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Course: NASA > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Curiosity rover: discoveries- Curiosity has landed
- Curiosity descent
- Systems check
- Curiosity's first drive
- Navigation update
- Observations
- Discovery: Streambed
- First CheMin results
- Preparation for holidays
- Calcium-rich deposits found
- Results of first drilling
- Mars' bygone atmosphere
- 'Spring Break' over: commanding resumes
- Rover ready to switch gears
- Trek to Mt. Sharp begins
- Dating younger rocks
- Curiosity completes its first martian year
- A softer trek to mount sharp
- A taste of mount sharp
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Systems check
Aug 9th 2012. Created by NASA.
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Are there more updates? Is this a series that can be posted to KA and continuously updated?(4 votes)
If it is not updated youtube has mass variety of video updates about Curiosity. The Curiosity team also has a youtube page dedicated to the updates.(2 votes)
Why use a black-and-white camera when you have a color one? Do they perform different tasks?(3 votes)
color takes more data and longer to process, if they think they can deal with black and white then they will take black and white to reserve time, but if they want color for a more prospective picture, then they will do color(3 votes)
As for software, what Operating System does the rover use?
I would presume something POSIX compliant, perhaps Linux based?(3 votes)
Curiosity is powered by Wind River's proprietary VxWorks commercial real time OS.(1 vote)
what day did the rover land and will it come back(2 votes)
It landed on August 5 2012. the rover is not desighned to come back.(2 votes)
In the planet there has stones or rocks?
because I saw the stone in video.(2 votes)
how do they get the rovers back?(2 votes)- The rovers are not designed to come back.(1 vote)
is the mars rover a camra that scans mars(1 vote)- Not exactly. Curiosity has many cameras, all having different uses. There are color cameras and black and white cameras. The cameras do not do the "scanning". Sensors such as the ChemCam do all the scanning.(1 vote)
What happens if the coding in the system becomes corrupt or damaged in the rover and they set it into auto pilot and it crashes? Or they just find out, would they just leave it on mars without using it? (After trying everything they could)(1 vote)
Video transcript
Hi I'm Bobak Ferdowski, flight director with the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and this is your Curiosity rover update. This week, we did a color panorama surrounding the rover with both the Mastcam, and the Nav cams, and we also upgraded the software on board on both computers of the rover this week. This new software is like having new applications with new functionalities on the rover to allow us to do mobility, deploy the arm and get to the science that we're looking forward to on the mission. We also did a series of instrument checkouts. Those included the ChemCam instrument. The CheMin instrument. RAD science. REMS APXS SAM And the additional cameras on the rover, including the MAHLI instrument. We also downlinked some MARDI high-resolution data images. Those are from the descent imager. Coming up this week, we'll be using the ChemCam to zap targets for the first time. We'll also be deploying the arm and we'll be checking the mobility system by doing what we call a rover 'bump,' or a short drive. This has been your Curiosity Rover Report and check back often for more updates.