Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Does anyone know if there is video of the landing taken from the spacecraft? Not an animated version, but real live video?

[Race5]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Does anyone know if there is video of the landing taken from the spacecraft? Not an animated version, but real live video?

From what I have heard, no video was taken from any part of the vehicle during descent / landing. Would have been a good marketing opportunity for the GoPro folks I know, I know... a gopro would not have been able to withstand the environment, but it would have been cool if they could.

[Lockheed Bob]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Now we will get the ones that say it never happened just like the moon landing they said was done in the Arizona desert.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

From what I have heard, no video was taken from any part of the vehicle during descent / landing. Would have been a good marketing opportunity for the GoPro folks I know, I know... a gopro would not have been able to withstand the environment, but it would have been cool if they could.

Weight was extremely critical for this Mission, despite the 1-ton rover mass. The designers/engineers even decided to leave out any zoom capability on the critical stalk-mounted cams used for navigation and science for weight reasons.

A GoPro would have looked like a lead brick to the engineers, and would have no scientific value. But Curiosity does have a nice set of eyes, and video is on it's way!


From Scientific American (take special note of the sections posted in bold text):

The 1-ton Curiosity rover, the heart of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission, will try to determine if Earth's neighbor is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. To help address this question, the six-wheeled robot is carrying 10 science instruments — and a wealth of high-tech camera gear.


Like its older Mars rover siblings Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity comes equipped with cameras mounted on a head-like stalk (called the Remote Sensing Mast, or RSM), providing a point of view similar to what a person might experience. Unlike previous rovers, however, Curiosity’s imaging system — called Mastcam — has features that will offer a whole new look at Mars.

Developed by the San Diego company Malin Space Science Systems, Mastcam is composed of two separate cameras that sit side by side, not unlike a pair of eyes, just below the ChemCam instrument on Curiosity’s "head." Mastcam will allow color images to be captured directly. [Curiosity Rover: 11 Amazing Facts]

"It will take color in the same way as a consumer digital camera,” said Michael Ravine, advanced projects manager at Malin. "It’s as 'true' as your phone camera."


In addition, Mastcam can capture stereoscopic images in infrared, plus a whole range of wavelengths that are of importance to scientific goals.

Both cameras are fixed-length; zoom motors may be common in even the cheapest point-and-shoot digital cameras, but in a spacecraft they would have added extra fuel-guzzling mass.

Still, one of the cameras has a focal length of 100 millimeters (4 inches) that can resolve objects a couple of inches across at 1,000 feet (300 meters). "I think that qualifies as telephoto," Ravine said.



Scientists no longer will have to assemble time-lapse footage from individual Mars images, for Mastcam also can take high-definition video. It will capture 720p color video at six frames per second.

"In the real world that’s not quite video, but compared to time-lapse images spaced 45 seconds apart, it’s close enough," Ravine said.

And Mastcam has the ability to store its own data. With 8 gigabytes of internal memory, Mastcam can hold 5,500 raw images, which can be compressed on the fly or just before transmission back to Earth.


Before Mastcam lets those on Earth see what Curiosity sees on its exploration, another state-of-the-art imaging system will help with a crucial part of the Mars Science Laboratory mission: the landing.

Researchers have studied images of the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) crater taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, but small-scale features at Gale such as rocks and loose debris will have to be contended with. To help with this, Curiosity is equipped with the Mars Descent Imager, or MARDI.



A downward-facing camera mounted beneath the rover, MARDI will image the ground beneath Curiosity as the rover descends to the surface, giving an aerial view of the surrounding region, as well as after the rover touches down.

Like Mastcam, MARDI (also developed by Malin) will store high-definition RGB color images in an internal 8-gigabyte buffer. Many of its first shots are likely to be blurred due to vibration as the rover descends. Even so, MARDI should capture the first-ever video-like sequence of an actual Mars landing, Ravine said.

"We’re looking forward to seeing that," he said.

Data acquired by MARDI will be used to determine exactly where Curiosity has landed, as well as provide an "astronaut’s-eye view" of Mars – although in this case the astronaut has six wheels and weighs 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms).

