NASA TV - Rover Curiosity Live stream

reply to post by MarioOnTheFly

But will they be streaming anything before the entry it self ? And even more importantly, will there be live streams of the rover while on the surface? Kinda doubt it...

I suspect it will be a very "retro" experience. You will hear engineers muttering: "Delta V thirty thousand... delta V twenty thousand..." over an animated sequence of the craft approaching Mars. (Remember the Gemini missions?)

reply to post by DJW001


You are probably right. Damn..this thread just lost a point

reply to post by Mogget


And if you believe NASA are coverup central, they landed today and anything that makes it to TV is not live but 2 days old. That's how NASA would ensure the public never sees anything they don't want them to see.

Originally posted by MarioOnTheFly
reply to post by DJW001

 

So what you're saying is...we will be seeing a stream of the control room ?

Now that's a major anti climax for me

There is no cameraman on Mars taking live videos of the landing, so we will see (at best) telemetry data of the landing.

(By the way, due to the speed of light, "real time" or "live" on Mars will be delayed by more than 13 minutes. That's the time it takes for the signals from Curiosity to reach the Earth at the speed of light.)

UPDATE: A camera will be deployed during the final moments of the descent phase:

As the heat shield separates, the Mars Descent Imager begins recording video, looking in the direction the
spacecraft is flying. The imager records continuously from then through the landing. The rover, with its
descent-stage “rocket backpack,” is still attached to the back shell on the parachute. The terminal descent
sensor, a radar system mounted on the descent stage, begins collecting data about velocity and altitude

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

Unfortunately, it does not appear that it will be broadcasting live.

Originally posted by DJW001
UPDATE: A camera will be deployed during the final moments of the descent phase:

As the heat shield separates, the Mars Descent Imager begins recording video, looking in the direction the
spacecraft is flying. The imager records continuously from then through the landing. The rover, with its
descent-stage “rocket backpack,” is still attached to the back shell on the parachute. The terminal descent
sensor, a radar system mounted on the descent stage, begins collecting data about velocity and altitude

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

Unfortunately, it does not appear that it will be broadcasting live.

Pictures from any rover is rarely (if ever) broadcast in real time. The image information is first sent to an orbiting satellite (either Mars Odyssey or The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) and those orbiters hold that image information until being in a position to send it back to Earth.

Images and video require a lot of memory, and I don't think the bandwidth is enough to view live videos. It usually takes a long time to download images, let alone video. Telemetry data requires less bandwidth, so that telemetry will be in real time...

...However, that was almost not the case. There was a problem with the relay satellite (the Mars Odyssey Orbiter) that threatened to have the relay satellite in the wrong position to send live telemetry of the landing. As I said above, Curiosity does not send data straight to earth, but first sends it to satellites orbiting Mars. Due to a problem, The Mars Odyssey satellite was in danger of not being withing the line-of-sight of Earth during the landing, (although in the line-of-sight of the lander itself). Line-of-sight is required to be able to transmit information. If they didn't fix the problem with Mars Odyssey, then Mars Odyssey would have held on to the landing telemetry of Curiosity for several minutes until the satellite moved into position to be able to send the info back to earth.

However, a couple weeks ago, Mars Odyssey's problem was fixed, and the satellite is now in position to send back live landing telemetry data ("Live" not counting the 13 minute speed of light lag time). Even with Mars Odyssey in the right position, bandwidth limitations would not allow real-time video.

I'm sure we will eventually see the descent imager video (I think it's at 6 fps), but not right away. Even if it is only a couple of minutes of video, that video may take considerably longer to download.

Couldnt someone with a fast connection from
US LiveStream the stream from their computer and
put it GLOBAL...???

What about the MARDI camera mars.jpl.nasa.gov... ? I was reading that there's going to be a 3-hours delay for it.

Originally posted by EllasArchaiaDynamis
What about the MARDI camera mars.jpl.nasa.gov... ? I was reading that there's going to be a 3-hours delay for it.

Again, images are rarely sent directly back to earth. Images are first sent from a rover to a Mars-orbiting satellite, then stored in the memory of that satellite until the satellite is in a prime position to send the packets of data back to Earth.

Sometimes it takes several orbits and several hours for those information packets containing the image data to be relayed from the satellite back to Earth, either due to the size of the packet, or due to backlogs of information waiting to be sent, or due to the satellite being busy doing other things.

For example, pictures take from the rover "Opportunity" yesterday may remain in the memory of one of the satellites orbiting mars for several days until that satellite is ready to send the image data to Earth. Often, there is a backlog of data waiting to be sent.