August 22nd, 2012
12:00 PM ET
Watch Curiosity land, in HD
The @MarsCuriosity team has released a beautiful, high-definition video of the Curiosity rover landing on the surface of Mars on August 6. This is no simulation: it's a rover's-eye-view of the Red Planet's surface zooming up to meet it.
Need to catch up on the details of the latest mission to Mars? Check out all our Curiosity coverage!
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there is some cool maps and photos of curiousity as it makes its way to mount sharp on here http://newsmoves.com/curiosity-continues-to-search-for-the-red-planets-secrets/
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Anyone wonder why we have not gone back to the moon.... hmmm (scratching chin here). Conspiracy or not, this is a great accomplishment for mankind. I do hope that these image(s)/video(s) are real and hope to see a human reach mars one day (I'm 30 now, lets see what happens in the next 20 years).
We've been to the moon 6 times. That's 6 more times than any other country. We haven't been back because the main reason we went (were able to go) the first six times was national pride and public support. It was a space race during the cold war back then and NASA only gets money when the public rallies to spend tax dollars on them. Besides, we've learned mostly everything we think we can learn from landing on the moon. Dollars spend going to Mars will be much more valuable.
Come on NASA, we want to see more pictures of dirt, rocks, and pieces of our tax paid wonder machine flying off into space.
So, I think you are talking about Obama's budget plan, not NASA right?
Besides, the AVERAGE american only paid about $8 total in taxes for this Mars mission. If we all resisted stuffing our fat faces by just one McDonnalds meal, we could send another!
Learning about the Curiosity project – and seeing video like this – fills me with awe and pride for the team of NASA engineers that developed this program. In comparison, it is shameful how uninspired, uninformed and intellectually lazy some of the commenters are here.
I love it when pentecostal science/technology illiterates step on their di–s.
Can someone explain to me how this video can be sent back to earth so quickly from a place that I believe is light years away and look almost flawless yet I can't even make a decent cell phone call?
Mars is not "light years away." At its minimum, Mars is about 35 million miles away (3 minutes for FM signal to reach us) and at its maximum, it is about 220 million miles (19 minutes).
KJK – Your preception of distance is way off. If it were lightyears away, the rover would not have landed before your great-great-grandchildren were dead and buried.
I bet if you paid $235B for your phone bill, you'd get better reception.
Actually, it cost NASA 2.5 billion dollars... compare that to AT&T's 18 billion dollars they spent on cell towers alone last year.
Now think about that... NASA can beam high def video from a remote controlled car that it landed on another planet for nearly a tenth of what AT&T uses to send crappy phone signals that I can't even get in my bathroom from a tower 9 miles away. Folks, this is why NASA should run everything.
WW_Dagger for the win!
And just to add on to WW_Dagger point on how great NASA is. NASA currently has a spacecraft on the way to Pluto called "New horizons" it will reach Pluto in 2015. At it's closest distance Pluto is 4.2 billion miles from Earth and when New horizons reaches Pluto it will also beam back photos. So yeah, NASA rocks!
Well mars is actually ~0.0000007605 light years away. (~4 min for light to travel from earth to mars)
It is not light years away for starters.
They had a number of days to return this data–it wasn't transmitted all at once. Still, it's a spectacular accomplishment.
Awesome. 235 milion miles from here.
We're just now seeing this due to the thousands of man hours going through footage frame by frame to make sure no anomalies were in the video. Can't have the general joe public seeing an alien or proof of prior civilizations.
isn't the reason the rover is there to look for life? wouldn't that be proof of a successful mission?
conspiracy theory logic is no logic at all.
Notice the props from the "mary poppins" movie in the 33rd frame? This was made on earth. Case Closed.
Looks like El Paso.
That's funny. The video footage looks almost authentic. Too bad it's all computer-aided animation created in a government-owned laboratory.
I've always thhugot of LR for rich snobs .until I owned one. My LR2 is unbelievable in a foot or more of snow and can get up to 25 mpg highway when you follow the speed limit (60-65mph). I am blue colar and got a great deal on a used 2008 model for $27,000 with only 12K miles .I feel so sorry for any idiot who pays $30K+ for a Ford Edge.
There ain't no Martians on Mars, no flying saucers either, you might as well go to Jupiter. Forget looking at rocks there's nothing there.
yeah....let's sit on our a$$es as we consume all the resources on this planet.....and let's be satisfied with not knowing and not going out there to find out more....because james says so....
Imagine if the European explorers from 500 years ago went by the same logic as James.
Now that was awesome!
This is something that should definitely excite the general population. Lately, the only thing we get from NASA is a grainy picture of the night sky with a caption saying, "This pixel here is an earth-like planet 20 lightyears away!! Actually, it's too close to it's star to be habitable, so it's really more of a 'Mercury-like' planet, It's also too far to reach in our lifetime so we'll probably never set foot on it...sorry for wasting your time." And other times we'll get artists' renditions of what a galaxy WON'T look like through the eyes of an average human (you know, the ones with solar flares and ambient lighting shooting all over the place).
