This may sound silly, but: The closest I've coming to building a "robot" was a simple little arduino kit. The kit was terrible, the parts defective, and you can imagine I was pretty sick of troubleshooting it after a time. These are things happening on my workbench with a small amount of automation code. I'd have been thrilled if it had just worked as designed.
Now, take three robots. One is wheeled, one flies by rotors, and another is rocket powered. Put them on a rocket, fly to another planet, and land them autonomously without wrecking anything. As a hobbyist I'd be beyond myself to just do ONE of those. On Earth. Let alone millions of miles away on a distant planet.
And to get video of it just days later, bounced across multiple orbiters? Mind blowing.
As it got closer to the ground, it seemed really hard to get a sense of scale with that downward camera. It felt like the ground just kind of "appeared" right before the sky crane did its thing. How big are the rocks under it? It felt like they were either big (1+ meter) or just little pebbles. I really couldn't tell.
Either way, this is seriously the coolest video I think I've ever seen. I cannot wait for more.
“ I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready”
There is this emotion, not sure it has a name, which I am sure many engineers know -- when you prepare your system for a long time and then send it into the real world and watch it work...
You can feel it in this video, e.g when you see the crane fly away after accomplishing the mission.
If we don't have a name for this emotion yet, I hope the japanese or the germans invent one. :)
I don't know why I'm surprised at the amount of footage and the quality, but I am. This is really setting a new bar for missions like this, similar to what SpaceX has done in recent years. Stuff like this has got to be huge for getting interest and excitement from the general public and especially kids.
In case the other thread doesn't make the front page, they also added a microphone to this lander and managed to capture the sound of Mar's wind, which to me is almost more amazing:
So glad they've realized the value in allowing everyone to experience how hard these things are. So impressive, I can't wait to watch this video over and over.
The inflation of the parachute is spectacular, and knowing how hard it is, and how hard it is to test on earth - its just incredible.
And the skycrane was flawless - just so impressive how well it works. Too bad it flies off to crash and can't land gently somewhere to maybe be able to use it for its own purpose.
If there was mass available to add something to the sky crane, you'd be better off putting that thing on the rover, since the rover has the plutonium power pack.
I do feel a bit sorry for the crane as well though :)
SpaceX broadcasts really raised the bar on what the public expect from space, and with it brought a lot of excitement. Great that scientific program is following in those footsteps.
There have been made tremendous steps in simulation software. The fact that the crane mechanism has never been tested on earth besides simulations is incredible. Always wondered what software they use. Do they have a generic platform to run simulations on? Or is every mission written from scratch?
It got sent back via orbiters ranging from the ESA's Trace Gas orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or Mars Odyssey. Through those they can get up to 2 megabits per second [0] back to earth but that depends a lot on the orbiter it's talking to at a given time. The TGO is doing a lot and is one of the early high speed relays for the data from Perseverance. [1] There's also direct links to and from Earth but they're significantly slower.
HiRise captured the whole shebang: An image with the lander, heat shield, descent stage, and parachute. The descender is always a big black smear after these things, which is quite sad.
I'm looking for the link, but the NASA TV feed had it.
I was hoping for the same, but at 9.5km away, and with a decelerating speed of 150m/s we wouldn't see but only a pixel.
I wonder if they have the time/it's in their plan to send the bot over to record where it landed, the state that it's in, etc. If they want to simulate assess the damage, it would be cheaper to make heat shield 50 of them on Earth and drop them from 10-15km. I assume that every minute is gold and they already got a X-days meter-by-meter plan on what to do with little room for free exploration.
Not an expert, but my sense is that it's at least in part due to widespread cheap/commodity consumer cameras becoming a thing between the planning of Curiosity and the planning of Perseverance. In earlier missions, cameras were usually big and bulky and designed specifically for their respective research functions, and if you're designing something from scratch, you design it to maximize research utility first, and sending home cool videos is probably a secondary consideration. So I'm not sure many of these could do video (because it's probably not that useful for studying rocks that don't move), and a lot of them didn't even capture a spectrum range exactly matching the visible range (I think some of them included parts of the near-IR range, etc.), so a lot of the images from earlier missions that were released to the public had color that was faked/recreated in post-processing.
I think the new rovers still have these specialty cameras, but now that there are decently good mass-market cameras from the cellphone/consumer-electronics industry that cost $5 apiece and weigh a couple of grams, it seems like there's no reason not to throw a few of those onboard as well.
I would speculate, also, that video compression might be part of the story. Processors on these vehicles tend to be specialized radiation-hardened chips that are modified versions of several-generations-old general-purpose processors. I think Curiosity's was a rad-hardened 200MHz PowerPC chip, for example. I would bet that those chips just weren't up to the task of compressing high-quality video enough to make it practical to send, given the bandwidth constraints of transmitting from Mars to Earth.
It's not just cameras. What good is an 8K video taken on a rover but it can upload at 200 bits/sec?
The entire stack has improved. I suspect everything from radiation hardening, semiconductor manufacturing, CCD reliability and costs, image processors, colorometry, radio transmission, relay tech and orbiters, and not to mention the importance of great PR.
One thing to consider is that NASA missions are basically always using older technology, because by the time the mission gets approved, designed, and built consumer/business tech has already moved past. Space worthiness ads more 'age' to the technology as well.
The current scale of video availability is very recent. Dirt cheap tiny HD cameras and storage & fast reliable networking to match, are only a few years old. Put that in context of a complex system expected to work perfectly under extreme conditions millions of miles distant, with early designs starting years ago, and that’s why you’re only seeing such now.
