully switched to the special antenna it will use for atmospheric entry.
1:26a - Curiosity has entered the atmosphere of Mars!
1:27a - MC receives word that Martian Odyssey satellite is tracking Curiosity's descent.
1:29a - Curiosity is decelerating, going ~Mach 2.4 and falling, preparing for parachute deployment.
1:30a - Parachute has deployed! Speed dropped to less than half of Mach 1 and falling. Preparing for sky-crane seperation.
1:32a - Sky-crane rockets have fired!
1:33a - TOUCHDOWN! Curiosity is safe on the surface of Mars!! MC crew goes wild - cheering, crying, hugs and high-fives all around! I haven't seen this many nerds crying since the end of Dark Knight Rises.
1:35a - the first image comes down from Curiosity! And, of course, I can't see it, because my internet connection cuts out all of a sudden.
1:44a - finally got my internet back and powered-up the feed again. Everyone at JPL MC still partying as the first images are coming down. Everything is covered in dust thrown up by the sky-crane's thrusters as it launched away from the rover after touchdown. First visible image is of Curiosity's wheel on the surface of Mars.
1:48a - everyone is settling back into their seats. Let's do some SCIENCE!
1:50a - crew going through post-landing checks, making sure everything is still intact and working after that fast and furious fall.
2:01a - post-landing poll almost finished. At that point, control will be shifted to the ground team, who will be responsible for the rover from this point on.
2:03a - well, I wanted to wait until the post-landing poll had been completed, and it was confirmed that everything was working satisfactorily, but NASA just cut their feed in preparation for the press conference in about twenty minutes, so I guess that's my cue to go to bed. What an amazing thing to have witnessed. I'm so glad I had a chance to be a part of it. We are absolutely incredible, truly. The things we can do!
I cannot wait to see what Curiosity can teach us.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Curiosity...
In just a hair under a week, humanity will have landed a third mobile robot on another planet.
On Monday, August 6th, at around 1:30a EST, the "mobile science lab" rover named Curiosity will land in Gale Crater, on Mars. Mars has very little atmosphere with which to slow down a robot the size of an SUV as it plummets to the surface from outer space, and so landing the rover has become a famously complicated endeavor dubbed, "The Seven Minutes of Terror." It is one of the single most complicated operations ever undertaken by Mankind, and it's an all-or-nothing deal; if any one thing goes wrong at any point, then the whole process will fail, and the rover will slam into Mars at several thousand mph, creating a new surface feature, Curiosity Crater. (Take five minutes and watch NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's video explanation of the Seven Minutes of Terror here. You'll be glad you did.)
If it lands safely (and it is far from guaranteed to do so - no one's ever done it before, and it is impossible to create on Earth the conditions necessary to accurately test it), then it will spend the next several years (dare I say, decades?) roaming about the planet Mars, searching for evidence that life has ever existed on the red planet.
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how exactly to explain why this fascinates me so much. I think for starters, it is simply an amazing thing, when you stop and think about it. Purely amazing. We are controlling robots on Mars. How fucking unbelievable is that?! Robots on Mars. It sounds like a science-fiction story. And it is! Except, it's not fiction. It's fantasy, brought to life.
And I think it also has something to do with something I touched on yesterday. It is a "living" example of the incredible, awe-inspiring things that human-beings can accomplish. How can it be that a bunch of balding monkeys could so quickly push themselves to the point that we're firing off robots to explore other planets? It boggles the mind!
What a piece of work is Man! Look what we can do! So what if no one has ever done it before. That's precisely why it must be done! From the moment the first of us picked up a rock and used it to smash open a nut (or a skull), our single purpose has been to learn, to discover, and to do the things that have not yet been done. Every single one of us for the last 200,000 years has done our part to push forward that line of what-is-possible, even just a little bit, in our own way. It is what we do. It is all we do.
And, in just a hair under a week, we're going to do it again, in a big, big way. And I will no doubt find myself once again struck dumb with awe at the notion of all that we are capable of achieving. We are, each and every one of us, absolutely, fucking, amazing.
Just look what we can do.
On Monday, August 6th, at around 1:30a EST, the "mobile science lab" rover named Curiosity will land in Gale Crater, on Mars. Mars has very little atmosphere with which to slow down a robot the size of an SUV as it plummets to the surface from outer space, and so landing the rover has become a famously complicated endeavor dubbed, "The Seven Minutes of Terror." It is one of the single most complicated operations ever undertaken by Mankind, and it's an all-or-nothing deal; if any one thing goes wrong at any point, then the whole process will fail, and the rover will slam into Mars at several thousand mph, creating a new surface feature, Curiosity Crater. (Take five minutes and watch NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's video explanation of the Seven Minutes of Terror here. You'll be glad you did.)
