mars

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

On this day in 1992, "Jeremy" premiered on MTV.

Great collection of what Olympic divers look like mid-jump.

NASA to air Mars landing in Times Square.

Digg unveils revamped home page.

FCC to Verizon: You don't have a right to block tethering apps.

Direction of Justin Bieber documentary to reboot He-Man movie.… Read more

No spam in Tuesday's top tech stories:

It's not often we get a shakeup in the email world, but say hello to Microsoft's new free email account, Outlook.com. It'll eventually be replacing Hotmail, but you might want to grab your name now. There's a new, clean look and it ties in your social media contacts. It's not too far off from what you may be used to already in Gmail, as you'll be able to tell from CNET's full overview of the features.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover, called Curiosity, will … Read more

To help scientists and engineers follow the action 154 million miles away, the trajectory of the Mars Science Laboratory was set up to make sure the rover's descent to the surface of the red planet occurs within view of three orbiting satellites.

NASA's Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite, will capture telemetry from the Mars Science Laboratory as the spacecraft makes its nail-biting seven-minute plunge to the floor of Gale Crater overnight Sunday.

But Odyssey is the only one of the three capable of "bent pipe&… Read more

The question is straightforward: how to get a car-size rover safely to the surface of Mars? And not just anywhere, but to a very precisely defined bull-s-eye on the floor of a broad crater, within roving distance of a 3-mile-high mountain.

In earlier ventures to Mars, spacecraft have either bounced to the surface cocooned in giant airbags or made the trip atop a rocket-powered descent stage. But neither approach was an option for NASA's Curiosity rover, the centerpiece of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Tipping the scales at one ton, the nuclear-powered Curiosity, a rolling laboratory … Read more

In a $2.5 billion gamble, a nuclear-powered Mars rover the size of a small car will attempt a pinpoint landing near the base of a 3-mile-high mountain overnight Sunday to search for the building blocks of life in the frozen history of the red planet and evidence of past or present habitability.

In so doing, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, dubbed "Curiosity" in a student naming contest, will climb layer by layer through vast eras of the planet's enigmatic history, possibly shedding light on the transition from a warmer, wetter past to the arid, frigid world … Read more

A six-second rocket firing Tuesday nudged NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter into position to relay telemetry from the Mars Science Laboratory back to Earth in near real time during the $2.5 billion rover's rocket-powered descent to the red planet's surface on August 6, officials said.

Odyssey entered "safe mode" July 11 after problems with the craft's attitude control system, raising the possibility that the orbiter might not be properly positioned to relay entry, descent and landing data from the rover back to Earth.

While the Curiosity rover will be sending X-band signal tones directly … Read more

Unexpected problems with a NASA science satellite in orbit around Mars could briefly delay receipt of telemetry from the agency's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover during the spacecraft's dramatic 7-minute descent to the surface August 6, officials said Monday.

While the issue with the orbiting Odyssey satellite will have no effect on the rover's ability to successfully execute its autonomous entry, descent, and landing sequence -- half jokingly dubbed "Seven Minutes of Terror" by project engineers -- it could mean an additional period of nail-biting before confirmation that the so-called "sky crane&… Read more

In just 41 days, on August 5, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover will touch down on the Red Planet, and this will be no ordinary landing. In fact, NASA has dubbed the descent "Seven Minutes of Terror."

"When people look at it, it looks crazy," senior EDL engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Adam Steltzner said in a new video by NASA on the rover landing. "It is the result of reasoned engineering thought, but it still looks crazy."

The recently released video (see below) outlines exactly how crazy the feat of landing … Read more

NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory rover is in good shape and on target for a nail-biting seven-minute plunge to a bull's-eye landing on the red planet in early August, thanks to upgraded software and post-launch improvements that will enable the craft to make a more precise descent to the floor of Gale Crater, mission managers said Monday.

While engineers are continuing to troubleshoot a contamination issue with Teflon seals inside a high-tech rock drill on the rover's robot arm, the project scientist said he is confident workarounds will be in place by the time the … Read more