** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Combat squirrel said:
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That green landscape below the pod... Looks like grass or algae or something :confused:
 
Aeleys said:
why are all the images B&W? surely 2 billion dollars buys a colour camera these days :p

more on topic, it's an amazing achievement.
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I think I read somewhere that the B&W images are much faster for them to download. The colour HD stuff takes a lot longer so for speed they just get the simple stuff out first.

But regardless, it's epically wonderful stuff to look at.
 
That image of mount Sharp presents the same perspective issue as on the Moon. With no reference objects (that we're used to) like cloud layers, trees, relative haze from wet atmosphere (effected by distance), etc you can't tell that the mountain is actually 3 miles high. It looks like a large hill.
 
Some pics from the briefing:


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Parachute and backshell
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Skycrane ... the dark dust pattern shows angle at which it hit ground...
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The above are the ones that look like something recognizable. The Curiosity itself and the heat shield look like specks when zoomed in on... nothing recognizable about them that I could see.
 
They said in the press conference yesterday that they would love to, but distance being one factor, the mission objectives being another and also that there could be danger around that area with the unspent fuel still on/near the sky crane, as there was some fuel leftover after dropping off Cusiosity.
 
It's not planned, but then there isn't a lot of it's potential operational life that is. The crane is pretty much off limits, but i guess everything else is a possibility. The heatshield especially would be interesting to see how it held up.
 
TimBrad said:
This, not many believed in him, but he proved all naysayers wrong :)
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Hee hee yea! :D

I feel...they should have let it land some distance away..upright. And then sprout some sensors from the top. Like maybe as a backup antenna or something. Seems like such a waste that they had to let it crash!

Kevin Clark said:
Be quite neat if they drove over to have a look at it but they probably have more important things to be getting on with :)
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Neat idea...actually I feel it would be beneficial. A good insight into how the hardware held up. I mean..we know it worked perfectly but still they should go take a look. At least to say "thank you"!
 
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