Lift off in about 12.5 hours all going well.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

Peak Warming Man said:

Lift off in about 12.5 hours all going well.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

Three hour warning.

Going live in about 80 minutes.
rubs hands
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/launch/watch-online/

T-minus half an hour until the broadcast begins.

Don’t know when the actual launch will be.

Coverage now going, launch in 50 minutes.

Audio out of synch.

Bubblecar said:

Audio out of synch.

Oh, well they’re fucked then.

This rover’s loaded with microphones, for the first time.

It’s all good, good signs, the sun’s come up in pretty much the exact right place and the weather is good.
The Atlas V is sitting there like a giant……….like a giant colossus ready to explode Perseverance and it’s 11 pounds of plutonium in the nuclear reactor battery to break the bonds of earths gravity on it’s way to Mars.
It could actually be part of the continued effort to send man home, life on earth may well have come from a dying red planet.

Rocket is vaping incessantly.

Bubblecar said:

Rocket is vaping incessantly.

Nervous.

I might switch over.

Oh fuck off with your hymn singing :(

party_pants said:

Oh fuck off with your hymn singing :(

I’ve got a cap like that.

Tell me when they get close to launch.

sibeen said:

Tell me when they get close to launch.

About 25 minutes to go. Laucnh os supposed to be at 9.50pm your time

party_pants said:

Oh fuck off with your hymn singing :(

More a Buddhist chant type of guy are we?

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

Tell me when they get close to launch.

About 25 minutes to go. Laucnh os supposed to be at 9.50pm your time

Ta. I can so without the hymns ad the probably singing of the national anthem and all that.

Witty Rejoinder said:

party_pants said:

Oh fuck off with your hymn singing :(

More a Buddhist chant type of guy are we?

Just launch the fucker without ceremony.

Witty Rejoinder said:

party_pants said:

Oh fuck off with your hymn singing :(

More a Buddhist chant type of guy are we?

Gregorian chants.

I do actually have an album of those.

They’re now discussing the helicopter.

No sound here. Is there a button I can’t find?

Witty Rejoinder said:

No sound here. Is there a button I can’t find?

Little speaker button, lower left of screen.

They’ve just had an earth tremor.

Witty Rejoinder said:

No sound here. Is there a button I can’t find?

mouse over the picture, the control panel should appear at the bottom. Mouse over the speakers icon and turn the volume up.

Bubblecar said:

They’ve just had an earth tremor.

…but that wasn’t at the launch site, apparently.

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said:

They’ve just had an earth tremor.

…but that wasn’t at the launch site, apparently.

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

sibeen said:

Tell me when they get close to launch.

You’ll miss Rakel’s eyes, phoaw!!

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said:

They’ve just had an earth tremor.

…but that wasn’t at the launch site, apparently.

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Ta PP & Car.

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

…but that wasn’t at the launch site, apparently.

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

Ah, OK, Ta.

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said:

They’ve just had an earth tremor.

…but that wasn’t at the launch site, apparently.

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Were making. It’s now in the rocket.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

No, it’s part of this mission.

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

3.9 in California. Which is where they are making the helicopter.

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

So today is just the rocket stage with a rendezvous to come later for the rover and chopper?

Witty Rejoinder said:

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

So today is just the rocket stage with a rendezvous to come later for the rover and chopper?

Nooo. The rover & chopper are in the rocket.

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

Surely they’ve finished it by now.

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

Ah, OK, Ta.

Sorry, scrub that. They are both packed into this rocket.

Next year’s launch is the one that hopes to gather rock samples and launch them back to Earth.

WILL YOU PEOPLE GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT!!!!

party_pants said:

sibeen said:

party_pants said:

Nah, that gets launched next year. This is just another battery powered shopping trolley.

Ah, OK, Ta.

Sorry, scrub that. They are both packed into this rocket.

Next year’s launch is the one that hopes to gather rock samples and launch them back to Earth.

This rover will be gathering the rock samples to send back to Earth. But another spacecraft will actually take them back.

sibeen said:

WILL YOU PEOPLE GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT!!!!

