Re radiation. they said Mars and the thin atmosphere does block some radiation. But different heavier particles are created with the atmosphere interaction which are as or more dangerous than the cruise radiation. Over all it seems that a trip to Mars and back would be the lifetime limit for an astronaut. But if you've gone to Mars and back I'd think you'd be wanting to spend a lot of time on Earth, lol.

Yesterday I noticed after I clicked mark all boards read and return to index, the page was constantly refreshing every 1/3 second or so. Anyone notice the same ?
It's still doing it today too.
I am using Firefox 17.0.
Thanks.

Rivers flowed on Mars, so it would be warm enough for rain.
Maven is going to provide answers to how quickly the atmosphere escaped, should it sucessfully get into orbit.

It sure is faster, great work.

I tried to make a donation but the page said my address was not a correct billing address, which is kind of odd.

Re Ageis....It's a good idea to get the normal, extremely complicated surface s/w working well, before adding on enhancements, bare in mind, if luck holds out MSL will last more than 10 years. Also long drives will still be posible in the hills, those hills are massive, not "molehills" you can drive around or over in a day.

When I look at thos pages with Firefox all I see is a background grid.

I don't know if it's me or what but the MSL navcam images don't seem to be as good as the MER ones were. Any thoughts anyone ?

Early on they did say MSL was little warmer than expected, which would mean slightly less power needed for heaters in the winter. The external actuators though would still need the normal amount of heating.

The main advantage is MSL won't have to stand down during the winter. As for returned data they did more than 500 megabits with MRO in one pass. Once out of Mars time though the team won't always be able to prepare the next days upload in time, so there will be quiet days, where I guess some safe run out science could be done. Also Mr Cook said they expect to have 10 years or more to explore. Of course they will have a "time line" to try accomplish the main mission objectives, which I suspect maybe extended beyond two years should MSL continue to be a reliable spacecraft.
What happened to Pete ?, as I see on the MSL website Cook is now the MSL Project Manager.

Edit : Wiki says this...
"He is currently director for the Engineering and Science Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

I guess Pete Theisinger got promoted .

When Curiosity is driving in-between 100 m high mesa's and butts I think the plains will be quite forgotten .

Did anyone else have the unfortuneate experience of reading this article ?

MSL/MAHLI.

Has anyone noted the strips of tape that seem to have been placed rather untidily behind and left of the calibration target ?

Looks like a MAHLI full res with the dust cover open.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...0000E1_DXXX.jpg

I see a dint in a wheel, I wonder if that was upon landing ?

ADMIN EDIT: Full image linked and crop of image added.
Original image

Crop from original image:

Don't forget the camera's work differently, they take thumbnails as well as full images, only the full ones needed for science and driving will be returned. Mike Malin said they proberbly won't be doing another full Mastcam panorama as the science team will be looking at science targets. Also the 2 labs on board need many sols each to do their work, including drilling, scooping, and filtering by the sample delivery system, then processsing by the labs. So the mission profile will be somewhat different.

I just winked at the Blue Moon, and remembered Neil Armstrong.

It's usually the amount of water the atmosphere can hold, 8 % is like a bone dry desert value, whereas in Florida eg, you often get 90 to 100 %, which generally feels miserable. Local met offices will also include a PWAT amount of water, that is if you squashed all the water out of the air you might eg get 1 inch. Usually less than 1/2 inch of PWAT it won't rain. Right now in NE FL the humidity is a nice 48 %. Most air conditioning units will make your house around 40 % humid, which is generally a comfortable level for humans.

R.I.P the guy I sat up late into the night to watch walk on the Moon when I was 6 years old.

The project scientist has said that the jets would be no problem as the decay of hydrazine was well understood. The jets also were angled outwards, but some blow back did occur, more than they expected. The two main labs are sealed inside the rover.

It was explained on the last news conference, APXS is more accurate, but ChemCam can sample many rocks pretty quickly but with good results, then they'd follow up with the other instruments on "interesting" targets.

Replay

This works ok for me.

It's up now.

Tele

I haven't heard the teleconference yet.

The rover could rotate though .