The commercial cameras have gotten so good over the years so they could put cameras everywhere. They added some local storage to retain images for post processing. They post process the videos to a much smaller file before transmitting. So of-the-shelf technology keeps getting better.
It didn't have priority until now. Everything costs time and money and adds more complexity, more parts that can cause a failure. While videos are nice, they don't have such scientific value as another scientific instrument that could have been on board instead.
The most astounding (but logical) thing to me is that those guys are looking at that maneuver without being able to do anything to correct any error. Literally a recording from the past.
One of the engineers said that the parachute's patterns was both for visually determining the orientation (with computer vision), but also hinted there was some secret message in it. (at 19:34 in the livestream)
The rover wheels on Curiosity had gaps so that the tire tracks left a pattern in morse code that spelled out JPL, so maybe something similar? They eliminated that on Perseverance with the wheel redesign.
When the parachute deployed all of a sudden it felt like mars is not so alien anymore, there is wind pushing against the parachute you can see the curvature of mars, there is sun, dust and all... Love this video compared to images.
[+] [-] geocrasher|5 years ago|reply
Now, take three robots. One is wheeled, one flies by rotors, and another is rocket powered. Put them on a rocket, fly to another planet, and land them autonomously without wrecking anything. As a hobbyist I'd be beyond myself to just do ONE of those. On Earth. Let alone millions of miles away on a distant planet.
And to get video of it just days later, bounced across multiple orbiters? Mind blowing.
[+] [-] spookthesunset|5 years ago|reply
Either way, this is seriously the coolest video I think I've ever seen. I cannot wait for more.
[+] [-] joeyh|5 years ago|reply
"the first open source linux box running on the surface of Mars"
"thank you to the open source community for allowing us to use your amazing software"
Per their press conference today, in the Q&A section. https://youtu.be/gYQwuYZbA6o?t=4025
[+] [-] midasuni|5 years ago|reply
“ I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready”
I think it’s more than a hobby now...
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
What was the model? The recording was garbled, and all I could hear was "...we're using a commercial computer, an Intel ???? PC. It's running Linux...
[+] [-] sebastialonso|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] udev|5 years ago|reply
You can feel it in this video, e.g when you see the crane fly away after accomplishing the mission.
If we don't have a name for this emotion yet, I hope the japanese or the germans invent one. :)
[+] [-] XVII|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|5 years ago|reply
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time
[+] [-] yazaddaruvala|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhh__|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] easton_s|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ranguna|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] O5vYtytb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookthesunset|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aosaigh|5 years ago|reply
https://soundcloud.com/nasa/first-sounds-from-mars-filters-o...
[+] [-] netcraft|5 years ago|reply
The inflation of the parachute is spectacular, and knowing how hard it is, and how hard it is to test on earth - its just incredible.
And the skycrane was flawless - just so impressive how well it works. Too bad it flies off to crash and can't land gently somewhere to maybe be able to use it for its own purpose.
[+] [-] baggy_trough|5 years ago|reply
I do feel a bit sorry for the crane as well though :)
[+] [-] midasuni|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interestica|5 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/wE-aQO9XD1g
[+] [-] bryan0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] holoduke|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somedude895|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtkwe|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...
[1] https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-mars-2020-perseverance-rover-...
[+] [-] cguess|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meepmorp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|5 years ago|reply
I'm looking for the link, but the NASA TV feed had it.
[+] [-] HenryBemis|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if they have the time/it's in their plan to send the bot over to record where it landed, the state that it's in, etc. If they want to simulate assess the damage, it would be cheaper to make heat shield 50 of them on Earth and drop them from 10-15km. I assume that every minute is gold and they already got a X-days meter-by-meter plan on what to do with little room for free exploration.
[+] [-] tppiotrowski|5 years ago|reply
Did the memory write speeds increase, more sensitive CCD sensors, easier to send data back to Earth?
I'm sure there must be some technological reason this wasn't done before because it's simply stunning...
[+] [-] apendleton|5 years ago|reply
I think the new rovers still have these specialty cameras, but now that there are decently good mass-market cameras from the cellphone/consumer-electronics industry that cost $5 apiece and weigh a couple of grams, it seems like there's no reason not to throw a few of those onboard as well.
I would speculate, also, that video compression might be part of the story. Processors on these vehicles tend to be specialized radiation-hardened chips that are modified versions of several-generations-old general-purpose processors. I think Curiosity's was a rad-hardened 200MHz PowerPC chip, for example. I would bet that those chips just weren't up to the task of compressing high-quality video enough to make it practical to send, given the bandwidth constraints of transmitting from Mars to Earth.
[+] [-] systemvoltage|5 years ago|reply
The entire stack has improved. I suspect everything from radiation hardening, semiconductor manufacturing, CCD reliability and costs, image processors, colorometry, radio transmission, relay tech and orbiters, and not to mention the importance of great PR.
[+] [-] DataGata|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctdonath|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkaye|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Daniel_sk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 93po|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cambalache|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rx_tx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wingman4l7|5 years ago|reply
10-bit encoding via the three rings of colored panels; spells out "DARE MIGHTY THINGS".
[+] [-] nsriv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yread|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/steltzner/status/1364076615932645379
[+] [-] davidg109|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soheil|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] albertzeyer|5 years ago|reply
> To date, no proof has been found of past or present life on Mars.
I wonder how long it takes until we get the first confirmation of some sort of life on Mars (e.g. something like bacteria or so).
Is this realistic already in the coming days?