Probably not.

sibeen said:

WILL YOU PEOPLE GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT!!!!

Party’s talking craaaap.

Only about 3 minutes to go.

4 minutes

Is this the same rocket they want to go back to the moon with? Can’t remember its name.

One Minute

bump

She’s up and hasn’t exploded yet, so…

Solid rocket boosters jettisoned.

Arts said:

bump

thanks

Bubblecar said:

Solid rocket boosters jettisoned.

Various other bits kicked away.

the Earth looks round in that picture.

Stage separation.

party_pants said:

the Earth looks round in that picture.

pfft, you sheeple.

party_pants said:

the Earth looks round in that picture.

LOL, that’s just a parallax error caused by atmospheric distortion.

Just got a call from NASA saying it’s safe for me to go to bed, everything is fine and systems are nominal so they wont need to call me.

Peak Warming Man said:

Just got a call from NASA saying it’s safe for me to go to bed, everything is fine and systems are nominal so they wont need to call me.

I missed it.

“NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully launched toward Mars on an Atlas V rocket on Thursday, July 30, from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA will discuss the successful launch in a briefing at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1539 GMT).

That was 1:30 am here.

• NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully launched toward Mars on an Atlas V rocket on Thursday

Surely it didn’t launch toward Mars? If it did, it would completely miss it…

Latest news is that we almost lost it when it froze when passing through Earth’s shadow, but it has been safely recovered. https://www.space.com/news/live/mars-perseverance-rover-updates

furious said:

• NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully launched toward Mars on an Atlas V rocket on Thursday

Surely it didn’t launch toward Mars? If it did, it would completely miss it…

I think his joke dates from the year 1934. “Towards” it in a rotating frame of reference. Mach’s principle. Corrected for eccentricity.

The Perservence Rover is very heavily based on Curiosity. Same landing method for starters.

From https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117969-mars-2020-landing-site-selection/

“The only improvements over Curiosity” are:
- tougher wheels (finally!)
- higher speed (from Curiosity’s 12 m/hr to up to 60-80 m/hr)
- improved, color engineering cameras
- a camera pointed upwards toward the parachute during descent
- higher efficiency due to new planning techniques (whatever that means)
- carrying a helicopter

Landing site is Jezero crater, in an alluvial fan.

Landing location, compared to earlier NASA landing locations.

Landing ellipse, taking in the alluvial fan.

Ingenuity helicopter has blades 1.2 metres in diameter, to fly in an atmosphere only 1.7% as dense as Earth’s.
Total weight only 1.8 kg, of which 0.27 kg is battery.

Why no more than 5 metres altitude (one source says 10 metres)? Higher is both more useful and safer.

Protecting other planets
Mars may be a pristine ecosystem
Earthlings should be careful not to contaminate it

Leaders
Jul 25th 2020 edition

Earth aside, Mars is the most-studied planet in the solar system. Satellites zip around it. Rovers trundle over its surface. A helicopter may soon clatter through its skies, for a clutch of new missions are either on their way or planned to launch soon.

The motive behind all this is the hope that Mars, like Earth, may support life—or may have done so in the past (see article). And, as technology spreads and rocketry gets cheaper, more people want to join the search for what would, in effect, be Biosphere 2. At first, Mars was the province of America and the Soviet Union. Japan tried and failed to explore it in 1998. Europe sent its first mission in 2003. India launched its in 2013. The United Arab Emirates joined the fray on July 20th. And China, after a failure in 2011, dispatched another attempt on July 23rd. The time is not far off when even private missions might be feasible.

Behind all this enthusiasm, though, is a worry. If Mars is sterile after all, or if any life which once dwelled there is now extinct, what people do to the planet by way of contamination with Earthly bugs probably does not matter. But if Martians do exist, even if they are but lowly bacteria (or something vaguely equivalent), that would mean Mars is a pristine ecosystem. Those wishing to investigate it should therefore tread lightly, for reasons of both moral and scientific prudence.

