Mars Curiosity Landing on Mars Today!!

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It's great watching the reactions of the people at JPL. Kinda neat that it's only about 10 miles away from where I am now.

The decent looked flawless.

We're used to high-res pictures here but damn if those pixely photos don't make me giggle!!

Success!

Viking I. The results, actually, were two "probably not" and one "maybe", which was still astonishing (as was the fact that the soil sample that was scooped up turned out to be more like clay than sand). That's where a manned mission would have been useful; a scientist on the scene could have run additional tests, whereas the simple robot sent could only run those three tests, and even then only once each.

That's also one reason the Curiosity rover was landed in Gale Crater - there's a rather tall mountain in the middle, and orbital scans indicate that there may be chemicals at the base that, if they are there, would tend to indicate probably microbial life back when that area was under water - about a billion years ago.

Tubes?

On Mars?

They are lying right next to the Face on the Sedona plain.

ruveyn

I don't know how many people have been reading the objectives of this mission in discernable detail, but the curiosity rover isnt over there to find life. NASA has all but given up hope that there is any life on Mars (at the moment). Curiosity is there to find natural archaelogical evidence that life may have existed there in the prehistoric past. If even that is found, much less incumbent biological activity, the mission will be considered a euphoric triumph.

As for a manned mission, don't hold your breath. the NASA funding is at an all time low and they're less likely than ever to consider a manned mission (i think before the costing estimates were in excess of $500 billion).
Arguably, unmanned missions are for the best because they only involve a fraction of the cost and they negate the horrific consequences of something going wrong in interplanetary flight that results in the loss of life in deep space. Moreover, for the cost of sending a team to Mars we could send robots to Mars, Europa, Ganymede, Io, Enceladus, Titan, Triton, Pluto etc and possibly other places for the same price that can do more or less the same job.

However I have been reading that there is a dutch entrepreneur that is building a campaign to do something over the course of the next 10 or 20 years. Its a private project called 'Mars One' and the objective is to start a permanent colony by sending people on a one way mission.

Its more likely to be the private sector overseeing the future of manned exploration, now that state run agencies dont seem willing to put their hands in their pockets.

I think he is referring to the 'martian bacteria' that was discovered on a rock debris from Mars that landed on earth about 20 years ago.

Under closer inspection, it was later found to be earthbound contamination.

Part of the mission is to provide data that will facilitate safe manned missions to Mars. The focus on NASA's budget is to begin shifting resources toward new technology that will use this new data and create brand new technology to cope with the challenging demands for such a mission. Just today on during the press conference on NASA TV they discussed the RTF sensor showing the level of radiation exposure on the journey to Mars itself will account for 20% the rad exposure an astronaut experiences in his entire career. So were going to need spacesuits and spacecraft that can help mitigate these risks far better than what we now have. The budget crisis is just a silly talking point, this isn't the sixties where we need twice the money because we have double our current workload. Many countries and corporations are working with us on this mission in varying degrees.

Btw it's a little absurd we require extraterrestrial evidence to validate life in the universe. We have this notion that it's not scientific fact until we find it outside of Earth. But all the evidence we needs surrounds us every moment we exist. I dont doubt the significance of an archeological discovery on Mars or the importance of new understandings that may come, but its almost built up to be a paradigm for some people. It's exactly like-- why is evolution still a theory, you shouldn't need anymore that what surrounds you to see the truth in it.

I'm absolutely obsessed with the rover!

In my younger days, I was obsessed with a manned mars mission. I designed my own hypothetical space program and used to literally paint acrylic pictures of my fantasy landing team, on the surface.

The movie Total Recall had a lot to answer for.

Sadly I lost the paintings, which is a shame as i was rather proud of them.