Change your heart
Look around you
Change your heart
It will astound you
I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine
Fly me to the Moon
These are the first tracks made on this part of the Red Planet… to our knowledge…
She Roves! Curiosity Hits the Martian Road
ASA’s new Mars probe lived up to its billing as a rover on Wednesday with a successful first test drive, its first motion since settling down inside an ancient impact basin on Aug. 6.Favorite quote of the story from a NASA project manager: “We built a rover, so unless the rover roves, we really haven’t accomplished anything.”
Smart is Sexy
In light of Curiosity’s successful landing, everyone became enamored with Bobak Ferdowsi. But it’s not just Bobak who is sexy and smart. NASA engineer Adam Steltzner has the brains and the sexy rocker past.
From Rock Star Dreams To Rocket Science
Steltzner’s path to becoming team leader for this new Mars lander was hardly direct. Unlike many successful engineers, he struggled at school. An elementary school principal told him he wasn’t very bright. His high school experience seemed to confirm that.
“I passed my geometry class the second time with an F plus, because the teacher just didn’t want to see me again,” he says.
His father told him he’d never amount to anything but a ditch digger, a remark he still carries with him years later.
Maybe that’s because school wasn’t a priority, particularly with the distractions of the flower-power era in the Bay Area.
“I was sort of studying sex, drugs and rock and roll in high school,” says Steltzner. It wasn’t just the long hair. “I liked to wear this strange Air Force jump suit. And my first car was a ‘69 Cadillac hearse. I put a bed in the back.”
Talk about a night to remember. “Well, I was younger. It was a different time,” says Steltzner.
After high school, the plan was to be a rock star. While he waited for stardom, Steltzner played bass guitar in Bay Area bands, watching his friends graduate and go off to college.Read More here
Another rocket scientist rock star. I’m telling you, the Curiosity team is one of the best things to happen to science in the public eye in years. Weird, smart, funny, excited youthful.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE ROCKET SCIENTIST.
Oh, Mal.
UGH. They sent a hipster?
being a hipster on Earth is too mainstream.
Now you’ve just made Cap’n Mal mad.
Oh well. Wrong fandom.
I should go and watch the game now. gymnastics is on…
(Source: whedonesque)
This is a great photo. The newest Mars rover is nearly the size of a Mini Cooper!
In honor of Curiosity’s successful landing, I present “Three Generations,” courtesy of John Klose , JPL employee since 2002. It shows the Mars landers Spirit (foreground), Opportunity (middle), and Curiosity (background) taken in front of JPL building 180, aka the Directors building.
HAVE TO REBLOG.
A new panorama just released by NASA’s Curiosity rover team shows us a fresh look at the Gale Crater on Mars.
Explore the interactive feature on LightBox.
High Res Images of the Martian Landscape from Curiosity’s Mast Navcam
Even in black and white, that landscape is absolutely fantastic.
Oh my god.
(via spaceandstuffidk)
This view of the landscape to the north of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing. (The team calls this day Sol 1, which is the first Martian day of operations; Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, 2012.)
In the distance, the image shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater. The image is murky because the MAHLI’s removable dust cover is apparently coated with dust blown onto the camera during the rover’s terminal descent. Images taken without the dust cover in place are expected during checkout of the robotic arm in coming weeks.
(via asonlynasacan)
NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in a daredevil maneuver that used a rocket-powered sky crane to lower the 1-ton robot safely to the Martian surface after plunging through the planet’s atmosphere. Never before had the maneuver been attempted and, by all accounts, it was a spectacular success.
(via asonlynasacan)
