Yes right now we are 3 times or more than the minimum. The transfer looked like a single transfer curve from Earth to Mars that rotated about 180 deg i think (Hohman transfer) but by that time of arrival earth had rotated around going away from mars even more again as it travels faster ( a bit less than 2 times faster in angular terms). Basically an 8+ month trip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer

also distance update

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i...+august+5+2012


http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Smars1.htm

No, 154 million miles is now. Obviously the distance varies enormously depending on where the earth and mars are in their orbits. They can be on the same side of the sun and as close as 35 million miles, or on opposite sides up to around 250 million miles apart. The average is about 140 million miles, so we are a bit farther than average.

They should get the people that faked the moon landing.

Seriously though, the NASA PR people definitely deserve a big kick in the ass. Hours of video of a bunch of nerds staring at their computer screens climaxing in a single picture of a shadow ain't the way to build interest.

Absolutely pi$$ed off that in this day and age they do not have the equipment and speed transfer rate to send a full HD quality video back to earth of the landing itself as recorded by the sensor cameras as it comes down and then the first 20 min around itself. I understand scientific priorities are far different but what on earth man, this is something even Feynman or Einstein would be angry about, it connects them with all of humanity so much better.

What on earth , i have no idea what the bandwidth they have is and i may have to search to find out but lazy, but i surely expected by now after so many hours having some video of just 1 min even is easy to send back to orbiter and then to earth.

What on earth such equipment can cost 5-10-20 mil $ at worse and will buy them a ton of interest in the public and movie rights even lol.

This is why i said its ridiculous that they do not finance a permanent rover camera feed from the moon which is probably much stronger bandwidth. Its so technically doable and would mean the world for so many people to tune in on the moon live as it moves around craters and hills. Talk about survivor and other bs reality crap instead. Who gives a @#$#@ for this bs garbage TV trends of a decade now when the ultimate reality is another world as if you are there in HD. Bloody hell its 2012 already!!!

Does anyone have any idea what the bandwidth they communicate is like?

Basically i can guess a limit because they had a picture of say 1 MB data or more sent within minutes of landing so a movie of 100 MB (a couple minutes in 720 forget 1080 HD) is easily 1-2 hours job to send back. It can be done within the first day easily if they spread the job but i bet their bandwidth is far stronger than 1 MB/min by possibly orders of magnitude. So its really something totally trivial that shows they are idiots. It makes me want to go and search how they communicate in full detail to see if i miss a problem because i cannot believe this is not technically trivial.

http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSumma...SL_Telecom.pdf

I see you updated more info and it looks like this i got here; (should be better than the previous rovers as the orbiter is actually cool speed)


This link here on the orbiter they use to send the data anyway says;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Re...ssance_Orbiter

"Telecommunications system
MRO High Gain Antenna installation

The Telecom Subsystem on MRO is the best digital communication system sent into deep space so far and for the first time using capacity approaching turbo-codes. It consists of a very large (3 meter) antenna, which is used to transmit data through the Deep Space Network via X-band frequencies at 8 GHz, and it demonstrates the use of the Ka band at 32 GHz for higher data rates. Maximum transmission speed from Mars is projected to be as high as 6Mbit/s, a rate ten times higher than previous Mars orbiters. The spacecraft carries two 100-watt X-band amplifiers (one of which is a backup), one 35-watt Ka-band amplifier, and two Small Deep Space Transponders (SDSTs).[4]

Two smaller low-gain antennas are also present for lower-rate communication during emergencies and special events, such as launch and Mars Orbit Insertion. These antennas do not have focusing dishes and can transmit and receive from any direction. They are an important backup system to ensure that MRO can always be reached, even if its main antenna is pointed away from the Earth.[4]

The Ka-band subsystem is used for demonstration purposes. Due to lack of spectrum at 8.41 GHz X-band, future high-rate deep space missions will use 32 GHz Ka-band. NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) has implemented Ka-band receiving capabilities at all three of its complexes (Goldstone, Canberra and Madrid) over its 34-m beam-waveguide (BWG) antenna subnet. MRO Ka-band demonstration will demonstrate viability of Ka-band for deep space operations. During the cruise phase, spacecraft Ka-band telemetry was tracked 36 times by these antennas proving DSN Ka-band reception functionality at all the antennas. During the primary science phase, Ka-band demonstration is assigned two passes a week for Ka-band demonstration purposes. The success of Ka-band during cruise also makes it a viable backup for the X-band subsystem on MRO."