[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

I'm reading the SF Chronicle online and the title of one of the stories is:
NASA releases low-res video of Mars rover descent

Look at photo 36 here: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/N...#photo-3290307

This article doesn't show the video of the landing, but it does show a photo that the orbiting spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, took of the landing, so I assume it also took video?

Can somebody find the video of the landing?

Here is an animated video of how the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter tracked Curiousity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gZl36c-4Go

[C_roundy]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

The bottom of the page says the "video" can be found at NASA.


Here's their offering. The vid is a series of stills shot from the rover, so all you really see is ground, but it begins with a view of the lower heat shield falling away, and ends with the sight of dust being kicked up by the rockets and one of the wheels falling into view as the rover's legs unfold: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/video...ction_id=18895


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[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Thanks for finding the video/stills.

Do you think this is as good of a shot as we are going to see, or do you think that later on, we will be seeing a high resolution of the same?

My smarthphone, a $500 Motorola Droid, shoots better stills than what we are seeing.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Thanks for finding the video/stills.

Do you think this is as good of a shot as we are going to see, or do you think that later on, we will be seeing a high resolution of the same?

My smarthphone, a $500 Motorola Droid, shoots better stills than what we are seeing.

Your "Droid" didn't have to shot under the conditions that NASA's "Bot" had to...:

QUOTE from JPL as I posted on page 2,..."Many of its first shots are likely to be blurred due to vibration as the rover descends. ".


But they do say hi-red photos were taken, so maybe sharper individual stills will come later. Still You won't see much. They were all ground shots from the rover itself.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Ya'll know Veektor is up there tending to his time share.. be patient...

[lowpasskid]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

we wiil see alot more as time goes by.
"My smarthphone, a $500 Motorola Droid, shoots better stills than what we are seeing."
strap that sucker to a rocket so we can get some better pictures!
just have to wait seven or so years...

[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

I guess the vibration and the exhaust gases of the rockets used during descent would blur an otherwise perfect photo.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

I think I found the reason for the low video quality:



"For defensible reasons, NASA decided not to include it (a 3D capable zoom camera).

But another Malin-built camera called MARDI — which, amazingly, was also initially axed by NASA cost-cutters — survived (barely — Malin had to put in his own money), and will film the rover’s descent as it drops to the Martian surface. Here’s NASA’s description of how it will work:


During the final few minutes of Curiosity’s flight to the surface of Mars, the Mars Descent Imager, or MARDI, will record a full-color video of the ground below. This will provide the Mars Science Laboratory team with information about the landing site and its surroundings, to aid interpretation of the rover’s ground-level views and planning of initial drives. Hundreds of the images taken by the camera will show features smaller than what can be discerned in images taken from orbit. The video will also give fans worldwide an unprecedented sense of riding a spacecraft to a landing on Mars.


MARDI will record the video on its own 8-gigabyte flash memory at about four frames per second and close to 1,600 by 1,200 pixels per frame. Thumbnails and a few samples of full-resolution frames will be transmitted to Earth in the first few days after landing….The full video — available first from the thumbnails in YouTube-like resolution and later in full detail — will begin with a glimpse of the heat shield falling away from beneath the rover. The first views of the ground will cover an area several kilometers (a few miles) across. Successive frames taken as the vehicle descends will close in and cover successively smaller areas. The video will likely nod up and down to fairly large angles owing to parachute-induced oscillations.

Many of the images may also be blurry, due to the motion of the camera. "



AirDOGGe sez: In other words, better quality video of the landing is forthcoming. They just upped thumbnails to Earth for now to minimize the transmission time required to get the first photos and video to us as soon as possible.


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[SkyvanDelta]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Curious AirDogge, in general, How and Where did you find such information on the picture quality? I made no attempt to search for it, but I did search youtube hoping to find something and found nothing.

[IcePaq]

Re: Mars Spacecraft Curiosity landing Sunday 10:30pm.

Thier first order of business is to get photo's out of the rover in case it has a catastophic failure very early on.

The low resolution photos are first because they are smaller.

Because of the huge latency of the connection, they have to use a "connectionless protocol" and deal with any data issues back here on earth.