The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and NASA have released a composite photo from the Mars rover Curiosity - a 1.3-billion-pixel image of the planet's surface. The rover is investigating Gale Crater's environmental past in order to determine the potential that it once hosted microbial life.
PASADENA, Calif. - Long minutes of thunderous applause greeted the managers and engineers who paraded into an auditorium here Sunday night, triumphant after a perfect landing on another world. The Mars rover Curiosity sent a picture from the Martian surface just moments after its self-piloted descent and airdrop, and everyone assembled at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory could not help but cheer. It's a huge moment for NASA, which delivered the rover over budget and two years late - but delivered it, and beautifully.
Scott Maxwell stared at his bedroom ceiling in the hours after his first drive, restless with excitement. All systems were go, and he'd sent the commands by the time he left the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Now he was supposed to sleep before his next shift on Mars time. But he knew that on the fourth planet from the sun, the Spirit rover's wheels had started to move.
For whatever reason things grow popular, this NASA animation - titled "Perpetual Ocean" - has been making the rounds over the past 24 hours, mesmerising all who dare click "play." Compiled from data produced by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Earth, Phase II (ECCO2 for short), the animation is a high-res model of global ocean and sea ice movements from June 2005 through December 2007. And it's strangely therapeutic to watch.
When NASA’s new Mars rover lands on the Red Planet this summer, it’s safe to assume it’ll be sometime in the morning or early afternoon at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, home of the rover science and engineering teams. So that means it’ll be mid-afternoon on the East Coast, evening in Europe, and so on — pretty easy to figure out the time zones. But what time will it be on Mars? What time zone will Curiosity live in -- and how can you even tell?
