StarHalo
Flashaholic
Successful touchdown at 10:14:39 PM PDT; the first 256-pixel image sent moments later from the rover hazard camera reveals the late Martian afternoon sky contrasting with one of Curiosity's wheels on the dusty surface:
Does this thing have a windshield wiper and some windshield wiper fluid? I remember the pictures from the previous rover that were clear, and colored. Is this going to get better in time?
one would think that from todays technology that the 'low res' camera's would be at least 1Mp - my nokia e63 has a better low res capture than that on a billion dollar rover?
one would think that from todays technology that the 'low res' camera's would be at least 1Mp - my nokia e63 has a better low res capture than that on a billion dollar rover?
Your cell phone signal doesn't have to travel a couple hundred million miles to be captured by earth stations, so we're not exactly talking '4G' here. Still, immediately after the rover landed it was transmitting thumbnails live to the JPL team, which if you think about it is a lot faster than my Android phone given Sprint's lousy coverage :ironic:
Actually the gear on the rover is very advanced, but has to be built to the limits of engineering fault tolerance. Images and data is stored on board the rover and the transmitted at ideal times, with no risk of data corruption, so data management is just as critical as data aquisition. When the Galieo probe had problems with it's high gain antenna the mission engineers had to come up with riduculous solutions to keep the mission going, and all subsequent space missions have adjusted for worst case scenarios.
The Spirit and Opportunity rovers have taken striking images of the Martian landscapes, with most of the better ones being pano stitches similiar to what I do with my dSLR. The coolest images were the swirling dust devils in motion, so we can expect some cool stuff from Curiousity. A big difference with Curiousity is it's RPG powered -vs- solar for Spirit / Oppurtunity.