The Rotating Snake Illusion is a fun image that makes your brain perceive motion where no motion actually exists. Psychologists understand the factors that make an illusion like this work (and work better) — for instance, breaking up and staggering the colored lines that radiate from the center of the circle creates a much stronger sensation of movement. But they don't know exactly why it works yet, according to Japanese psychologists Akiyoshi Kitaoka and Hiroshi Ashida.

And that brings us to this kitten video.

YouTube user Rasmus posted a video that he thinks might show his cat being tricked by the same sense of motion that catches the eyes of humans who look at The Rotating Snake Illusion. On the other hand, this just might be a cute video of a kitten attacking a piece of paper — which is known to happen.

So here's the challenge: Try it on your cat. You can print it off here. Then, report back here and/or post video responses to YouTube. Let's gather some data!

This is not exactly the soundest experimental methodology ever, but it sure would be interesting to see what happens.

Just a few minutes ago, researchers with NASA's MESSENGER mission announced the publication of data that strongly suggests the poles of Mercury contain significant quantities of frozen water.

On the one hand, this is not exactly new news. The possibility of water on Mercury has been a topic of research for something like 20 years. And scientific discoveries tend to move in little mincing steps, not giant leaps, so there have been lots of previous announcements about evidence supporting the hypothesis of water of Mercury — including very similar announcements from the MESSENGER team in December 2011 and March 2012. Your life will not change in any significant way because there is frozen water on Mercury. You probably won't even make a note to tell your children where you were the day NASA announced that ice most likely existed there.

But that doesn't mean this news isn't damned exciting. And it doesn't mean that the scientists involved shouldn't be giddy about it. We are, after all, talking about a mission that sent a spacecraft into orbit around another planet and has quite likely found frozen water sitting on a landscape that is hot enough to melt lead. What's more, they think that ice is covered in places by a thin layer of some coal or tar-like organic material. That is huge news. It's going to change textbooks. And because the scientists think both the ice and the organic material got to Mercury via collisions with asteroids and comets, it's going to be an important part of our ongoing efforts to understand how life begins on planets like Earth.

All of this makes for a really nice, topical lead-in to an essay Robert Gonzalez published on iO9 today. It's totally reasonable to be frustrated by the recent whiplash of hearing that Curiosity discovered something "Earth-shattering" on Mars, only to have that announcement quickly revised to something "interesting" and/or "not insignificant". But, Gonzalez argues, it's also reasonable for scientists to look at something that is merely not insignificant from the public perspective and see it, from their own perspective, as groundbreaking. In fact, he says, we want more scientists who get excited about their work, not fewer.

Because here's the thing: I think it's a good thing when scientists are outwardly excited about their research. When someone like Grotzinger overstates the significance of a discovery, it reminds us that scientists are humans who are wholly invested in their work, and it makes their pursuits more relatable. I believe that the tendency among scientists to present themselves as dispassionate, robotlike, and wholly objective is boring and dishonest.

Granted, there are different ways to "expose one's humanity," and some are vastly preferable to others. Do we want researchers to engage in wholesale scientific fraud? Obviously not. But could scientists stand to be, for example, more outwardly enthusiastic about their work? Absolutely. Scientists, even the pompous ones, tend to undersell their findings, eschew "flowery" language, and feign complete objectivity — all under the banner of "good science."

But sometimes this approach is bullshit.

Cutting through the bullshit means allowing scientists to be people. More importantly, it means allowing them to not just tolerate that process of inch-by-inch discovery ... but actively geek out about it.

Gonzalez isn't trying to say that the researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory couldn't have been more clear with reporters. From what we know about this misunderstanding it's pretty clear that mistakes happened on both sides. He's also not supporting intentional over-hype of results.

Instead, he thinks (and I agree) that scientists shouldn't pretend they're emotionless about the stuff they love. In fact, when combined with careful communication, that emotion can actually be an important part of helping the public understand science. When you're enthusiastic about your work, you spread that enthusiasm. In my experience, the scientists who the best job of making their work clear to lay people are the ones who are obviously hyped up about what they're doing — even if what they're doing isn't ever going to be front-page, above-the-fold news.

Besides, I don't only want to know what history books will think is important. I want to know what science thinks is important. And listening to scientists is the best way to find that out.

Read Robert Gonzalez's essay on iO9

Read more about today's news from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury

What might the Curiosity rover find on Mars? So many cool things. Maybe friends that hug your face! Maybe Nixon's secret tapes! Or maybe even something less easily fit into song lyrics, like significant amounts of Martian methane.

This video, made by Cinesaurus, is a parody of "Dumb Ways to Die", an adorably demented public safety message from Australia's Metro Trains Melbourne. If you've not seen that yet, you should check it out as well.

The Curiosity rover comes complete with a mini chemistry lab. It's designed to analyze the composition of Martian soils and Martian air. And, right now, that particular piece of equipment is at the center of a giddy storm of activity. Curiosity has turned up something important — big enough for Curiosity's principal investigator to tell NPR, "This data is gonna be one for the history books."

What is it? NASA's not telling just yet. Right now, researchers are in the process of verifying said exciting data, in order to make sure they aren't deceiving themselves into thinking they've spotted something that isn't really there. That's pretty good policy, given the recent flap around over-hyped studies about Earth-like planets and arsenic-based life.

On the other hand, if you're trying to avoid overhyping something, might I suggest that "We have groundbreaking, world-changing data that we can't tell you about yet," is maybe not the best way to do it.

Stay tuned.

This video interview with Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory, is a nice overview of the what everybody's favorite currently operational Mars rover is looking for.

Josh Stearns writes,

My four year old son painted this at school and told his teacher, “This is Mars. Mars is red. And there is a robot there taking pictures and sending them back to earth.”

Mars Curiosity, eat your heart out.

When a narrow stream, flowing downhill, meets a wide, significantly-flatter valley, you get an alluvial fan — a place where the flow of water spreads out, slows down, and leaves behind all the rocks and sediment it's no longer moving fast enough to carry. At least, that's how it works on Earth.

Once upon a time, it may have worked that way on Mars, too. Yesterday, NASA announced that the Curiosity rover had documented geology that looks very much like an alluvial fan and rocky deposits that also look very much like what would be left in an alluvial fan on Earth. You can see the comparison of some of those in the image above. In these Martian geological features — as in an Earth-bound stream bed — you find smooth, rounded pebbles and conglomerates, masses of pebbles cemented together over time. The rocks photographed by Curiosity are also too large to have been blown into this sort of arrangement by the wind.

All of this adds to the long string of evidence that Mars once had flowing water on its surface. In fact, reading up for this post, I was surprised to see how much evidence there actually is for this, some direct and some indirect, stretching all the way back to the Mariner 9 orbiter mission in the early 1970s. And, of course, there is water on Mars right now. It's just not flowing water. Previous probes have measured a small amount of water in the Martian atmosphere, and the planet's polar regions contain both frozen carbon dioxide and frozen water. Viking 2 took pictures of frost on the ground in the late 1970s, and in 2008, the Phoenix lander literally dropped out of the sky onto a patch of ice.

Frost on the surface of Mars, as photographed by Viking 2.

The bright spot near the lander's leg was later verified to be a patch of ice.

The new photos from Curiosity add to this growing body of evidence. Taken all together, it's pretty safe to assume that Mars was once a wetter place. Here's NPR's Bill Chappell:

"There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars," the agency said in a press release, "but this evidence — images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels — is the first of its kind."

Scientists have not yet estimated the age of the rocks, which may have been buried beneath the surface. Their age could be several billion years.

The next step will be to find a good spot to drill into the rock, NASA says. And they'll be looking for possible carbon deposits to determine whether the water on Mars once supported life.

Read the rest of the NPR story

Read astrobiologist Caleb Scharf's thoughts at the Life, Unbounded blog

Read Wikipedia's extensive entry on evidence for water on Mars

Check out this 2007 report prepared by the National Academies of Science, which discusses a strategy for looking for evidence of life on Mars. It includes a summary of evidence for water on the planet.