But THIS right here...this is awesome. Bravo people! Looking forward to seeing more of what's to come!
awesome video, i was hoping they would release more of the landing. just stunning!
What a lame video, can't believe I wasted my time watching it. Also no life on Mars, and never will be, big waste of time.
coming from someone who lives in Alaska, figures
with your astounding knowledge of mars, i wonder why the scientists at nasa didn't consult with you.
Sarah Palin is that you?
Such astounding scientific conclusions from Alaska. How about on the next journey to Mars they take along Sarah Palin.You know, she can see Mars from her front porch! You Betcha!
What's it like being so stupid, Alaska?
The question was never if there ever WOULD be life on Mars (and yes, if we land a person there, there will be). It was if there ever WAS. How did that concept escape you?
There is a good possibility that there was life there, there might be life now, and there definitely will be life there in about 20 years.
I made this look pretty real didn't i? suckers
Reblogged this on thatsummersguy and commented:
Very, very cool vid of Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars.
That was awesome. Can't wait until we send people there. Too bad people can't appreciate just how difficult this is to do.
I just had an orgasm.....
We've finally done it!!! We have managed to take billion dollar pictures of dirt and rocks. Landing on the moon was a novelty, spending billions to land on Mars is a travesty.
You know that NASA is only 0.5% of the entire National Budget? If you are complain about how funds are spent then take it out on the Military who spends over 700 billion a year on pointless wars. Or how about the bank bailouts which cost more than the entire 50+ year running budget of NASA.
Right On! Jack is an ill-informed buffoon.
It's not about what programs cost more. Defending one by saying another is MORE pointless is a stupid argument. No, we shouldn't spend that much on wars but we also shouldn't spend it on a bunch of photos and video of a planet that, according to the majority of scientists, will not help us or our future by way of sustainability nor usable minerals. So, all in all, you are saying it is OK to waste $2.5 billion on this because we are already wasting $700 billion on wars?
please crawl back in your hole and leave us alone.
Land on the sun and I'll be impressed. I volunteer you three.
I'll join them Jack, only if you are standing under the rocket when it launches.
You've been shot out of a circus cannon one too many times without a safety net.
Actually NASA currently has spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, they also have spacecraft around Saturn, Vesta, Mars, Mercury, one on the way to Pluto, then there is Voyager who is currently on the edge of the solar system. NASA does all of this on 0.5% of the national budget, while the pointless war in Iraq cost us 720 Million dollars a day.
I'm glad that Jack is not in charge of our future.
I don't get it. Is the camera on the bottom of the rover? What is the disk falling to the surface at the beginning of the shot? Is that the heat shield falling off?
Yes, that is heat shield that falls off
Yes. because it totally makes sense that this heat shield would fall to the ground 10 times faster than the rover which weighs 400 times the shields weight lolol
Do some research, at that point the rover portion has deployed a parachute and the heat sheild is free falling.
The rover had a parachute you silly monkey! Of course the Shield falls faster! 😉
The heat shield is falling away more quickly because the rover has a parachute already expanded and slowing it down. The heat shield just got cut off from the parachute. An animation of the entire landing process is available all over the internet – watch it! It's pretty impressive!
Thanks for proving you are a donkey, the rover had deployed it's parachute which is why the heat shield is falling much faster.
@intothemoonbeam
LOL
just to add to the chorus, it weight of the object doesnt even matter when it comes to how fast an object falls, gravity acts the same on everything. Thats why if you drop a bowling pall, or a small ball bearing, they will both hit the ground at the same time, barring air resistance and the objects terminal velocity.
One has a parachute and one does not but what does weight have to do with anything?
Not only was the rover on a parachute: a difference in weight does NOT affect the speed at which things fall. Without the parachute, both the rover and the heat shield would have fallen at the same rate.
Just to be clear – with the parachute, the rover falls SLOWER than the heat shield.
Rob I was not impressed with moonbeam's answer and I think you deserve a better one. There is indeed a camera on the bottom of the Rover known as the Descent Imaging camera. The rover is at the point in its descent where the heat shield is no longer necessary and in fact would interfere with landing if it was not released from the rover. It is released to uncover the landing radar as well the descent imager. The radar tells the rover how high it is and how fast it is falling and helps the computer that is landing the rover do it's job. The Descent Imager provides a video of the landing and tells NASA how well everything worked.
Amazing!
Gorgeous it's like we were there. Interesting to see the dirt blow up and the texture of it.
Lila, I'll bet you spend a lot of time with your face in the dirt. Or the pillow.
The original video source is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZX5GRPnd4U
You clearly don't understand the term original source.
What an overuse and misuse of a word in the headline = "terror".
Not a misuse of the word 'terror' in the headline, since NASA formed the phrase 'seven minutes of terror' to specifically describe the danger and complexity of the landing process.
Calm down, something amazing just happened. Didn't you notice?
Don't worry, Fox News still holds that crown.
