Are you watching the Mars Curiosity Landing?

Earth first! Make Mars our bitch!

@Muerthoz: Fuck you, that song is god awful!

Well that was great. Can't wait to see more on it at a later time.

@Muerthoz: Fuck you, that song is god awful!

@ajamafalous said:

@Phatmac said:

@Muerthoz: Fuck you, that song is god awful!

Damn, I was going to do exactly this. lol

I'm glad I was able to watch it. Pretty amazing moment.

It was awesome!!! :D

I was hooked for the last few hours of the stream.

That was way more touching than I expected it to be. I think I shed a single tear. I'm envious of those guys, the looks of pure joy on their faces were priceless. I wish they had a live stream of Mission Control running 24/7, I'd love to listen to those guys talk while doing homework or whatever.

Credit to Petey on Something Awful:

we went to mars for 20% of the price of the london olympics.

I've heard something about it on the news, and space colonization doesn't seem too interesting to me, I like earth. So no.

Here are the first pics.

Gallery

and here is my contribution to the random music.

I've found better cameras at flea markets. Hopefully the quality will be better and that's just a temporary solution to send a small amount of data, because of the distance.

@Xymox: There will be much better pictures later. I think the satellite they are using is out of range right now, and these where just quick thumbnails a min after landing from the hazard avoidance cameras, not the main HD cameras.

@Lego_My_Eggo: I'm sure there will be. Can't wait to see them. I wonder how long it will take to send an HD picture from mars.

I'm just waiting until we find Transformers now.

@Xymox: It's a simple camera used for quick confirmation shots. The real camera is still concealed by a dust cover to help avoid issues during the landing and the amount of dust and stones kicked up.

If you're interested in HD photos from Mars, our previous rovers have provided many great shots before. My personal favorite is this one, which is a panoramic shot considered by many to be the best representation of how the Mars surface would look to our eyes(click it for full):

You should also check out this fantastic collection of high quality images from Mars: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/martian_skies.html

A great shot from that collection:

Amazing stuff indeed. I'm certain the Curiosity rover will bring home even more impressive images of its own; though, its primary purpose is biological discoveries that will have a far wider overall impact on our scientific understanding than any images it captures. :)

Fuck yeah man. HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE!

Missed it... but saw it on the news while eating ma' brekkeh this mornin'.

@Deusx said:

Fuck yeah man. HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE!

YEAH! EAT SHIT DOGS... and cats... and... fish....

HUMANS RULE!

damnit, i totally missed this.. :(. I didn't even know it was supposed to be today.

@TruthTellah said:

Amazing stuff indeed. I'm certain the Curiosity rover will bring home even more impressive images of its own; though, its primary purpose is biological discoveries that will have a far wider overall impact on our scientific understanding than any images it captures. :)

Such a beautiful red desert, those are wonderful shots. The purpose is interesting, I had not even heard about this mission until earlier today.

It's been debated for many many years. I don't know what kind of implications extinct microbial or plantlife on mars would have. With the polar caps and heat it might be able to sustain some form of life. Is that basically what they're looking for?

Here is the pic it took after landing.

@TheHT said:

@Deusx said:

Fuck yeah man. HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE! HUMAN RACE!

YEAH! EAT SHIT DOGS... and cats... and... fish....

HUMANS RULE!

WE DON´T NEED NON-HUMAN SCUM ON OUR PLANETS YO.

It was really fun to watch live on the NASA stream last night. Quite interesting to me because everything done was managed on board, simply for the impossibility of directing it from earth. And there were plenty of multi moves to have to make while achieving one thing, like the sky crane flying sideways for a moment to avoid crashing back into the parachute assembly upon rocket deceleration. The cpu/program in that thing got quite a workout. Impressive!

@Xymox: Its doubtful that they will find living life on Mars. But one of the main things they are looking for is whether life could have formed there or not by looking for the basic things all living things need, what the environment was like in the past, whether that environment could have sustained life, and understanding why and how that environment changed. It can also help them with future maned missions to Mars by giving them a better understanding of what resources are already there that they could potentially use.