If it lands safely (and it is far from guaranteed to do so - no one's ever done it before, and it is impossible to create on Earth the conditions necessary to accurately test it), then it will spend the next several years (dare I say, decades?) roaming about the planet Mars, searching for evidence that life has ever existed on the red planet.
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how exactly to explain why this fascinates me so much. I think for starters, it is simply an amazing thing, when you stop and think about it. Purely amazing. We are controlling robots on Mars. How fucking unbelievable is that?! Robots on Mars. It sounds like a science-fiction story. And it is! Except, it's not fiction. It's fantasy, brought to life.
And I think it also has something to do with something I touched on yesterday. It is a "living" example of the incredible, awe-inspiring things that human-beings can accomplish. How can it be that a bunch of balding monkeys could so quickly push themselves to the point that we're firing off robots to explore other planets? It boggles the mind!
What a piece of work is Man! Look what we can do! So what if no one has ever done it before. That's precisely why it must be done! From the moment the first of us picked up a rock and used it to smash open a nut (or a skull), our single purpose has been to learn, to discover, and to do the things that have not yet been done. Every single one of us for the last 200,000 years has done our part to push forward that line of what-is-possible, even just a little bit, in our own way. It is what we do. It is all we do.
And, in just a hair under a week, we're going to do it again, in a big, big way. And I will no doubt find myself once again struck dumb with awe at the notion of all that we are capable of achieving. We are, each and every one of us, absolutely, fucking, amazing.
Just look what we can do.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Life on Mars?!...
"Scientists have discovered life on Mars."
Dozing on the couch early this morning, between snooze alarms, I hear that sentence come from the newscast on my television, and I am instantly awake. My eyes pop open and I sit bolt-upright, throwing the blanket off my chest.
"Scientists are now saying they believe a lander sent over 30 years ago actually did discover life on Mars. Now, this isn't the little-green-men kind of life, but they say they have found evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. In other news..."
"That's IT?!"
I'm all at once astounded, amazed, and outraged. We found life on another fucking planet - and not just any other planet, but one of the closest planets to us - and it gets a less-than-10-second blurb between the Weather and the latest update on the Gingrich "campaign"? What the fuck is wrong with that picture?!
Finding life on Mars is a HUUUGE deal! Astronomically huge, you could say, pun completely intended. Because, first of all, finding any life anywhere else would change everything we now know about our place in the universe. It would change the entire outlook of every single religion practiced by humanity! For the first time in the entire history of life on Earth, we would know that we are not alone! So, yeah, kind of a big deal.
But then to find life on Mars, specifically, would increase the importance of that discovery by an order of magnitude. Because it could mean one of two things: either, A) life actually began on Mars, and later traveled to Earth, essentially changing our entire concept of the origin of our species (for instance, a large asteroid slams into Mars, blowing chunks of it out into space, which later hit Earth as meteorites [we've already found Martian-meteorites in Antarctica]; and some of the bacteria or other organisms on some of those Martian-meteorites could've survived the trip, essentially becoming "seeds" that later flowered in our environment); or B) if life actually formed on two-out-of-eight planets in our incredibly-ordinary-solar-system - if we found evidence of a second genesis right next-door to us - then life must be incredibly common in the universe.
So hopefully you can understand why I'm a little upset that they didn't think this story warranted more than just a headline.
I have to know more. So I grab my laptop and start searching the news feeds. Doesn't take long to find an article that goes into a lot more depth. And I'm disappointed (though, I hate to say, not surprised) to discover that once again, the media has simultaneously dumbed-down and overblown another science story.
No one has discovered any life on Mars. The actual story, beyond the sensational headline, turns out to be that a team of mathematicians took another look at the hard-copy data of the soil samples taken by the two Viking landers back in 1976. They analyzed these numbers to determine their level of complexity, using a new theory that biological systems are much more complex than non-biological ones. And, using this new theory, they found data that was so complex, that they believe the only explanation is that it shows evidence of biological life-forms.
So, at most, what they've actually discovered is evidence of the possibility of some sort of biology on Mars, at some point. Hardly the same thing as finding "life on Mars." But then on top of that, this mathematical-complexity-theory of biological systems that they've based all of their findings on, hasn't even been proven to work on Earth! So all of their findings are based on a method that they haven't even proven yet!
How in the fuck do you get from "mathematicians have used an unproven theory on 36 year-old data to suggest the possibility that life may have existed on Mars at some point" to "Scientists have discovered life on Mars?!"
