Intelligent life on Mars.

[CJay]

It's to be hoped there isn't any if we carry on impactig their planet with our attempts to land.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/21/esa_finds_where_schiaparelli_probe_hit_mars/

[Refrigerator]

Is that the same device that crashed because one of the engineers used imperial instead of metric ?

[ProBang2]

Is that the same device that crashed because one of the engineers used imperial instead of metric ?

No, the ESA managed this complete in metric...

[SeanB]

the parachute worked, but the rocket did not fire for some reason, and it basically did a unscheduled disassembly after falling around 4km with the software waiting for the contact with the ground. Think it exceeded the design stress then for that switch.

[tom66]

Apparently even if the control computer had survived the heavy impact with the ground it wouldn't matter because the fully fueled rocket tanks will have exploded upon significant force...so...

[John Heath]

If the fuel tanks were still intact it could have been an abrupt unscheduled disassembly.

[Ampera]

I don't see why we haven't tried this before.

If we can't land on mars, we should keep sending explosive payloads to it until it breaks off into pieces, we can strap a couple SRBs to it, and then push mars over to us!

GENIOUS 

[EEVblog]

The parachute engineers just passed the ball onto the descent rocket engineers with a 

[Brumby]

I can just imagine it.....

What if somebody didn't remove the safety interlock that prevented the rockets from firing during transport and assembly at the launch site?

[Jeroen3]

Is that the same device that crashed because one of the engineers used imperial instead of metric ?

It's an ESA project. But I still think this is the cause.

[stj]

you assume it crashed.
let me give you a history lesson.


the u.s. mapped the moon - and never shared the result.
the europeans got pissed off and mapped it themselves - and never made the results public.
the chinese are now talking about mapping it.

the u.s. and russia have been to mars - and shared very little.
now the europeans have got there, and just in time - have nothing to share with the public.

see the pattern!
these are the same people that want to know and archive everything we do or say, but want to keep all government stuff secret.
so you should not expect them to ever reveal anything - even if it was only to say their was nothing there.

[hans]

Space programs has been (and still is I suppose) a competition between nations to show their technology advancements, and although science is fascinated by it there is also a large prestige factor in it. No wonder they aren't going to help the other parties.
Which I think is kinda stupid to be honest. For now we're just studying the solar systems and planets that might be able to support life, but if the long term goal of space programs is to colonize other planets we better stand united on this.

Unfortunately you see similar things happen with GNSS. GPS is owned by America, and they can switch off civilian access at anytime. If that happens millions of navigation devices, parcel trackers, theft trackers, etc. will malfunction.
Russia obviously doesn't want to depend on GPS and so have their GLONASS project. Many receivers can receive both signals and use both constellations for more accurate positioning. However, most GNSS receivers I've come across often require you to have a valid GPS lock (first) and then will search for GLONASS. So this makes those receivers still garbage if America turns the switch.
And Europe will join this battle with GALILEO as well.
China has their own system "Beidou" which is exclusive to China, because the satellites don't orbit the complete earth (afaik).

There is a large military factor for these programs I suspect, which is unfortunate with aforementioned ethics in mind.

[TheNewLab]

Ouch. Hans, I had no idea there was so much redundancy because of nations keeping this stuff to themselves. I am not surprised, i was just not aware of the extent of nations doing this.  I feel, the only way we can get beyond this planet is through co-operation among nations, both governments and their people. it appears the problem keeps returning to the former.

Ultimately, we must get out into our solar system. (I am told this will make us "type 1 species" and right now, we are 0 (zero) we don't exist at the planetary level yet. We are fairly certain there is life on mars, water. intelligent? question is has our own species yet earned the title of "intelligent"? Anyone the American Presidential election  for 2016? That's what I mean.


(Please, no one attempt to bring any political race, candidate details into this forum...)

[TheNewLab]

On the upside, if we pull ourselves together and grow up, We may see Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy happen in our lifetime!! Just imagine playing around with electronics on a Mars colony?!!
A Hobb-Mars-eeny??

