Curiosity Rover almost there

Egg Born Son said:
It was fun watching a solid two hours of high fives on the live feed. But this didn't even get 90 seconds on the news tonight. No wonder NASA's shutting down operations. The fluff piece at the end got a bigger slot.
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Apparently right when we got news that it made it safely Fox News was busy arguing about Michael Jackson's will. MERICA!
 
Batutta said:
That's kind of like asking what makes a Red Camera more special or interesting than a Digital 8 Handycam.
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Well, not really. A lot of people are reacting to this as though it's a manned landing.

That, I would stay up all night for.
 
I'm not finding anything on why the camera is 2MP. To each his own, and not trying to pixel peep here, but you'd think they'd be able to put something a little better on there. I clicked the thumbnail of the first photo as soon as it went live and realized it wasn't a thumbnail at all. It was the actual size of the picture.
 
David Jimerson said:
Well, not really. A lot of people are reacting to this as though it's a manned landing.

That, I would stay up all night for.
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It's a matter of scale...the protocol used for the journey and landing such a large vehicle says the next visit could be a manned mission. The general public (unwashed masses) are hard to impress. I remember the second moon landing television coverage had folks complaining that reruns of Gilligan's Island got bumped...
 
Hawk Teflon said:
I'm not finding anything on why the camera is 2MP. To each his own, and not trying to pixel peep here, but you'd think they'd be able to put something a little better on there. I clicked the thumbnail of the first photo as soon as it went live and realized it wasn't a thumbnail at all. It was the actual size of the picture.
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That wasn't the main camera, it was another sensor. I'm sure bandwidth and power concerns are a reason for the 2MP sensor, but keep in mind these rovers take pictures differently. They take vast panoramas and stitch them together into huge photos, so it doesn't need to take a giant resolution photo all at once. Opportunity only had a 1MP camera, and it was able to take this--

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Victoria_Crater,_Cape_Verde-Mars.jpg

Victoria_Crater%2C_Cape_Verde-Mars.jpg
 
Batutta said:
That wasn't the main camera, it was another sensor. I'm sure bandwidth and power concerns are a reason for the 2MP sensor, but keep in mind these rovers take pictures differently. They take vast panoramas and stitch them together into huge photos, so it doesn't need to take a giant resolution photo all at once. Opportunity only had a 1MP camera, and it was able to take this--

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Victoria_Crater%2C_Cape_Verde-Mars.jpg

Victoria_Crater%2C_Cape_Verde-Mars.jpg
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I've looked at the published specs on a few sources and even the mast cam has a 1600 x 1200 array...1.9 mpix !
 
If the government limits the budget then NASA will have to close some of their projects such as Mars Odyssey and Curiosity scientific mission.
 
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