I'm sitting in on a NASA Jet propulsion laboratory teleconference for science journalists, with an update for the world on the Mars Curiosity rover's mission. Curiosity completes her "checkout" phase today. Including an "intermission" of 13 sols, and one remaining sol to inspect the rover's robotic arm, 26 sols have been devoted to so-called checkout duties. Today is sol 37. Rover is currently facing a Southeast direction. Temperatures on the rover are between 7 and 33 C. She has covered a little over a football field's distance on the surface of Mars. Ability to move the arm has been confirmed, and the ability of the rover to perform sampling is confirmed.

Curiosity has so far driven 109 meters from its original landing site, and engineers are driving her about 40 meters per sol. The first drilling into the surface of Mars is expected to occur about a month from now, following various surface activities (scraping rock surfaces, and so on).

Three speakers in the teleconference: Jennifer Trosper, JPL; Curiosity mission manager. Ralf Gellert, University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada; principal investigator for the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer instrument (or APXS) on Curiosity. Ken Edgett, Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego; principal investigator for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (or MAHLI) on Curiosity.

At the top of this blog post, the first Mars image of the day (larger size here):

Opening and Closing SAM. This set of images from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the inlet covers for the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument opening and closing, as the rover continues to check out its instruments in the first phase after landing. These images were taken by the Navigation camera on the 36th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012). The rover's mast is casting a shadow over the deck. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Above, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on NASA's Curiosity rover, with the Martian landscape in the background.

The image was taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera on the 32nd Martian day, or sol, of operations on the surface (Sept. 7, 2012, PDT or Sept. 8, 2012, UTC). APXS can be seen in the middle of the picture. This image let researchers know that the APXS instrument had not become caked with dust during Curiosity's dusty landing. Scientists enhanced the color in this version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analyzing the terrain.

JPL confirms that the APXS "Works great, good confirmation with the calibration target." And "There might be tweaking needed because of contamination," but scientists have all the tools they need working perfectly.

Tomorrow, a final set of checkouts, and special imaging events with cameras. Then, "drive, drive, drive," until the science team decides where to stop. Scientists packed a piece of Earth to take to Mars -- specifically, a chunk of New Mexico.

A sample of basaltic rock from a lava flow in New Mexico serves as a calibration target carried on the front of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity for the rover's Canadian-made Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument. This image of the APXS calibration target was taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Sept. 9, 2012). The image has been rotated to compensate for the tilted orientation of the camera when it was taken.

The prepared slab of well-characterized dark rock collected near Socorro, N.M., is held in a nickel mounting. The circular opening revealing the rock is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The Sol 34 imaging was part of characterization testing of the rover's arm and tools on the arm. A subsequent step commanded the arm-mounted APXS instrument to take a reading of the composition of the calibration target. Curiosity will use the target from time to time during the mission, checking the continuing performance and calibration of the APXS instrument.

APXS can identify chemical elements in rocks and soils. The spectrometer uses the radioactive element curium as a source to bombard the target with energetic alpha particles (helium nuclei) and X-rays. This causes each element in the target to emit its own characteristic X-rays, which are then registered by an X-ray detector chip inside the instrument's sensor head.

The rock in the calibration target is the hardest basalt of more than 200 types tested by the APXS team. Hardness was a desired attribute for preventing the target from breaking during the stresses of launch and landing. In addition, this basalt is low in sulfur, nickel and chlorine. Those elements are common in Martian dust. Thus, scientists using APXS will more easily detect and account for any Martian dust on the calibration target.

In the image below cropped from a larger scene by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), a penny with the first close-up images of Martian sand grains, seen right below Lincoln's ear (about 200 microns in size, or .2 mm) and one near the number 9 (about 100 microns, or .1 mm).

What science can we determine from this image? Edgett replies: The little sand grains on the penny are "just things that blew up on the penny during landing." They haven't been transported far, because if they were more round they'd have originated from a greater distance.

