Only $2.5 Billion.Watch it live Sunday Live (Tonight, or monday morning on the East coast USA). Curiosity is scheduled to land in the Red Planet's Gale Crater late Sunday or very, very early Monday, depending on your Earthbound time zone. Confirmation of the landing should come at about 10:31 p.m. PT Sunday for folks on the U.S. West Coast, or 1:31 a.m. ET Monday for those on the East Coast. The rover will have actually touched down before that, but there's a 14-minute communications lag time for signals traveling the 154 million miles from Mars. The space agency will begin its live coverage Sunday evening at 8:30 p.m. PT / 10:30 p.m. ET on the NASA TV site and will also show the coverage via UStream: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
sooo, why didnt they just make a bigger wind catcher to slow it down more?
The speed of re-entry prevents a larger parachute. The thinness of the atmosphere means the parachute can't slow it down enough. The parachute gets you from about 1000mph to 200mph.
[This message has been edited by Formula88 (edited 08-05-2012).]
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03:42 PM
James Bond 007 Member
Posts: 8868 From: California.U.S.A. Registered: Dec 2002
Originally posted by Rallaster: They hit a 200 meter(656 feet) target from 300 million miles away! I don't know what that compares to here on earth, but Dayum!
Talk about sniping....
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04:41 PM
Gokart Mozart Member
Posts: 12143 From: Metro Detroit Registered: Mar 2003
Hi, I'm Carl Sagan. This is a place where I often work in Ithaca, New York near Cornell University. Maybe you can hear, in the background, a 200-foot waterfall right nearby, which is probably — I would guess — a rarity on Mars, even in times of high technology.
Science and science fiction have done a kind of dance over the last century, particularly with respect to Mars. The scientists make a finding. It inspires science fiction writers to write about it, and a host of young people read the science fiction and are excited, and inspired to become scientists to find out more about Mars, which they do, which then feeds again into another generation of science fiction and science; and that sequence has played major role in our present ability to get to Mars. It certainly was an important factor in the life of Robert Goddard, the American rocketry pioneer who, I think more than anyone else, paved the way for our actual ability to go to Mars. And it certainly played a role in my scientific development.
I don't know why you're on Mars. Maybe you're there because we've recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we're up in near-Earth space, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we're on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we're on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we're on Mars because we have to be, because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you.
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06:32 PM
Formula88 Member
Posts: 53788 From: Raleigh NC Registered: Jan 2001
Moment of Perspective: American Reinvestment & Recovery Act of 2009: $800 Billion Sum total of every NASA budget in history from 1958 - 2015: $572 Billion
[This message has been edited by Formula88 (edited 08-07-2012).]
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10:39 PM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27083 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
Moment of Perspective: American Reinvestment & Recovery Act of 2009: $800 Billion Sum total of every NASA budget in history from 1958 - 2015: $572 Billion
Ho-ly S***! That really puts it into perspective. If ANY government spending stimulates and does good, it's space exploration. All we got from Obama's stimulus was his paying back unions and cronies.
