[X] My Assistant

[Tom Tamlyn]

The April 22 issue of the New Yorker includes an excellent and lengthy (11k words) article by Burkhard Bilger about Curiosity. It's not pay-walled, and it does a nice job of covering both the science and engineering. There are sympathetic profiles of Adam Stelzner and John Grotzinger.

I spotted one slight misstatement (describing the landing system as “find[ing] clear ground”), although I’m sure that the other Dave, et al., will find more nits. But all-in-all, Bilger did a very good job. It's a useful resource to point to for friends who want to know what the fuss is about, as well as worth reading for its own sake.

TTT

This post has been edited by Tom Tamlyn: Apr 25 2013, 09:40 PM

[dvandorn]

Curiosity isn't looking for living things, really, you're right. But any Mars lander with a camera can find an obvious fossil within the camera's field of view.

We obviously won't get into any kind of discussion as to whether or not anything in the tens of thousands of pictures returned from the Martian surface resembles a fossil -- that's so far outside of our rules here it's not even funny. Just wanted to point out that a camera will generally see what is there, and not see what's not there.

-the other Doug