This is the first penny ever sent to Mars, and it was minted in the first year on which Lincoln's image was present on the coin.

One JPL scientist on the call, fumbling for a precise sol number as he describes an image, stops and says "Man, I am so tired." They've been on "Mars Time," following the daily solar cycles that Curiosity is on, and experiencing slow-motion sleep deprivation.

The most common type of rock on Mars is basalt, so that is what they're aiming for with the first gathering of samples in the days (and sols) to come.

And a little easter egg: The spaces in the tire treads in the image below are Morse Code for "J-P-L."

This view of the three left wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images that were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Sept. 9, 2012). In the distance is the lower slope of Mount Sharp.

The camera is located in the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The Sol 34 imaging by MAHLI was part of a week-long set of activities for characterizing the movement of the arm in Mars conditions.

The main purpose of Curiosity's MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil at the rover's Gale Crater field site. The camera is capable of focusing on any target at distances of about 0.8 inch (2.1 centimeters) to infinity, providing versatility for other uses, such as views of the rover itself from different angles.

And above, a new image from Curiosity showing the open inlet where rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. This photograph was captured by (MAHLI) on Curiosity's 36th Martian day, or sol, of operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012).

MAHLI was about 8 inches (20 centimeters) away from the mouth of the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument when it took the picture. The entrance of the funnel is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The mesh screen is about 2.3 inches (5.9 centimeters) deep. The mesh size is 0.04 inches (1 millimeter). Once the samples have gone down the funnel, CheMin will be shooting X-rays at the samples to identify and quantify the minerals.

Engineers and scientists use images like these to check out Curiosity's instruments. This image is a composite of eight MAHLI pictures acquired at different focus positions and merged onboard the instrument before transmission to Earth; this is the first time the MAHLI performed this technique since arriving at Curiosity's field site inside Gale Crater. The image also shows angular and rounded pebbles and sand that were deposited on the rover deck during landing on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT).

Like Burning Man, the ethos for rovers on Mars is "leave no trace." A journalist from Germany on the teleconference asks if the rover's activity will violate any internationally-agreed planetary protection agreements. A NASA headquarters spokesman says, "Curiosity is the cleanest rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. No prohibitions against planned drilling activity, based on what we expect the rover will do and where it will go."

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/12/mars-curiosity-update.html/feed 17 http://boingboing.net/2012/09/11/in-letterspace-no-one-can-hea.html http://boingboing.net/2012/09/11/in-letterspace-no-one-can-hea.html#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 02:56:04 +0000 Glenn Fleishman http://boingboing.net/?p=180260

We spent $2.5 billion to put Helvetica Arial on Mars (and incidentally, an SUV-sized robotic science rover), and yet not a cent was devoted to kerning. The Curiosity rover carries a calibration target for its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), an adjustable focus camera designed to take close-up pictures. It's one of 17 cameras on the rover, but it's the only one that has its own target for testing a photo against known colors, brightness, and scale. (​Update: ​The sundial on top of the rover has color swatches for the mast cameras.)

But as a former typesetter, I had to poke fun at the kerning in the word "Target", where the "a" in any design software would be neatly tucked underneath the "T". NASA is old-school in type, too, as this is Helvetica, not Helvetica Neue.​ (Update! Readers note this is Arial, as the angle terminators on the upper-case C give it away! Go, go, Microsoft fonts!)

The calibration target includes a 1909 penny as a homage to the practice of using a coin for scale in images. One of the scientists bought the penny from the first year Lincoln appeared on its front, and sent it on its merry mission. The target is now lightly dusted with Martian soil, but still useful for its purpose.

A full size image is available from NASA.

On Sol 32 (Sept. 7, 2012) the Curiosity rover used a camera located on its arm to obtain this self portrait. The image of the top of Curiosity's Remote Sensing Mast, showing the Mastcam and Chemcam cameras, was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). The angle of the frame reflects the position of the MAHLI camera on the arm when the image was taken. The image was acquired while MAHLI's clear dust cover was closed.

