BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

I was going to put this in News & Links but hopefully further discussion will be warranted so here goes nothing. Less than a week to go by the way.

Curiosity Rover on Track for Early August Landing

Curiosity, the car-size, one-ton rover is bound for arrival on Mars at 1:31 a.m., EDT on Aug. 6.
The landing will mark the beginning of a two-year prime mission to investigate one of the most intriguing places on Mars

Way more here
http://www.nasa.gov/

[Shadowwolf]

Fingers crossed that it makes it down successfully.

[MikeG]

If things don't go smoothly in the landing phase, Mars will be contaminated. Curiosity is nuclear powered. Here's hoping everything goes as planned.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I wouldn't worry too much MikeG, due to Mars not having a magnetic field the surface is bathed in lethal amounts of radiation on a daily basis, so much so that the idea of life (as we know it) surviving on the surface is highly unlikely and a bit of Plutonium is not going to matter here or there. Although it is possible that the 'lander' could hit the Martian atmosphere at too low an angle and effectively bounce off like a skimming stone on water and hurtle off into the Solar System not to be seen ................. well for a very long time certainly. But either way it isn't going to upset the planets eco-system of kill off any life forms that might be there.
If life is going to be found on the red planet then I'm of the opinion that it will be underground, and not just a few inches either but deep within the planetary crust, a crude bacteria living on organic chemicals within the margins of whatever of the Martian geothermal energy still exists.

[Shadowwolf]

Yeah, I'd rather it got down intact but I don't think contamination will be a major problem if it did crash.

[...]

nothing to worry about http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns- ... 3320.story

[Shadowwolf]

Whew, I was genuinely concerned that the elaborate method of deployment created a large number of things to go wrong - all the hover engines, the four cable winches, the four release mechs etc. - with any failure compromising the whole thing.

But hey, it's down and that's the big hurdle passed.

Oh and here it is from the horse's mouth at NASA : Curiosity

[Shadowwolf]

And here be the first colour panorama


Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

[Lateralman]

What no deckchairs!

[Shadowwolf]

[MikeG]

Nice quip by Obama concerning the Curiosity mission.

"If, in fact, you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away. I've got a lot of other things on my plate, but I suspect that that would go to the top of the list, even if they're just microbes," he said.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57492 ... ight-away/

[M Paul Lloyd]

He could, presumably, go'head to head' with microbes?

[MikeG]

If I was a betting man, I would go all in that at least microbial life will be confirmed quite soon. If it has anything in common at all with earth based microbes, but turns out to have an unrelated origin (that is, Mars rocks did not carry the first microbes here), that will be extremely exciting. The independent, but similar development of life will increase the odds that sentient beings may develop elsewhere along similar lines to ourselves. I know thats a stretch, but the possibility remains.

[Shadowwolf]

In some useless trivia, the acronym J.P.L. is in morse code on the wheels so gets put down in the sand as it trundles about.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Which, in the Martian tongue, translates as 'We bring war' ................