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Cosimo

Cosimo

Cosimo

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Another of those special images from Mars:

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Five Bites Into Mars

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used a mechanism on its robotic arm to dig up five scoopfuls of material from a patch of dusty sand called "Rocknest," producing the five bite-mark pits visible in this image from the rover's left Navigation Camera (Navcam). Each of the pits is about 2 inches (5 centimeters) wide.

The fifth scoopful at Rocknest -- leaving the upper middle bite mark -- was collected during the mission's 93rd Martian day, or sol (Nov. 9, 2012). This image was taken later that same sol. A sample from that fifth scoop was analyzed over the next two sols by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments inside the rover. A second sample from the same scoopful of material was delivered to SAM for analysis on Sol 96 (Nov. 12). No further scooping of soil samples is planned at Rocknest.

The first Rocknest scoop was collected during Sol 61 (Oct. 7). Fine sand and dust from that scoopful and two subsequent ones were used for scrubbing the inside surfaces of chambers in the sample-handling mechanism on the arm. Samples from scoops three, four and five were analyzed by the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument inside the rover.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Cosimo

Cosimo

Cosimo

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Back home:

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Expedition 33 Lands

The Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft is seen shortly after it landed with Expedition 33 Commander Sunita Williams of NASA and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko in a remote area of Kazakhstan, on Nov. 19, 2012. Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko returned from four months onboard the International Space Station.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
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ShortWarning

ShortWarning

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I've got a (possibly stupid) question.

When an astronaut is in orbit (on the ISS for example) they are weightless because they are free falling around the earth.

Why is it astronauts flying away from the earth (say to the moon) also experience weightlessness?
 

Metalface Mark

Metalface Mark

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ShortWarning said:
I've got a (possibly stupid) question.

When an astronaut is in orbit (on the ISS for example) they are weightless because they are free falling around the earth.

Why is it astronauts flying away from the earth (say to the moon) also experience weightlessness?
Click to expand...

Everything is falling in a sense, even when they are travelling to the moon they are pushing away from earths gravity before they get into the sphere of influence of the moon. Everything is travelling at the same speed though astronaut, ship etc, if you stopped powering them they would eventually fall into something's influence and hit the ground (if there was anything left).
 

Skii

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ShortWarning said:
I've got a (possibly stupid) question.

When an astronaut is in orbit (on the ISS for example) they are weightless because they are free falling around the earth.

Why is it astronauts flying away from the earth (say to the moon) also experience weightlessness?
Click to expand...

Because they are still in orbit, the TLI burn that accelerated them to 25000 mph (actually just under ) put them on a much larger orbit - one that intercepted the moon.
 
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