Curiosity's First Anniversary
August 6, 2013 4:00 PM   Subscribe

 


*sniffle* They grow up so fast...
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:07 PM on August 6, 2013


Highlights Of The Curiosity Rover’s First Year On Mars (Obligatory Onion Infographic)
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:11 PM on August 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


"November 12, 2012: Finds big empty plain and just does donuts for four hours straight"

It could have been worse.
posted by homunculus at 4:24 PM on August 6, 2013


Hold your damn cell phone sideways, Curiosity!
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:39 PM on August 6, 2013 [4 favorites]


/pours one out for Beagle.
posted by Artw at 4:49 PM on August 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hold your damn cell phone sideways, Curiosity!

The first thing Curiosity did when she got to Mars was take a selfie and tweet "I AM IN YOU" in all caps. Just sayin'.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:53 PM on August 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm going to take this opportunity to thank Metafilter for all of the great posts you all have done about Curiosity. I'm totally uninterested in space stuff and would never find it on my own, but my kid is obsessed. Every time a post like this goes up and I find all the new videos/photos to show him it's the highlight of his month. So thanks very much.
posted by gerstle at 5:16 PM on August 6, 2013


Wait, the sun never goes down? YOU GUYS THIS WHOLE THING IS FAKE
posted by not_the_water at 5:27 PM on August 6, 2013


Here's the NYT's Curiosity Rover Tracker, "[a]n interactive feature offer[ing] a chronology of where Curiosity has been and what it has done so far; new images and information will be added as the rover progresses." It's in a timeline format, laid out Sol by Sol, and you can navigate forward and backward through the photos with your left and right arrow keys. MARS!
posted by divined by radio at 6:39 PM on August 6, 2013 [2 favorites]




Come back soon!
posted by mazola at 8:47 PM on August 6, 2013


all I want to see is some seashells.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 8:54 PM on August 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Has it killed the cat yet?
posted by Sys Rq at 9:14 PM on August 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


1.23 kilometers per year, in 70,000 mostly overlapped and redundant images. Kudzu grows faster than that, maybe even on Mars, and is about as interesting. Naming the damn thing Curiosity just seems like cruel baiting of the U.S. taxpayers. I can't believe we're continuing to pay people to supposedly robo-drive that turkey. 1.23 kilometers in a year. Sheesh.

But perhaps I expect too much. After all, it did spend a couple weeks updating its software after landing (because its minimal computers couldn't hold the code base needed for the transit flight and landing, and the surface operation programs, together), and after that, it did drill a hole, and analyze some dust from that, and zap 5,000 or so nearby rocks with its laser.

Oh hell, put it all together, and it's still a black hole of tax dollars, mostly sitting around aimlessly on a dusty, dead red planet. And every once in a while, it wakes up, and jets as much as 100 yards in a day, now that its long distance travel mode is in full swing.
posted by paulsc at 2:03 AM on August 7, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I don't know if that comment's serious or sarcastic or what, but as a physicist let me try to explain why curiosity is important:

THERE IS A ROBOT GO-KART DRIVING AROUND MARS SHOOTING LASERS AT THINGS. AND SOMETIMES IT SENDS US A POSTCARD OF WHAT IT'S BEEN DOING. AND THIS IS FOR SCIENCE!
posted by Ned G at 4:30 AM on August 7, 2013 [4 favorites]




Did the lab techs compensate for the difference in atmospheric density so that the song will come out in tune?
posted by plinth at 8:24 AM on August 7, 2013




Needs birthday party. Halfway to Mars, in space! ...shuttle.
posted by aroweofshale at 3:10 AM on August 10, 2013








Panspermia season again, put up your umbrellas.
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM on September 1, 2013


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