Now if i trust this literally 6 Mbits per second even 1 MBit/sec say for our purposes its about 125kbytes/sec or 7.5 MB/min (hence the order of magnitude claim if you trust their 6 already ie x42 from 1MBy/min at max- but i stick with 1/6th that for room for error and comfort ie not being the data priority i mean). So basically yes in 20 min at only 15-20% of total bandwidth they can have even a 2 min 1080 HD quality movie (but even divx5-6 times smaller would do) of what it looks around it or on the way down which at small speeds would have been easy to record assuming their electronics can function at the temperatures in question as it is landing, maybe it takes more time to warm it up properly locally, not sure how they operate them at these temperatures). Basically no excuse really they can easily send the first day a crystal clear super cool video of 2-3 min of what Mars looks as if you were there "live". I have no idea why this is not even a small priority for which they could create some Imax movie or whatever and pick up many millions in theaters but basically that is for later, at start it would be a free 2-3 min from Mars why not.

I will look further into it out of curiosity how they communicate anyway but seems the above number is not prohibitive of some decent video or super cool images within the first hour even if they wanted. The prestige would be magnificent.

I still remember as a kid looking in the encyclopedia the pictures from Viking the first time i saw them many years after taken since it was before my time when it happened live, with complete amazement of what another world looked like (so familiar in many ways and yet so distant) . I dont care if you are artist, scientist or a potatoes farmer, a video and good pics is the first thing you want to get to connect emotionally at the highest level with the experience. Why is it so stupidly hard for them to get this elementary fact about humans that connects them all together regardless of their fields of experience.

What on earth, our generations have missed the moon landing live and Mars too and so many more first things and what do we get today? lol We get books from amazon about Mars landascape to give as gifts to friends and family years after they have landed. LOL. Their pace is amazing.

Lets hope they have a surprise for us this time in a few days???

I think they had enough to worry about the landing, because they did it for the first time,filming of the landing would just complicate things.
Curiosity has many cameras that are capable of HD filming (at least 720p i think), so i'm quite sure there will be dozen of videos and pictures in the future.

It's not 1080p@60 or anything like that, but they do have footage of the descent: MARDI. So we'll get about two minutes of the descent at 5 fps. It won't be a priority for sending right now, as the footage is already stored in MARDI's own flash memory. Although it would be nice to see it straight away, they'll have a huge amount of diagnostics to go through before they actually send it, or anything else substantial, back to Earth. We'll definitely see something.

On a gaming tangent, I believe this is the first time in mainstream gambling history that a major bookmaker has offered both sides of the 'are there aliens?' bet. Ladbrokes offering 100/1 Curiosity discovers evidence of life on Mars, 1/500 they don't: http://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/sp...als-e216248173

You've mentioned this a couple times now, but the reality is very few people actually want to watch a moon rover wander around for hours. For most people the novelty would wear off in 15 minutes and they'd never watch it again.

People don't watch Reality TV because it's reality. They watch it because of the drama. Other than the landing and the potential it'll screw up, a moon rover has none.

Also, reality TV isn't produced because it's good, it's produced because it's cheap. When you don't have to pay actors, script writers, etc. you end up needing a lot fewer viewers to turn a profit. When we can put a rover on the moon for eighty bucks, I'm sure a broadcasting company will get right on your request.

While pretty much everything you claim here is true and for most people the novelty would wear off in 15 minutes, that doesn't make what Masque is saying any less important. Perhaps most people aren't really that into science, but many people are curious at a young age. Having video from another planet would certainly help foster this curiosity. Also, many people who won't ever get into science are fascinated by recent discoveries of the Hubble telescope and many other space missions. Just look at the success of the discovery channel and the content shown there. This interest can only help future funding into space research and technology. Fortunately, it appears we will have this video after all, so yay!

This is a grand achievement by NASA and congratulations to the whole science and engineering team and to all the technical staff that make this type of feat possible.

Some posts were deleted from this thread. Just to make everything clear, the SMP Forum is NOT a place for the airing of personal grievances, grudges or personal attacks. Infractions and/or banning will result if this activity continues.

Please settle your personal differences on your own time and at some neutral location. Not here. Thank you.

I'd take the "yes" but it's not clear if they mean that life EVER existed there, obv there's no life there now (not on the surface anyway), but I think they will discover evidence of past microbial life at least. I really hope they do bc then Europa should def be bumped up the priority list. F it, it's worth a cheeky fiver lol