OK – so NASA misused the word!
Nice cartoon.
And you sir are a ret@rd
Please put your your tinfoil hat back on, and crawl back into your 2012 bunker.
This should be the top news story right now instead of some nutty politician in Missouri.
Wow ... I'm truly amazed and absolutely proud of my countryman who really came thru. After the space shuttle program shutdown, there was some shame but this totally restores our pre-eminence as space explorers. Go USA!
Watching this film took me back to the excitement I felt as a child watching the moon missions etc! I stand in awe of your scientists and your program!
Unbelievable!
I want to go to Mars.
This is really cool stuff. Up Untill now this view only existed in movies. You make us proud NASA. Thank you.
I was just thinking to myself "I bet we get a bunch of movies with reentry showing heat shields blowing off over the next 5-10 years".
nostrildamus-face it, you're a low IQ mouthbreathing moron
Cool!!!
It's Obama's fault...
I'll say one thing, that is one beautiful soft landing, pretty amazing considering
Would have been better in 3D!
awesome video. maybe that will keep those shouting for pictures quiet for a while.
Don't count on that Cedar Rapids. There is no known effective treatment for instant gratification syndrome...LOL
Beautiful. Truly honored to be alive right now.
Awesome!!!!! It is a proud moment for NASA, and for the U.S. Let's enjoy it.
THE SPACE RESEARCH / PROJECTS CREATE / PROVIDE MILLION OF JOBS, certainly is interesting to see if it will yield any space colony,s on moon / mars / planets / or moons, they have had interest in bringing mars back to a habital planet for over thirty years, the proposed process was to take 200 YEARS TO MAKE IT HABITABLE LIKE THE EARTH,
To control a landing craft and send pictures back that far away certainly takes technology
Mars' chances of being made habitable are as tenuous as its magnetosphere. Mars has essentially no magnetosphere, which is what shields life on Earth from solar and cosmic radiation.
Mars habitability = ZERO
we can't convince people on earth that the hundreds of millions of tons of pollution we generate every day can affect this planet and you want to try convince people we can create a habitable atmosphere on another planet from scratch?
Makes you think. Why would our government Photoshop this image?
Yeah, its a conspiracy.
Here's your tinfoil hat.
And your sign.
Why does it look like an animation.
Weird, but it looks fake.
It is not really a movie but a series of stills spliced together. OK, that is what a movie really is too but in this case the stills were taken much farther apart than for a "real" movie.
Ahh..that explains it. It certainly doesn't look like a video.
But if it was put together from a bunch of images, that's different.
Because it was put together from a huge number of still shots to make a running video.
@Phil from MD
Yes, "WE" the scientists can do this....and more!
it's those concerned with religions and imaginary gods that prefer to occupy their time and energy with unimportant matter, like your example.
It's time for such ignorance to be rocketed off into the abyss and the darkness of space, where it truely belongs.
You are such an idiot.
How so Franco? 🙂
Looks like a flying saucer. I wonder what the Martians are saying.
That "flying saucer" is the jetisoned heat shield that protected the Curiosity rover from the intense heat of atmosphere entry.
own an LR2. It is based on the EUCD platform which it shaers with most Volvos, but not the Escape. The LR2 transmission is also from Volvo and the AWD system is from Haldex, not Dana as in the Escap). In fact, the LR2 shaers zero components with the Escape. Aside from being about the same size, they are 2 totally different vehicles. Also, Jaguars and Land Rovers were always designed and manufactured in their own facility and were never based on a previous Ford product.
It's obvious this was Photoshopped.
It's obvious this was sped up. Pretty simple conclusion considering it's a 7 minute descent +/- a few seconds. You watched it in its entirety in about 30 seconds.
The video doesn't start recording until it's already 2/3 the way thru it's decent since the camera isn't exposed until the heat shied separates at that point. Plus it appears the video is shorted after the 24second mark until it apporaches the sky crane phase. So the video isn't speed up, it's only the last 1/3 of the decent and part of the middle of that portion seems to be cut out.
I believe that the frame rate was about 10 frames per second, whereas "normal" video that you watch on your TV is shot at 30 frames per second. It does give a "photoshopped" effect, but the movie is very, VERY real of Curiosity's landing.
The MARDI imaging rate for the descent was just under 4 frames per second.
It's obvious that you know less than you think you do.
An obvious post, but obvious troll is obvious.
It's amazing we can do this and argue over who can marry whom at the same time.
Yes, "WE" the scientists can do this....and more!
it's those concerned with religions and imaginary gods that prefer to occupy their time and energy with unimportant matter, like your example.
It's time for such ignorance to be rocketed off into the abyss and the darkness of space, where it truely belongs.
Maybe we could send your intolerance and bigotry along with it, Jim.
@Ceri
I think you need to re-read Jim's post again... slowly this time.
Maybe we people of faith that paid for these rockets should stick all the narrow minded scientists and shoot them off into space.
I"m pretty sure that Ceri read Jim's email exactly as he intended