Curiosity Rover Report (Sept. 6, 2012)

Stopping and Stretching: NASA's Curiosity rover takes a short breather on the trek to Glenelg to check out her arm instruments.

[mrericsully]

I love that you guys are changing the host of these updates- it gives us a chance to see more of the team.

[jedidrummerjake]

Love this JPL news channel. Look forword to new info everyday !!!

[mosshark]

Good to see Curiosity functioning as planned.

[mkozachek]

Third, the target area is the remnant of a river, and as such has a deep geological history of the area. The rover will not be drilling to get ground samples, but instead looking at the sides of already exposed cliffs. The laser "drill" on the rover is used only for photospectroscopy of the minerals blasted into a vapor by said laser.

[dbarriba]

So, the presenter of this video recently helped land a rover on Mars and now she is part of the team running it. Yet some people have chosen to comment on her appearance, some rather tastelessly. Let's keep our attention fixed on what's really cool here. SHE IS RUNNING SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS ON MARS!!

[CoolHardLogic]

The rover has limited power and moves slowly. Don't forget its mass - 900Kg is a lot to shift around and the whole rover has just 125W of power to play with. Also, components are still being tested - the arm for instance needs its positioning checked and calibrated now that its on Mars due to the different gravity. Comms bandwidth is limited, comms are delayed. Slow and steady has to be the order of the day to preserve the rover and keep the mission going as long as possible = max results :)

[mkozachek]

The rover won't be visiting the impact site for a few reasons. Firstly, there may be unused hydrazine, the fuel used for the rockets on the skycrane, at the landing site. The last thing NASA wants is to go near the skycrane and have the rover potentially exposed to damage. Secondly, the skycrane crashed in the opposite direction from the target area, so driving there at the incredibly slow pace of the rover would add a huge amount of time to the mission.

[intigfx]

Well, let's do a quick calculation... Curiosity's top speed is 0.09 km/h, and Spirit is at roughly 2200 km. It would take almost 3 years of nonstop driving to reach it, neglecting its 2-year mission and all the important science it was sent to do, and that's not counting the rough terrain (mountains, sands). And Spirit is dead anyway, its electronics have been irremediably damaged by the cold.

[whyte_lotis]

Cool upload, i love the satilite view of trail the rover,
Have you guys made rover game yet,

[RoulinBrooks]

After watching this video my first thought was "Good update--exciting things happening on Mars!" My second thought was wondering how many people in the comments would say "Nice cans!" YouTubers never disappoint.

[onjofilms]

You can also get the raw camera images from Nasa.gov before anybody else.

[JunkyardAcademy]

How does the rover handle analysis of samples? Does it deposit the sample back onto the surface of Mars and re-use the instrument to analyze further samples? If so, how does it handle cross-contamination from sample to sample?

[intigfx]

Kudos to you for being so patient. Youtube commenters are the worst kind...

[Kalevala]

Actually the data from the Viking biological experiments was entirely inconclusive even after re-analysis.

[srajjad]

It will be really cool if you share a video which shows how you guys are controlling the rover from the control center.

[georgewashington]

Hello, l was wondering if there is any way to see the formulas used for the trajectory of the craft(s) from Earth too Mars. Also whose formulas did you use for the basis of understanding the trajectory and where they re-used from prior space flight missions. Thank-you in advance, keep up the good work geniuses you are inspiring in so many dimensions.

[slay]

Because of the distance. It'd be extremely slow and fluctuation images if such a transmission took place.

[DSBrekus]

From what I remember in 10 years time it will be outputting 75% of the power it does now, so a good long time.

[Royalchess]

NASA actually built 2 of them; the one stays on earth so they can have an exact model to fine tune the position movements with to the other on mars. This leaves the guess work out of this part of the mission. This info is on another NASA vid of this mission.

[WarriorTaurus]

Howcome that in today's day and age these rovers are not sending HD videos instead of pictures? It doesn't have to be huge videos just small clips at a time.