Unfortunately, this is something I see time and again from the mainstream news media. They did it with the whole "Large Hadron Collider May Create Black Hole and Destroy Earth" story (no, it won't). And they did it again recently with the "Scientists Have Discovered Particles Traveling Faster Than Light" story (no, they didn't). They never report actual scientific findings. Instead, at the barest hint of only the most sensational stories (black holes gobbling up the planet, speed-of-light barrier broken, life on Mars, etc.) they jump all over it, remove anything resembling context, evidence, or truth, and splash the tabloid-esque headline across the front page or the evening newscast: "Bat Boy Found on Mars Travelling Faster Than Light! 'Trying to Destroy Earth,' Say 'Scientists'!"
Ugh.
It's mornings like this that I weep for my species.
< /nerdrant >
Dozing on the couch early this morning, between snooze alarms, I hear that sentence come from the newscast on my television, and I am instantly awake. My eyes pop open and I sit bolt-upright, throwing the blanket off my chest.
"Scientists are now saying they believe a lander sent over 30 years ago actually did discover life on Mars. Now, this isn't the little-green-men kind of life, but they say they have found evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. In other news..."
"That's IT?!"
I'm all at once astounded, amazed, and outraged. We found life on another fucking planet - and not just any other planet, but one of the closest planets to us - and it gets a less-than-10-second blurb between the Weather and the latest update on the Gingrich "campaign"? What the fuck is wrong with that picture?!
Finding life on Mars is a HUUUGE deal! Astronomically huge, you could say, pun completely intended. Because, first of all, finding any life anywhere else would change everything we now know about our place in the universe. It would change the entire outlook of every single religion practiced by humanity! For the first time in the entire history of life on Earth, we would know that we are not alone! So, yeah, kind of a big deal.
But then to find life on Mars, specifically, would increase the importance of that discovery by an order of magnitude. Because it could mean one of two things: either, A) life actually began on Mars, and later traveled to Earth, essentially changing our entire concept of the origin of our species (for instance, a large asteroid slams into Mars, blowing chunks of it out into space, which later hit Earth as meteorites [we've already found Martian-meteorites in Antarctica]; and some of the bacteria or other organisms on some of those Martian-meteorites could've survived the trip, essentially becoming "seeds" that later flowered in our environment); or B) if life actually formed on two-out-of-eight planets in our incredibly-ordinary-solar-system - if we found evidence of a second genesis right next-door to us - then life must be incredibly common in the universe.
So hopefully you can understand why I'm a little upset that they didn't think this story warranted more than just a headline.
I have to know more. So I grab my laptop and start searching the news feeds. Doesn't take long to find an article that goes into a lot more depth. And I'm disappointed (though, I hate to say, not surprised) to discover that once again, the media has simultaneously dumbed-down and overblown another science story.
No one has discovered any life on Mars. The actual story, beyond the sensational headline, turns out to be that a team of mathematicians took another look at the hard-copy data of the soil samples taken by the two Viking landers back in 1976. They analyzed these numbers to determine their level of complexity, using a new theory that biological systems are much more complex than non-biological ones. And, using this new theory, they found data that was so complex, that they believe the only explanation is that it shows evidence of biological life-forms.
So, at most, what they've actually discovered is evidence of the possibility of some sort of biology on Mars, at some point. Hardly the same thing as finding "life on Mars." But then on top of that, this mathematical-complexity-theory of biological systems that they've based all of their findings on, hasn't even been proven to work on Earth! So all of their findings are based on a method that they haven't even proven yet!
How in the fuck do you get from "mathematicians have used an unproven theory on 36 year-old data to suggest the possibility that life may have existed on Mars at some point" to "Scientists have discovered life on Mars?!"
Unfortunately, this is something I see time and again from the mainstream news media. They did it with the whole "Large Hadron Collider May Create Black Hole and Destroy Earth" story (no, it won't). And they did it again recently with the "Scientists Have Discovered Particles Traveling Faster Than Light" story (no, they didn't). They never report actual scientific findings. Instead, at the barest hint of only the most sensational stories (black holes gobbling up the planet, speed-of-light barrier broken, life on Mars, etc.) they jump all over it, remove anything resembling context, evidence, or truth, and splash the tabloid-esque headline across the front page or the evening newscast: "Bat Boy Found on Mars Travelling Faster Than Light! 'Trying to Destroy Earth,' Say 'Scientists'!"
Ugh.
It's mornings like this that I weep for my species.
< /nerdrant >
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