{"id":2066,"date":"2012-08-06T15:10:04","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T06:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-08-06\/2066"},"modified":"2012-08-06T15:10:04","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T06:10:04","slug":"norman-rockwell-esque-scene-in-kyoto-watching-curiosity-land-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-08-06\/2066","title":{"rendered":"Norman Rockwell-esque Scene in Kyoto: Watching Curiosity Land on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So the Curiosity\nRover<\/a> just landed successfully\non Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

In the type of scene that Norman Rockwell would have painted, Anthony\nand I watched<\/span> live.... “live”, except that it took 14 minutes for data to\ntravel across space at the speed of light from Mars to the United States,\nthen another second or so to make the trip halfway around the Earth to our\nhouse in Kyoto.<\/p>\n\n

My laptop with the live video stream was on the dining-room table while\nAnthony huddled nearby and I watched<\/span> from across the sink as I stood<\/span> in my\nunderwear doing the dishes in the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n

We had watched NASA's “Seven Minutes\nof Terror<\/a>” animation that described the incredibly complex method used\nto land the large car-sized rover safely and without raising a huge<\/span>\ndustball, so we knew the basic milestones, and could cheer with Mission\nCommand each time a milestone<\/span> success was announced. “We are under\npowered flight<\/i>” got me choked up a bit,<\/span> as the probability that it\nwould work even if it got that far seemed pretty small. The whole<\/span> contraption was under powered flight for only a short<\/span> time as it got to\nwithin a five<\/span>-story building's height above the surface, then in a\n“skycrane” maneuver, the powered craft lowered the car-like rover gently to\nthe surface before the rover cut loose and the powered craft blasted itself\nclear.<\/p>\n\n

When I first heard about this planed landing method, I mentioned<\/span> it to\nsomeone who replied “That has too many moving parts to ever work<\/i>”.\nThat's was a reasonable<\/span> observation, I thought,<\/span> until I happened<\/span> to have\nwatched the 1998 HBO miniseries “From\nthe Earth to the Moon<\/a>” with Anthony while he was in the hospital last\nmonth, and realized the amazing complexity of the “lunar-orbit rendezvous”\nmethod used by the Apollo missions 30+ years ago, which actually did work.<\/p>\n\n

It's all rocket science to me... but Author Clark's third law certainly holds true: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n

Minutes after landing, the rover sent back a tiny<\/span> thumbnail image:<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>\n\n

It's not\nmuch — one can apparently see the edge of a wheel,<\/span> showing that the rover is right-side-up — but a million<\/span> things had to\nwork perfectly over the last eight months for it to have been sent and\nreceived successfully, so in that sense it's truly amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n

(Forty minutes later, Anthony has already made his first LEGO mimic of the lander.)<\/p>\n\n

Here's a larger version of that first image that came in later:<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>\n\n
<\/a>\ntoday's xkdc comic\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the Curiosity Rover just landed successfully on Mars.<\/p>

In the type of scene that Norman Rockwell would have painted, Anthony and I watched live.... \"live\", except that it took 14 minutes for data to travel across space at the speed of light from Mars to the United States, then another second or so to make the trip halfway around the Earth to our house in Kyoto.<\/p>

My laptop with the live video stream was on the dining-room table while Anthony huddled nearby and I watched from across the sink as I stood in my underwear doing the dishes in [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}