EEVblog #328 - Curiosity Mars Rover Landing

[analogueground]

I'm in the UK and I set my alarm early and watched the whole thing using the NASA TV app without a glitch, which was a surprise as I expected the bandwidth to be hammered.

What an unbelievable achievement! The whole project was inspirational from a technical point of view and shows that you only push the boundaries when you take risks.  From his comments, I felt Dave wanted this to fail so he could say 'I told you so' That's the attitude you get from being immersed in too much systems engineering without looking out of the window.

NASA JPL employ the daring, the visionaries and the engineers - you need them all to do what they have just achieved. Incredible stuff.

Steve

[KedasProbe]

I did turn on the internet live feed but I checked CNN an they were also broadcasting it. I missed the beginning though I started seeing it at about mach 3.
They should have kept this real time sensor data on the screen though for the viewers, looked nice. Sensor screen example: https://www.youtube.com/NASATelevision
Edit (incl. funny transcript!)
They had quite a safety margin on the fuel, 35% of fuel left.

Dave, maybe it helps thinking that even the best seat to witness it had a 14min delay

[EEVblog]

From his comments, I felt Dave wanted this to fail so he could say 'I told you so' That's the attitude you get from being immersed in too much systems engineering without looking out of the window.

I predicted it would work! 

Dave.

[IanJ]

I'm in the UK and I set my alarm early and watched the whole thing using the NASA TV app without a glitch, which was a surprise as I expected the bandwidth to be hammered.

Am a bit surprised some folks in UK couldn't get the feed.........I got up early and straight to NASA TV website.......very clean, un-interrupted live feed......perfect!

It all happened so fast.....and how the guy who announced touchdown managed it without screaming I'll never know.

Would love to be involved in a project like Curiosity.............!

Ian.

[EEVblog]

Have been thinking about trying to get one of the systems designers on the AmpHour show.
Would be good to get an electronics perspective of such a project. I need a name though so I can harass them 

Dave.

[Things]

Have been thinking about trying to get one of the systems designers on the AmpHour show.
Would be good to get an electronics perspective of such a project. I need a name though so I can harass them 

Dave.

They were all probably waiting to see if it worked or not before putting their names out in public. Would hate to be the guy that screwed up and created a $2.4bil crater on Mars

[EEVblog]

Would hate to be the guy that screwed up and created a $2.4bil crater on Mars

The Big Bang Theory - Plan AAA

Dave.

[firewalker]

Freak'n awesome!

But I'm pissed!
I was one of few people who didn't see it "live", and actually got a spoiler that it had landed, ruining the entire thing.
I went to the Sydney Observatory to see it as they advertised a live feed and figured it would be cool to hand out with the pro crowd watching this.
But it was a debacle.
Was supposed to happen at 3:30pm Syd time of course, and they announced they would start the live feed at 3pm. Ok, fair enough. Then we just watched videos until about 3:25pm when they decided to turn the live feed on. Great, at least I'll get to watch it...
No Wifi, so I wasn't able to see anything much on my phone apart from Twitter.
Then things just seemed a bit strange, I heard one announcer on the feed say 22min until entry and figured the timeline got screwed by some issue or something.
Then decided to check twitter to see what's happening and I see the NASA tweet that it had landed! and twitter melted down.
So I and a guy next to me who was doing the same thing looked at each other whispering WTF just happened?
And then we realised the "live" feed we were watching was massively delayed, by at least 20min it turns out, so we had to sit there deflated and watch he "live" feed knowing the ending. I have no idea how it was delayed or where they were getting their feed from.
Experience totally ruined.
Then we got a tap on the shoulder to keep our mouth shut, and they admitted they knew it was already down.

I should have stay home.
Thumbs down to the Sydney Observatory, what a bunch of dickheads.

Dave.

It seems that someone made a click on the time line of Nasa's feed. It would automatically drop the live feed and start playing back from the point of the click (~130 hours of video).

Alexander.

[EEVblog]

It seems that someone made a click on the time line of Nasa's feed. It would automatically drop the live feed and start playing back from the point of the click (~130 hours of video).

Ah, that would explain it!

Dave.

[Mechatrommer]

...It would automatically drop the live feed and ....

live feed is "practically impractical" what if its discovered an "uncivilized alien tribe" there? i'm talking about male and female.

[KedasProbe]

live feed is "practically impractical" what if its discovered an "uncivilized alien tribe" there? i'm talking about male and female.

How hard can it be to translate "Do not tough high voltage parts!" or "Sorry, is this your rock?"

[KedasProbe]

They have a nice picture of the parachute (taken from 340km), very nice in case something went wrong.

[MikeK]

That's awesome.  I hope they were able to video the full EDL.