That's from NASA's description of this great Curiosity self-portrait.

What really stuck out to me, though, was the use of "Sol 32". Sol is what you call a "day" on Mars. We use a different word because the length of time is also a bit different. One Martian Sol is equal to 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. Sol 32 isn't, itself, a date, but simply a record tracking the number of sols that Curiosity has been on Mars—starting with Sol 0, which was August 6th. Every mission to Mars since Viking has kept its own sol count, so you can't really use these sol dates to keep track of history except as it relates to a specific mission.

There have, however, been proposals for a standardized Martian calendar system with a starting point that all dates progress from. NASA includes a Mars Sol Date on its Mars24 Martian clock app. In this case, the count begins on Earth date December 29, 1873 at noon Greenwich Mean Time and MSD represents the number of sols that have happened since then.

Why December 29, 1873? The Mars24 explainer just says that this date was chosen because it precedes all the really good, detailed observations of how time worked on Mars—how fast the planet was spinning, how often it went around the Sun, what the orbits of its moons were like ... that kind of thing. In 1877, the orbit of Mars took it particularly close to Earth, allowing humans—and their increasingly good quality telescopes—to get a really nice view of the planet.

That still doesn't exactly explain the 1873 date, though. But, according to Wikipedia, it's also the birthday of Carl Lampland, an American astronomer. Among other achievements, Lampland would calculate temperatures on the Martian surface, finding a large difference between soltime temperatures, and those at night. That data gave scientists their first clue that Mars had a particularly thin atmosphere, compared to our own.

Hahah! Boing Boing reader William Jaspers saw the 1967 ad for jobs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory I posted yesterday, which ran in Scientific American—and with a little help from Photoshop, he updated it to feature the MSL space celeb Bobak "Mohawk Guy" Ferdowsi, who works on the Mars Curiosity team at JPL.

Now all they need is a reversal of those devastating budget cuts so JPL can hire more space-dreamers, instead of laying them off, and the vintage ad will really be true again 45 years later. Larger size here.

* Thanks again to reader fdecomite for scanning and sharing the original.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/02/1967-jpl-employment-ad-now-wi.html/feed 25 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/29/about-the-cameras-on-curiosity.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/29/about-the-cameras-on-curiosity.html#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:08:40 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=178620 Economist, Glenn Fleishmann writes about the 17 cameras on board the Curiosity rover on Mars. That's "seven more than any previous exploratory vehicle," he writes. They "store images in a raw, unprocessed format and initially beam back tiny thumbnails (which NASA uploads as they come in). The scientists working on different aspects of the mission meet daily to determine which of the thumbnails to download in higher resolution. The 'health and safety' of the rover takes priority. After the deliberations, which can last over an hour, instructions are dispatched to Mars."]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/29/about-the-cameras-on-curiosity.html/feed 5 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/the-first-recorded-human-voice.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/the-first-recorded-human-voice.html#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:39:32 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=178448 speaking via broadcast from the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars: "The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale Crater, will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet. Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not too distant future."]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/28/the-first-recorded-human-voice.html/feed 5 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/27/curiosity-mars-rover-descent-f.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/27/curiosity-mars-rover-descent-f.html#comments Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:54:09 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=178244

[Video Link] This is a magnificent thing.

YouTuber hahahaspam explains, "This is the Curiosity Mars Rover descent footage interpolated from ~4 frames per second to 25 frames per second. It is playing back in real time. This took me 4 days straight to put together, so I hope you enjoy it! Music: Kevin Macleod."

