News on Mars-missions
- 3D model of the Mars rovers completed
- Mars orbiter 10 years anniversary
- Mission to search for life on Saturn-moon proposed
- Planned NASA/European Mars-mission InSigth
- New images of old Mars-lander
- Food and diet for a Mars-mission
- Mars rover begins 9th year of Mars work
- Russian Mars probe crashes
- Mars rover to spend winter at 'Greeley Haven'
- Mars-bound rover begins research in space
- Euopean autonomous Mars-rover being developed
- European scientist play key-role
- No new contact with Russaian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft
- Curiousity heading for Mars
- The Curiosity rover's journey to Mars
- Launch for Mars Science Lab saturday
- Car-sized Mars rover ready for launch nov 25
- Curiosity rover could conclude the water question
- Microbe risk when rover wheels hit Martian dirt
- Epic search for life heats up with focus on new high-tech
- Mars-rover approaches large crater
- NASA announces news briefing on Mars science findings
- Landing site selected for next Mars-rover
- NASA will soon decide on where to land
- The long jorney of the curiosity rover to Mars
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Watch the construction of the Mars-rover Curiosiuty on-line
Wednesday, 01 December 2010 14:24
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| Spaceflight - Mars-missions |
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More than 2 million people have watched assembly and testing of NASA's next Mars rover via a live webcam since it went online in October.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as the Curiosity rover, is being tested and assembled in a clean room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The webcam, affectionately dubbed "Curiosity Cam," shows engineers and technicians clad in head-to-toe white smocks working on the rover. There have been more than 2,3 million viewer sessions up untill now. Metrics from the webcam's hosting platform, Ustream, showed more than one million unique viewers spent more than 400.000 hours watching the Curiosity Cam between Oct. 21 and Nov. 23.
The camera is mounted in the viewing gallery of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at JPL. While the gallery is a regular stop on JPL's public tour, Curiosity Cam allows visitors from around the world to see NASA engineers at work without traveling to Pasadena. Viewers from Chile, Japan, Turkey, Spain, Mexico and the United Kingdom have sent good wishes and asked questions in the chat box that accompanies the Curiosity Cam webstream. At scheduled times, viewers can interact with each other and JPL staff. The chat schedule is updated weekdays at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl. Months of assembly and testing remain before the car-sized rover is ready for launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rover and spacecraft components will ship to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida next spring. The launch will occur between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011. Curiosity will arrive on Mars in August 2012. The rover is one of the most technologically challenging interplanetary missions ever designed. Curiosity is engineered to drive longer distances over rougher terrain than previous Mars rovers. It will carry a science payload 10 times the mass of instruments on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Curiosity will investigate whether the landing region had environments favorable for supporting microbial life. It will also look for environments that have been favorable for preserving evidence about whether life existed. The continuous live video of rover construction is available at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl, |