[AntiProtonBoy]

the u.s. mapped the moon - and never shared the result.
the europeans got pissed off and mapped it themselves - and never made the results public.
the chinese are now talking about mapping it.

the u.s. and russia have been to mars - and shared very little.
now the europeans have got there, and just in time - have nothing to share with the public.

I don't know what exactly you mean by that, but I could access 128px/degree resolution PDS elevation data from Mars Orbiter 16 years ago. I even remember emailing NASA to provide some of that data in gzipped form, because the files were too big to download. Someone at NASA actually went out of the way, archived gigabytes worth of files and made an FTP link available for me personally. I was blown away.

Here is an example, someone using the same data to render synthetic images of Mars:
http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/mars/

You can still access them here:
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/tools/map

For Moon:
http://geo.pds.nasa.gov/missions/lro/lola.htm

[stj]

yes, but NASA decided where to take that rover - and a lot of experts arent happy with the fact they seem to be intentionally avoiding the "interesting" places.

also, they need to drop the "red planet" crap,
mars is gray - the red is spectral shift effecting telescopes.
they keep messing with the image-tint, but you can tell because the rover has a calibration "colour-wheel" on it that is visible in some foto's

[AntiProtonBoy]

intentionally avoiding the "interesting" places.

Elaborate. Particularly on what you mean by "interesting".

also, they need to drop the "red planet" crap,

Er, have you seen the feeds from Curiosity?
http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/

It has visible spectrum cameras. The landscape is clearly has red hues, much like some of the iron rich sand deserts you'd find in Australia.

[CJay]

you assume it crashed.
let me give you a history lesson.


the u.s. mapped the moon - and never shared the result.
the europeans got pissed off and mapped it themselves - and never made the results public.
the chinese are now talking about mapping it.

the u.s. and russia have been to mars - and shared very little.
now the europeans have got there, and just in time - have nothing to share with the public.

see the pattern!
these are the same people that want to know and archive everything we do or say, but want to keep all government stuff secret.
so you should not expect them to ever reveal anything - even if it was only to say their was nothing there.

Well we know why they didn't share the moon data because of this undercover documentary that was forced to masquerade as a popular entertainment film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_foil_hat

[AntiProtonBoy]

Here is some technical specs of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) used to take some of the colour photographs:
http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/Mastcam/

Clearly, it is capable of taking images in the visible spectrum, which closely approximates what humans would see, when they engage the right colour filters (Bayer).

Looks pretty red to me mate:

[EEVblog]

We are fairly certain there is life on mars

Err, no we aren't.
It's hopeful there was life in Mars on at one point, but no evidence for it yet. Let alone life still there now.

[EEVblog]

you assume it crashed.
let me give you a history lesson.

the u.s. mapped the moon - and never shared the result.
the europeans got pissed off and mapped it themselves - and never made the results public.
the chinese are now talking about mapping it.

the u.s. and russia have been to mars - and shared very little.
now the europeans have got there, and just in time - have nothing to share with the public.

see the pattern!

Yes, I see the pattern, you are wrong on every single point. Amazing.

[stj]

how am i wrong?

[EEVblog]

yes, but NASA decided where to take that rover - and a lot of experts arent happy with the fact they seem to be intentionally avoiding the "interesting" places.

Who else would direct the rover? Do you want an internet poll to decide? It'd be inspecting the Boaty McBoatface rock 
The project science team direct were the rover goes:
http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/scienceoperations/
And I'm sure a lot of the people on that aren't happy with the group decision ultimately made too, they would have their own pet choices of what to inspect.

Do you have a point at all?

[EEVblog]

how am i wrong?

It's trivial to find the data released on these missions, I'd suggest you actually go and look.

[EEVblog]

Well we know why they didn't share the moon data because of this undercover documentary that was forced to masquerade as a popular entertainment film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Sky

For those who haven't seen that, do yourself a favor, it's hilarious!