Watched that landing 3 times today as a means to get over the fact that I couldn't see it live and had absolutely no one at work to share my joy at the success with. And I realized watching their celebration how awesome it must be to be bursting with cheer at your job. Fuck, I'll never cheer about anything at my job.

Idiots like to claim that fuckin' dolphins are smarter than humans, but have they ever sent a robot to Mars? Nope. 
 
They haven't even invented pre-packaged shelled cashews. Stupid dolphins.

@Sign said:

Credit to Petey on Something Awful:

we went to mars for 20% of the price of the london olympics.

Jeez, makes you wonder why they bother with funding anything else but space exploration.

@TooWalrus said:

Idiots like to claim that fuckin' dolphins are smarter than humans, but have they ever sent a robot to Mars? Nope. They haven't even invented pre-packaged shelled cashews. Stupid dolphins.

You'd think they would have at least figure out canned tuna, but nope.

@Xymox said:

@TruthTellah said:

Amazing stuff indeed. I'm certain the Curiosity rover will bring home even more impressive images of its own; though, its primary purpose is biological discoveries that will have a far wider overall impact on our scientific understanding than any images it captures. :)

Such a beautiful red desert, those are wonderful shots. The purpose is interesting, I had not even heard about this mission until earlier today.

It's been debated for many many years. I don't know what kind of implications extinct microbial or plantlife on mars would have. With the polar caps and heat it might be able to sustain some form of life. Is that basically what they're looking for?

The implications would expand our basic understanding of life itself. It could indicate that life is more common in the universe than previously thought, and it might confirm many of our theories on what is necessary for life to come about. It would have a wide ranging impact in both science and culture, and it would be one of the crowning achievements of humankind so far.

And yes, it would also possibly give us a better indication of what we might be able to cultivate on Mars. A lot of this mission does give us new insight into what will be necessary for a long term human mission at some point in the future. :)

@MikkaQ said:

@Sign said:

Credit to Petey on Something Awful:

we went to mars for 20% of the price of the london olympics.

Jeez, makes you wonder why they bother with funding anything else but space exploration.

@TooWalrus said:

Idiots like to claim that fuckin' dolphins are smarter than humans, but have they ever sent a robot to Mars? Nope. They haven't even invented pre-packaged shelled cashews. Stupid dolphins.

You'd think they would have at least figure out canned tuna, but nope.

I just got this message, It reads...

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Any one know what this means?

Also my Dad works at Godard Space Flight Center, he was on the crew that built COBY and fixed the Hubble Space Telescope. And he now oversees the operations at the Clean Room.

@TruthTellah said:

@Xymox said:

@TruthTellah said:

Amazing stuff indeed. I'm certain the Curiosity rover will bring home even more impressive images of its own; though, its primary purpose is biological discoveries that will have a far wider overall impact on our scientific understanding than any images it captures. :)

Such a beautiful red desert, those are wonderful shots. The purpose is interesting, I had not even heard about this mission until earlier today.

It's been debated for many many years. I don't know what kind of implications extinct microbial or plantlife on mars would have. With the polar caps and heat it might be able to sustain some form of life. Is that basically what they're looking for?

The implications would expand our basic understanding of life itself. It could indicate that life is more common in the universe than previously thought, and it might confirm many of our theories on what is necessary for life to come about. It would have a wide ranging impact in both science and culture, and it would be one of the crowning achievements of humankind so far.

And yes, it would also possibly give us a better indication of what we might be able to cultivate on Mars. A lot of this mission does give us new insight into what will be necessary for a long term human mission at some point in the future. :)

Even if nothing is found from it, it's still incredibly exciting (not to imply you disagree).

I mean, we sent a robot to another fucking planet, and are getting images and other data about that planet from it. That's amazing! And it's not even the first time!

Just watched their press conference for today. They are going to hold a press conference at 1000 PDT every day this week by the sounds of it. They had some new screens from the rover as well as a "video" of the descent from the MARDI cam. It is a serious of stills taken at regular intervals.

Cool stuff, can't wait until they get all the systems tested and really start exploring.

This is as of now unconfirmed, but there are rumors that they actually landed on an indigenous cat and again this is not 100% confirmed but it would appear Curiosity killed the martian cat.