(via Joe Sabia) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/27/curiosity-mars-rover-descent-f.html/feed 16 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/mars-curiosity-rover-hd-video.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/mars-curiosity-rover-hd-video.html#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:45:01 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=177664

[Video Link] Above, HD video of the Mars Curiosity Rover's landing on Mars. And below, an image of her first drive. (via @tweetsoutloud)

]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/mars-curiosity-rover-hd-video.html/feed 28 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html#comments Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:36:04 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=177660 writes in the Economist about how Curiosity sends messages home from Mars: "NASA'S Curiosity has the fastest modem on Mars. Since its only competition is an oldish bit of kit aboard Opportunity, one of two rovers dispatched in 2003, that is not saying much, at least in terms of what internet users on Earth have learned to expect. Curiosity's ability to capture images and other data easily outstrips its capacity to beam it all back home. Nonetheless, it delivers vastly more information from the red planet than any previous mission did." ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/sending-messages-from-mars-in.html/feed 9 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/why-do-nasa-engineers-like-pea.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/why-do-nasa-engineers-like-pea.html#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:51:51 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=176901

As Curiosity was landing safely on Mars, many of you noted that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers orchestrating the whole thing were eating an awful lot of peanuts. In fact, each workstation boasted a little commemorative jar of peanuts. Seriously, what is up with all those peanuts?

Discovery News has an answer. And it's surprisingly interesting.

Turns out, this is a JPL-specific tradition, dating back to 1964, when the lab's funding was on the line after the Ranger program—unmanned missions to photograph the Moon—weren't living up to expectations. In fact, six Ranger missions in a row had failed.

This was the heritage leading up to Ranger 7. There was talk that JPL should be shut down, that a university-affiliated center couldn’t handle a rigorous spaceflight program. There were suggestions that the program had been sabotaged -- a worker found a small polyethylene bag with 14 screws and a lock washer in one of the sealed electronic modules in Ranger 7’s television subsystem.

Just before Ranger 7 launched to the moon on July 28, mission manager Harris Schurmeier handed out peanuts to ease tensions. He figured chewing or playing with them on the table would give his team something else to focus on.

The full story is pretty neat. You can read the rest at Discovery News

[Video Link]. This parody music video debuted this week on a new YouTube channel called Satire, and mashes up LMFAO's hit “Sexy and I Know It” with the NASA Curiosity mission and abundant JPL-love.

"It comes complete with shout-outs to Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson," reports the Washington Post, which dug into the story behind its creation. Half a million views so far, huh? Best NASA PSA ever.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/mars-curiositylfmao-parody-vi.html/feed 22 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/16/about-mars-curiosity-rovers.html#comments Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:26:16 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=176837

What a beautiful video by Mark Rober, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "I was able to work on NASA JPL's Curiosity Mars Rover for 7 years. This video is an attempt to capture what it felt like to have 7 years of your life vindicated in the 7 minute landing. Honestly one of the coolest moments of my life so far.

(Via Adam Steltner)

I'm with Steve Silberman, who tweeted this image, taken by the Mars Curiosity rover. Silberman, a science journalist, pointed out how amazing it is to be able to have access to photos of Mars that look totally ordinary, decidedly un-exotic, and even a little dull.

There is a delightful irony here. Think of all the work, all the skill, all the serious intelligence that went into getting Curiosity to Mars. This photo is kind of boring. But it represents something truly wonderful and exciting. It's mundane. But it's the mundanity of M*#&$%*!(*%ING MARS.

I dig it. And I'm a little surprised there wasn't already a Tumblr for it.

Check out Steve Silberman's excellent, science-packed Twitter feed

As regular readers of this blog will recall, I asked a question of the Mars Curiosity team about imaging technologies during the post-landing press conference at NASA JPL a few days ago.

Related: Digital Photography Review now has an interview with the Mars rover camera project manager. Above, the 34mm (115mm equiv.) Mastcam from the Curiosity rover. This was developed by Mike Ravine and his team at Malin Space Science Systems, a contractor for NASA. Ravine explains how they developed the 2MP main imaging cameras used to transmit those breathtaking images back from Mars.

The slow data rates available for broadcasting images back to Earth and the team's familiarity with that family of sensors played a part, says [Ravine], but the biggest factor was the specifications being fixed as far back as 2004. Multi-shot panoramas will see the cameras deliver high-res images, he explains, but not the 3D movies Hollywood director James Cameron had wanted.

