
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover Arrives at Martian Mountain - happyscrappy
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-s-mars-curiosity-rover-arrives-at-martian-mountain/
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karpathy
Is there any parallel set of videos where they actually convey more than 10
bits of information? I'm not interested in listening to a fun synopsis of next
chapter of "The story of Curiosity and the mountain". Is anyone? "We found an
important boundary, and the rover is now next to the important boundary."
That's wonderful. I was expecting to hear at least 2 words on why it was
important but it never came.

These update videos are a chance to also get technical, drill into details and
explain the Curiosity mission piece by piece over a long period of time,
perhaps in style of minutephysics. Seems to me as a bit of a missed
opportunity.

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markbnine
All science news releases go through JPL:
[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/)

But a science planning blog gets posted here:
[http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/](http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/)

Also nytimes has a nice tracker. No science, but select raw images:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/space/mars-
curios...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/space/mars-curiosity-
rover-tracker.html?_r=0)

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yanma
Sweet! Just wondering if there is any references to how the A.I onboard works?
I have heard that the platform is semi-autonomous, with visual odometry for
motion estimation, but could not find anything that describes the techniques
in detail.

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dredmorbius
I've been following the wheel-wear issue with some interest. Curious what
alternate wheel designs might prove more resilient under the off-road
conditions found on Mars.

I'm supposing that any sort of rubber or similar material would prove
prohibitively expensive in terms of mass?

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markbnine
Also Emily Lakdawalla wrote up a nice article on the wheels for the Planetary
Society:

[http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2014/0819063...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2014/08190630-curiosity-wheel-damage.html)

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lsllc
0.75mm wheel skin thickness? check. Machined out of aluminum? check. Punctures
and tears in the wheel? check.

Surprised it lasted this long. I understand weight was a concern, but surely
for $2B, there's some exotic, more resilient alloy that could've been used? Or
maybe just make those middle wheels 1mm thicker and eat the extra 3 1/3Kg.

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peter303
About time. The nominal mission was one Martian Year which ended in June. The
NASA Inspector General recently criticized the Curiosity team for not meeting
their main science goals which were based on climbing on Mt. Sharp. There were
some interesting diversions like the alluvial fan. And sand dunes blocked a
more direct traverse to Mt. Sharp. This not the first time Curiosity has been
in the doghouse. They missed their initial launch data, with a 26-month delay,
from falling behind on engineering of a new landing method and new power
source. That put Curiosity nearly $2B over budget and almost ended the US Mars
program.

Most of the instruments and the power source are expected to last ten years.
The deteriorating wheels are a concern.

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metaobject
Have the rovers ever had access to the kinds of strata shown on the side of
the hill/mountain in the video? If not, hopefully there will be some very
interesting finds in there.

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ch
What type of mountain is this? When I think of mountains out here in the North
Eastern US, most are not something a wheeled vehicle might easily summit.

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disputin
I'd like a rover sent to snap Olympus Mons.

