Curiosity and its Parachute Spotted by Mars-Orbiting satellite

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by HawkeyeNation
Are you being sarcastic? Well either way this looks fake as hell. I just find it a little bit odd...I don't know probably looking into it more than I should I guess

Can you explain in detail what a real picture of a spacecraft parachuting to the Martian surface SHOULD look like?

I can tell you that if I spend a billion dollars on a camera it better be able to take better pictures. I'm not disputing what you said just my opinion that I want to see something better.

The HiRise camera that is on board MRO is a .5m reflecting reflecting telescope which is the largest ever carried on a deep space mission. Compare that to the HiRise that can be taken on Earth and it's the same at .5. Google has the ability to use 1m.

Originally posted by HawkeyeNation

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
Can you explain in detail what a real picture of a spacecraft parachuting to the Martian surface SHOULD look like?

I can tell you that if I spend a billion dollars on a camera it better be able to take better pictures. I'm not disputing what you said just my opinion that I want to see something better.

That camera was on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which is an orbiting spacecraft flying at an altitude of 180-200 miles (300+ km) above Mars. In addition, the image was taken at an oblique angle, which means it was even further away than that.

Considering the camera was maybe 200+ miles away, I think it's a pretty good picture.

Ya I see what you're saying...probably being a little picky when I want to see something much clearer.

Wow... it's certainly a breathtaking picture, but I can't help but think this is the proof that "pics or it didn't happen" is a bar that will never be reached to prove UFOs, alien structures, etc.

Not saying this is a fake-- I believe it's real-- but I admit I agree with Hawkeye that it doesn't LOOK real. It's believable because we timed our satellites to capture it and everything in the picture was made by us-- we set out to get this picture of our own rover.

But what if some human-like aliens from another planet dropped a rover on our moon, and one of our satellites snapped a photo that looked kind of like this? Maybe NASA with their expertise could make the distinction, but see how easy it would be to cover up? All they'd have to do is remain silent-- we could even have access to the original picture and we'd dismiss it as horrible photoshop, camera artifact, etc.

Originally posted by jra

Originally posted by raiders247
Why does my iphone take better pictures than what this multi-billion dollar rover can?

Firstly, as has been said dozens of times in all the other MSL Curiosity threads. The photos that have been released now are from the Hazcams. They are low res cameras designed simply for navigation. They are not the primary camera.

The MSL has a total of 17 cameras. The Mastcam will be raised and checked out in the coming days. After that, you can expect to see higher resolution colour photos.

If you believe that then I feel really sorry for you brother. What is the point of attaching low res anything on a multi billion dollar craft. Why save the pennies? And yes the iphone most likely wouldn't survive the vacuum of space, but neither would most electronics made on earth not intended for space travel. The brightest minds of NASA couldn't figure out a way to back engineer a simple camera and make it space proof? This is just 1 flaw, there are many, and most are choosing to ignore them for some reason.

Originally posted by raiders247
..What is the point of attaching low res anything on a multi billion dollar craft....

It's a rover...it can move. It has a hi-res camera on a movable mast and another hi-res camera on a movable arm. Those two cameras can take hi-res images of whatever they want to that hi res images of.

Why in the world would you need you other cameras to be hi-res -- especially your hazard-avoidance cameras (at least some of which are fish-eyed lenses, anyway)? Do you need hi-res images of the rocks next to the rover in order to avoid hitting them? I think low-res is enough to avoid a rock. If one of the rocks looks interesting, then use the one of other high-res cameras to take a picture of them. I mean, that's why the rover and the High-res cameras can move in the first place -- to look at what you want to look at.

Plus, right now, the rover has 8 GB flash memory. If you make all 17 cameras hi-res, then you probably need to at least quadruple the amount of on-board memory (and I think that is even conservative) . Extra memory (and the extra-hi-res cameras) would require additional power requirements, and a larger power plant. That larger power plant, additional on-board memory, and larger cameras would add weight to the craft.

Additionally, photo upload times would be greater due the limited bandwidth between earth and mars, so waiting for high resolution images to download will make driving the rover excruciatingly slow. Due to the 14-minute speed-of-light delay between earth and mars, controlling the rover is already a slow process, and waiting for hi-res hazard avoidance pictures to download would make it even slower.