'There's a popular belief that projects like this are going to be very advanced but there are things that mitigate against that. These designs were proposed in 2004, and you don't get to propose one specification and then go off and develop something else. 2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn't sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn't compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.'

(thanks, Michael Kammes)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/10/interview-with-developer-of-2m.html/feed 11 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/09/curiosity-transmits-first-full.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/09/curiosity-transmits-first-full.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:59:33 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=175744

Ain't it pretty? The first color panorama image of Gale Crater, the landing site for the Curiosity rover. Thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera were combined to form this 360-degree view. From NASA:

Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground. What appeared as a dark strip of dunes in previous, black-and-white pictures from Curiosity can also be seen along the top of this mosaic, but the color images also reveal additional shades of reddish brown around the dunes, likely indicating different textures or materials.

The images were taken late Aug. 8 PDT (Aug. 9 EDT) by the 34-millimeter Mast Camera. This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each. Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each, are expected to be transmitted to Earth later. The images in this panorama were brightened in the processing. Mars only receives half the sunlight Earth does and this image was taken in the late Martian afternoon.

Full size available here.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/09/curiosity-transmits-first-full.html/feed 37 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/what-time-is-it-right-now-on-m.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/what-time-is-it-right-now-on-m.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:30:29 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=175490

And you can download it right here, for Mac, Windows, Linux, OS/2, and other open operating systems. About:

Mars24 is a Java application which displays a Mars sunclock, a graphical representation of the planet Mars showing its current sun- and nightsides, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format. Other displays include a plot showing the relative orbital positions of Mars and Earth and a diagram showing the solar angle and path for a given location on Mars.

Created at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

And for iOS, this looks promising. Haven't tried it, and it's not a NASA product, so YMMV.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/what-time-is-it-right-now-on-m.html/feed 8 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/interview-with-a-mars-rover-dr.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/interview-with-a-mars-rover-dr.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 01:57:22 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=175474

Photo (NASA JPL): The first two full-resolution images of the Martian surface from the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover, which are located on the rover's "head" or mast. The rim of Gale Crater can be seen in the distance beyond the pebbly ground.

Thomas Hayden at science blog The Last Word On Nothing has a wonderful little interview with Scott Maxwell (@marsroverdriver), who works at JPL as a Mars rover driver. Coolest job ever, right?

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Maxwell at JPL a few weeks before Curiosity touched down, when I accompanied Miles O'Brien on a shoot about MSL for PBS NewsHour. Loved him, and I love how he describes what makes his job so exhilarating:

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time I drove her.  It was just a few meters along a simple path — we wouldn’t even bother to yawn at it today — but it was magic to me then, as it’s magic to me now.  I went home and should have slept, but all I could do was stare at the ceiling, in awe that right then, on Mars, there was a robot doing what I told it to do.  It was dead amazing, and that feeling has never left me and I hope it never will.

Read the rest here: SCUBA Diving through the Endless Martian Desert : The Last Word On Nothing.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory today received and published the first photograph shot by the Navigation cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover.

It shows the shadow of the rover's now-upright mast in the center, and the arm's shadow at left. The arm itself can be seen in the foreground. The navigation camera is used to help find the sun -- information that is needed for locating, and communicating, with Earth. After the camera pointed at the sun, it turned in the opposite direction and took this picture. The position of the shadow helps confirm the sun's location. The "augmented reality" or AR tag seen in the foreground can be used in the future with smart phones to obtain more information about the mission.

(via spaceref.com. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech) ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/mars-curiosity-image-of-the-da.html/feed 18 http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/a-watch-that-displays-time-on.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/a-watch-that-displays-time-on.html#comments Thu, 09 Aug 2012 01:29:16 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=175463

Looking for a gift for the NASA Mars rover flight controller in your life who has everything? Executive Jewelers makes watches that display Martian time, and watches with dual displays so you know what time it is on Mars *and* Earth, at a glance. (via @milesobrien)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/08/08/a-watch-that-displays-time-on.html/feed 10