Astrobiologists identify two kinds of risk in putative encounters with alien life forms that are not actually toting ray guns. The first, “forward contamination”, is that hardy micro-organisms from Earth might hitch a ride with a space probe and set up shop on landing. The second, “back contamination”, concerns the reverse: that samples returned to Earth might bring alien microbes with them.

The first risk is no longer theoretical. Scientists reckon that the rovers and landers already on Mars each play host to tens of thousands of microscopic Earthlings. Shielded from radiation by the probes themselves, these bacteria are probably dormant—but not dead.

Back contamination would require samples to be returned from Mars. That has not happened yet. But America’s newest rover is designed to stash samples of Martian regolith away, to be returned to Earth by a follow-up mission in 2031.

Back contamination is the less worrying of the two. Lurid suggestions that Martian bugs might infect human beings ignore the fact that their biochemistry would almost certainly be too different from that of terrestrial organisms for this to happen. Sealed laboratories could provide reassurance for sticklers.

Forward contamination is more troubling. Some echo terrestrial worries about conservation, arguing that humans have a moral obligation not to damage other ecosystems. Others fret about the scientific implications. Life on Mars, whether extant or extinct, could be one of the most significant discoveries in the history of biology. Contamination risks disrupting understanding of that scientific bounty.

Countries are already required, by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to worry about these risks. But this treaty is light on specifics, leaving individual space agencies to come up with their own rules. This is better than nothing. But as more countries head for Mars, the case grows for a formal, global approach.

Plenty of ideas are worth discussing. Some advocate risk-management, in which the greatest care is taken when exploring those parts of Mars most likely to contain life, though lower standards apply in harsher regions. “Reversible exploration” holds that, if life is discovered, humanity should retrieve the probes that already dot the Martian surface, along with their microbial passengers. And should private individuals be required to follow the same rules as nation-states?

International co-operation is not a popular idea just now. Never mind: it should be tried anyway. Nationalism and protectionism can wane as well as wax, and alien-hunting is the work of decades. Counter-measures need not be expensive—experience suggests they add 10% or less to the cost of a probe. And it is hard to think of a more intrinsically global problem than ensuring that one planet’s life forms do not contaminate another’s. ■

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “Tread softly”

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/25/mars-may-be-a-pristine-ecosystem?

CNN — 

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world/perseverance-rover-mars-images-scn/index.html

dv said:

CNN — 

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world/perseverance-rover-mars-images-scn/index.html

Organic matter would surley indicate that there was life there?

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

CNN — 

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world/perseverance-rover-mars-images-scn/index.html

Organic matter would surley indicate that there was life there?

Not necessarily. They’ve found amino acids in various places in spaaaaace, including the asteroid 162173 Ryugu visited by Hayabusa 2 a few years back, and the boffins were quick to point out that there are non biological processes that can make those little protein units. I’m not the expert on what those processes are.

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

CNN — 

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world/perseverance-rover-mars-images-scn/index.html

Organic matter would surley indicate that there was life there?

They organic mean molecules, which may have been associated with life or may not.

>“While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we’ve seen here on Earth,” Sharma said. “To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue. And we’re getting stronger and stronger clues as we’re moving through our delta campaign.”

Perseverance as well as the Curiosity rover has found organic matter before on Mars. But this time, the detection occurred in an area where life may have once existed.

They organic mean molecules = they mean organic nmolecules

Bubblecar said:

They organic mean molecules = they mean organic nmolecules

Now all I need to know is what nmolecules are

Bubblecar said:

Peak Warming Man said:

dv said:

CNN — 

Investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars, according to NASA scientists.

A few of the recently collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero Crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago.

“The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/world/perseverance-rover-mars-images-scn/index.html

Organic matter would surley indicate that there was life there?

They organic mean molecules, which may have been associated with life or may not.

>“While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we’ve seen here on Earth,” Sharma said. “To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue. And we’re getting stronger and stronger clues as we’re moving through our delta campaign.”

Perseverance as well as the Curiosity rover has found organic matter before on Mars. But this time, the detection occurred in an area where life may have once existed.

The building blocks of life can only occur where specific conditions exist. These building blocks land on every desolate planet.