Virtual Curiosity

We have a CAD model of Curiosity in KeckCAVES!

The University of California Office of the President, otherwise known as UCOP, has a PR campaign called Onward California.  They have "stories" about faculty members that are professionally filmed by The Department of the Fourth Dimension.  I am the focus on one of their 2013 stories, and two videos were recently released with me in the KeckCAVES with Curiosity, Earth, and Mars.

This is the "official" Onward California release:

And here is the one with lots of Curiosity:

Oliver Kreylos blogged about the filming of these videos - he was a great help as always!  His blog and YouTube channel are great places to go for the latest in useful virtual reality.  

JPL is the place to go for information on Curiosity.

Our First Problem...

We've been on the surface of Mars with Curiosity for over 6 months, and nothing serious had gone wrong - until Tuesday night.  We got part of our data down for planning on Wednesday - when I started my shift as Long Term Planner.  Then we got errors.  The science team continued with planning in case the problem was with the communications, e.g. the links getting data from Curiosity to us.  The engineering team scrambled to figure out what was wrong.  By the end of Wednesday, they realized that Curiosity had not gone to sleep for its nap.  That is equivalent to the "spinning wheel of death" we all hate to see on our computer screens. 

There is, of course, a JPL Press Release and National Geographic has a nice summary with more engineering explanations from Richard Cook (Project Manager) and Madgy Bareh (JPL Engineer).  Madgy is leading the "tactical" recovery efforts, which includes getting all the necessary settings into RCE-B.  There is also a team working to reconstruct what went wrong and whether or not RCE-A can be used in the future. 

It's been a very stressful few days, but we still have a working rover on the red planet!  (Actually 2 - Opportunity is still going strong, too).

I'm still on duty at Long Term Planner through Saturday.  My main job right now is to help the science team regroup on our plans for the next few weeks.  As one team member said, "It's time to brush off our patience."

Success

We successfully drilled our first sampling hole on Mars!  Whoo-hooo!

First Drilling on Mars!

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1422

It's been two months since I last wrote an entry.  It's not that nothing has been happening - quite the opposite.  I've been trying to adapt to being back home and teaching while also helping run the Curiosity mission.  And Curiosity has been VERY busy.  Just this morning, we got confirmation that we've drilled a mini-hole in a rock on Mars.  It's about 1 cm deep and is both an engineering test and a bit-cleaning exercise.  The act of drilling removes contaminants from Earth off the bit.  The next step is to drill a 5 cm deep hole.  That one will send sample up through the drill bit, into the sample processing chambers, and eventually to the CheMin and SAM instruments for analysis.  We are really looking forward to know what minerals are present as well as what comes off the sample when we heat it for SAM.  This is really an exciting adventure.  Stay tuned!  There is likely to be a press conference soon!

By the way, this morning I did an interview on Insight, Capitol Public Radio.  Unfortunately, we didn't have confirmation of the first drill hole until 10 minutes before I went online, and I didn't have an internet connection.  Thus, I couldn't announce these great results there!

A special post for Bill and Bruce

I was sitting in the Davis train station waiting for my train home, typing a summary of today's Science Discussion, when an old friend sat down across from me.  Bill Cotton!  A retired conductor and "legend of the Amtrak line", Bill knew everyone by name and still remembers most of us regular riders.  He said he is meeting Bruce, another conductor, tomorrow.  Bruce and I talked a lot about Mars when I first became part of the MastCam/MAHLI/MARDI camera team for Curiosity.  I gave Bill my blog address and asked him to pass it on to Bruce.  After talking a bit more, I said I'd add a link to the great images in the JPL press releases, so here it is, Bill:  http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/  It's so great to have run into you!

Now it's back to that summary of today's Science Discussion, with an even bigger smile on my face!

Curiosity's Self Portrait

Curiosity took a self portrait using the MAHLI.  Here is a great description of how the imaging was done at National Geographic:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/121204-curiosity-mars-rover-portrait-science-space/

Engineers Talk EDL

I don't normally pay attention to GQ (the magazine, not another NASA acronym), but here's something you want to read:  http://www.gq.com/moty/2012/nasa-spacemen-of-the-year-2012  It's some of the MSL engineers reminiscing about Curiosity's landing.  Each adds their own take as they reconstruct the events.  It was an amazing night!