curiosity

Curiosity prepped for software upgrade; snaps panorama

Engineers are gearing up to flush entry, descent and landing software from the Curiosity rover's central computer and replace it with programming optimized for surface operations, mission managers said Thursday.

In the meantime, the rover has snapped its first 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in Gale Crater and beamed down an initial set of low-resolution thumbnail frames that provide a hint of things to come. The full-resolution frames will be eight times sharper than the thumbnails, but they must be moved from the camera's memory to the main computer for later relay to Earth.

Frames from a … Read more

Why the Mars rover has a measly 2MP camera

Geeks everywhere are riveted by the new images of Mars the Curiosity rover is beaming back to Earth. What you might be surprised to hear is just how few megapixels are involved in bringing those photos to us.

The rover sports 12 cameras in all, but the main imaging cameras have measly 2MP sensors. Wait, what? Was NASA trying to discourage the rover from taking too many vacation snapshots?… Read more

Curiosity's Gale Crater panoramic vistas (pictures)

With the masthead fully extended and the Curiosity rover's systems coming to life on the surface of Mars, NASA is beginning to return stunning views of the Red Planet, and today the agency released two stunning 360-degree panoramas from inside the Gale Crater.

Click the images to see the full-size panoramas from the surface of Mars. (And when you're done viewing a full-size version, scroll to the bottom right corner of the image to close it.)

You can see the full-resolution version of the above panorama here.

You can see the full-resolution version of … Read more

NASA's Morpheus moon lander crashes and burns

While the world is still basking in the glow of NASA's successful landing of its Curiosity rover on Mars, a flight of the space agency's experimental Morpheus lander had a much more unfortunate ending today.

According to Space.com, the lander crashed and burned at Kennedy Space Center this afternoon after its first free-flight test went badly awry.

"The @MorpheusLander experienced a failure, causing it to catch fire," NASA tweeted. "No one was injured. Information will be released as soon as possible."

But Space.com added that in a statement, NASA said that, "… Read more

Low Latency No. 32: Rover Street View

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Thursday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far.

Viewers opted for the Web over TV to watch Curiosity's landing

More Curiosity fans took to the Web to watch the rover's highly anticipated landing on Mars than those tuning into cable TV.

According to Mashable, more than 3.2 million people viewed the nail-biting descent nicknamed "seven minutes of terror" via Ustream's live streaming platform on Sunday night.

"More people tuned in to watch the NASA Mars landing coverage on Ustream than many of the top cable news networks during Sunday prime time," Ustream spokesman Tony Riggins told Mashable.

The Mars rover settled into Mars' Gale Crater, surviving its white-knuckle plunge in remarkably good … Read more

Curiosity sends back first full-resolution images

Not for the first time, and surely not for the last, we bring you another first from the Curiosity rover.

NASA has now released the first full-resolution images from Curiosity, which arrived on Mars late Sunday in a dramatic landing following an eight-month, one-way commute from Earth. The initial images sent back from the newly arrived rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, were low-res images, the better to get them back quickly and to help confirm that Curiosity was all in one piece.

The two just-released black-and-white images, which have been stitched together to show as a single … Read more

NASA mohawk heartthrob racks up Twitter marriage proposals

A momentous NASA-related event occurred recently. It caused many people to stop a moment and gaze at NASA photos. It ignited Twitter into a tizzy. I'm not talking about the Mars rover landing, I'm talking about the NASA Mohawk Guy.

Flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, better known as the NASA Mohawk Guy, has caused quite a stir with his unique hairstyle, rugged good looks, and geek credentials. In the process of helping to successfully land the Mars rover, Ferdowsi also landed many hearts. … Read more

NASA video reveals Mars rover landing

NASA is offering a first video glimpse of the Curiosity rover's arrival on Mars.

The space agency last night released a modest stop-motion video built from 297 still-image frames captured by Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager, aka MARDI, which is mounted on the underside of the rover. The landing sequence, which finishes quickly in only about 40 seconds, provides a record of the last two-and-a-half minutes of the spacecraft's descent.

In the first few seconds, you can see the heat shield, 15 feet in diameter, falling away after separation from the 1-ton rover, which itself was slung below … Read more

iPhone processor way outguns Mars Curiosity rover's

If processor power were all that mattered in the space race, your iPhone 4S would be about ready to land on Pluto as part of a mission to send Siri to console it following its demotion from planet to just another big, cold rock floating in space.

F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen pointed out earlier today that the onboard computer specs in NASA's Mars Curiosity rover look pretty sad when stacked up against your basic smartphone, at least on paper.

An Apple A5 processor running at 800MHz is fully four times more powerful than the 200MHz chip aboard Curiosity. The 512MB of RAM on the iPhone 4S doubles what Curiosity packs, and if you've got 64GB on your phone, that's 32 times better than the rover.… Read more