I suppose you could argue that the HazCams could be switchable between high and low resolution, to speed up the hazard avoidance issue with driving it, and to reduce the need for additional on-board memory and additional power...

...but that brings us full circle to the original issue, which is this: when would you EVER need the HazCam images to be high-resolution, so why would you even bother making those cameras high-resolution in the first place?

That's just complete waste of spacecraft weight (which quickly adds up to HUGE amounts of money), and you get ZERO scientific return out of it. Or worse yet, the extra weight of the power plant needs to be offset elsewhere, so they decide to delete one of the other science instruments on board (besides the cameras, there are 8 other scientific instruments on the rover), which now results in a net loss of science returns.

Originally posted by raiders247
What is the point of attaching low res anything on a multi billion dollar craft. Why save the pennies?

It's a Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam). Curiosity has 4 of them. They don't need to be super high res. Spirit and Opportunity also had multiple low res Hazcams as well. I doubt the reason for them being low res was cost. It's more likely to do with minimizing bandwidth use, so that the images can be transmitted and received on Earth quicker.

The brightest minds of NASA couldn't figure out a way to back engineer a simple camera and make it space proof? This is just 1 flaw, there are many, and most are choosing to ignore them for some reason.

Like I said before. Curiosity has 17 cameras total. Some of them are high res some of them are not. They are all designed to meet certain needs and requirements. They don't all need to be 20mp or what have you.

ETA: Looks like SGiP beat me to it, and very well said.

There are so many requirements and restrictions when it comes to designing a Rover (or an Orbiter) that the average person isn't really aware of. It's not as simple as slapping on higher resolution cameras everywhere. Since like you said, there are power, weight, memory, and bandwidth limitations/restrictions to deal with.

It should also be pointed out that the first images from the Hazcams were at 1/4 full resolution.

Again, as jra and I pointed out, that was due to bandwidth issues. The rover landed on a part of Mars that was facing away from the earth at the time, so the rover needed to first send data up to a satellite orbiting mars, then that satellite relayed the images back to earth. This satellite is only inthe line-of-sight of the rover for a little while on each pass, so if the rover wanted to get the first images back to earth quickly, it had to send small files (i.e., small amounts of data) due to the limitations on bandwidth between the rover and the satellite.

So the choices were get a 1/4 resolution picture immediately after landing, or wait several hours for the higher resolution images to download. I don't think the world wanted to wait several hours for the first images.

Just imagine if there was intelligent life on Mars watching the orbiter land. It would be a "UFO" basically, sent by the scientists of Earth to study another planet.

If we Earthlings are doing things like this at this relatively early stage in our development, imagine what we will be doing given another million years or so.

Kind of makes the possibility of other civilizations coming here to study us and our planet a little more feasible....

Originally posted by HawkeyeNation
Are you being sarcastic? Well either way this looks fake as hell. I just find it a little bit odd...I don't know probably looking into it more than I should I guess

Thank you. Yes, it looks fake as hell. The parachute is supposedly 51 feet in diameter. The rover and "sky crane" from what I've read weigh 3,700 pounds. The martian atmosphere is 0.6% of earths atmosphere. A full size parachute (parabolic) for a man is 35 feet in diameter. Yet the 2-ton payload is calmly floating towards the martian surface. And if the payload was dropped from, say, 100,000 feet, the atmosphere would only be only a fraction of 0.6%. How would the parachute open?

It looks fake. And they say they landed in area 51 (although they were aiming for area 50?) Give me a break!!!
www.theatlantic.com...

reply to post by sanchezal28


there's a video on nasa website which explains the role the parachute plays , how it works and the exact forces it needs to withstand.

It slows the craft down to 200mph which is not slow enough to land it then detaches . The thrusters & sky crane do the rest.

You also state its "calmly floating" . I wouldnt describe something travelling 1000mph as calmly doing anything. Although it is controlled

Originally posted by ipsedixit
Great photo. Thanks for bringing it to attention here.

I'm a big critic of the current American political stance in the world and have deplored much of what has gone on in the country since the assassination of JFK, but I have been wowed by this current Martian foray. Way to go America! I love it when you show your best! You don't need the bullying stuff. There are other ways in the world, other ways, like this great Martian effort, to be a world leader.

We were taken over as a country by the bankers and contractors that sell weapons after that day. The USA died several weeks after his assignation.