Meant to be Seen

Hi, tonight the mars rover is landing on mars, look here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

success! can't wait for the 3D camera images!

Yeah it looked successful, I was watching them all hugging and chearing. Looks pretty advanced with all those gizmos.

I watched the whole thing live streaming. It seemed incredible to see all the information they were getting of every stage with the velocity, altitude, heat, g-forces, etc. When it landed and was successfully confirmed, I was really relieved. I do wonder if those cameras can do stereoscopic 3D. I know they are different lenses, but surely they would have made it so that they have at least one zoom level that both can achieve so they can get some stereo pics... at least that's what I would have done. lol

The rover is equiped with 17 different cameras, and my source on that claimed they were especially awaiting the stereo images, so I am sure they we\ill be arriving sometime. Nasa has a thing for stereo imaging, though finding formats other than analglyph has proved difficult sometime. Some 3rd party website usually makes them available after some delay, so I haven't spent the time locating the .GOV raw source material. I may though, for this mission, as I am an Apollo baby at heart. I remember 11, and the drama of 13. This should prove equally as exciting, though I am not betting on them finding life. I just hope they get to go underground somehow.

The whole "life" question is really frustrating.

If they don't find any chemistry with this rover, then maybe they just didn't look in the right place. If they do find chemistry and it in any way resembles Earth chemistry, then it could be due to independent development but it could also just be panspermia with Earth. So short of some truly alien process, the Mars results seem almost entirely undecidable.

We have better luck with the Kepler-like missions for deciding the life question.

from what I could find out Cameron was working on a 3D camera for the rover but seems like NASA wanted zoom, not 3D. I think this rover is 2D, but not 100% sure. Hope not.

The rover has two pairs of black and white navigation cameras mounted on the mast to support ground navigation. The cameras have a 45 degree angle of view and use visible light to capture stereoscopic 3-D imagery.



*if you can trust the internet