Tag: JPL

Categories
Education Science and nature

The history of Humanity’s #JourneyToMars

On Saturday, November 26, NASA is scheduled to launch the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission featuring Curiosity, the largest and most advanced rover ever sent to the Red Planet.

I’m really looking forward to the movie, “The Martian“. The latest trailer looks awesome:

As cool as the movie looks, the real-life #JourneyToMars is even more spectacular. NASA JPL released a retrospective video titled “50 Years of Mars Exploration” showcasing highlights from Humanity’s 50 year history exploring Mars. 50 years!

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs has loads of awesome videos on YouTube and it is definitely worth subscribing to JPL’s channel. By the way, did you notice the soundtrack in this video? Sounds a lot like the Transformers soundtracks by Steve Jablonsky.

Another great video to watch is this one titled “11 Years and Counting – Opportunity on Mars” that chronicles the Opportunity rover’s discoveries on Mars:

My favourite video is still “Seven Minutes of Terror: The Challenges of Getting to Mars“:

You can follow updates about Humanity’s journey to Mars using the #JourneyToMars hashtag on Twitter too:


Image credit: Daybreak at Gale Crater from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, licensed CC BY 2.0

Categories
Useful stuff

Watching the Mars Rover landing in bed

I just watched the JPL live feed as the Mars Rover landed on Mars and began transmitting data back from the red planet’s surface. Aside from being able to watch this historic event (well, live from JPL, the data from Mars is delayed due to the distance to Mars), I got a huge kick out of my ability to watch the live stream on my iPad on UStream. I know this isn’t new but it is amazing technology nevertheless. Anyone remember the old footage of families crowded around little TVs watching the first Moon landing?

Update: If you aren’t too sure what all the fuss is and why everyone got so excited about the landing, watch this video titled “Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror” which explains just how intricate the whole manoeuvre was: