Fifth Avenue Forum

I'm not sure how accurate that time is. I'm bouncing between the Space Official and NASA streams on YouTube and Space's counter is showing a landing time of 2h 9m from now.

All the local TV channels have journalists up at JPL today. It's kind of a fun juxtaposition seeing the same field reporter who covered the fire hydrant that got sheared off in Van Nuys 2 months ago is now on the next-big-step-in-the-advancement-of-human-civilization beat.

I'm not sure how accurate that time is. I'm bouncing between the Space Official and NASA streams on YouTube and Space's counter is showing a landing time of 2h 9m from now.

ok, not sure why Space showed that as counter. It went to zero and literally nothing changed on that channel.

@tifosi77

The static live feed from the rover is probably more interesting than Covenant.

Has someone shopped in Bernie yet?

of course

This is the view down from the Skycrane as Perseverance glided to the Martian surface.

I'll be honest, I haven't paid much attention to NASA in a while. But this mission sounds pretty cool.

The rover will collect over 40 samples of soil and rock, in the hopes to find microbes and fossils in that crater.

I'd assumed that the rover had a sensor suite that would send data back to Earth, and although it does have that, these samples will be returned to Earth! Which seems crazy, but really cool. After the rover finishes collecting, 36 samples will be selected and another rover (a fast rover, as Curiosity and Perseverance, are very slow) will collect them and pack them into a rocket that will orbit above Mars, get transferred to another craft, and make the trip back to Earth in 2031.

Has someone shopped in Bernie yet?

Hearing a gust of Martian wind.... That's awesome.

You know what's going to be awesome about this? They will have HD cameras for when the rock sample recovery rover lands in a few years. We'll be able to watch the whole thing (almost) live, with sound.

FYI, there's a panorama from Perseverence floating around social media that shows a vibrant, star/deep sky object filled sky. The sky is completely shopped. There is so much dust floating around the Martian atmosphere that you wouldn't be able to see much, even at night. The Moon on the other hand...

It was humorous to watch people arguing about it in the comments. Also people insisting that constellations would look different there. No... 150 million miles away is nothing. It would be the equivalent of looking at the Moon from two different spots in Pittsburgh.

Here's a surprise. Rocket Lab announced today that they're working on a new medium-lift rocket called "Neutron." It will be a reusable rocket with a lift capacity of 8 tons or so, which is around half of what a Falcon 9 can carry in reusable mode. The press releases mention launching from Wallops in the US. As the same time, Rocket Lab also announced a merger deal with a venture-capital firm that will see it traded on the NASDAQ. The plan is for Neutron to be flying around 2024.

SpaceX Starship prototype SN10 just stuck the landing. SN10 is leaning a little, and it might have crunched up the landing legs, but it's still standing, the vehicle is intact, and they have a demonstration that the "landing flip" maneuver is viable and can work. The current landing-leg design is just a placeholder and isn't the final design, so if they didn't work too well that's no big deal.

Oops. SN10 just blew up around 15 minutes after landing. It shot way back up into the air. It looks to me like it might have been an overpressurization. I wonder if the venting system was damaged on landing.

The concept of landing a rocket is still kinda trippy.