Just the reaction, there's a slight possibility that Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a picture of it entering the atmosphere but we won't know that until later since MRO is on the far side of Mars at the moment.
Fun math problem I just thought of: I wonder how high the satellite's orbit would have to be in order to maximize the amount of time during which it would be obscured by Mars when looking from Earth.
Thought stream: Minimum arc length of hidden (eclipsed) section of orbit; the higher the orbit, the slower the satellite needs to travel to maintain; I don't have experience with exactly the right math, but intuition tells me that regardless of distance from Mars, the related speed means that the time to traverse that arc will be the same ... maybe we could use an atypical orbit (passing closer to the planet while hidden?) to reduce eclipsed traversal time?
InSight lacks a descent imager. However, the Mars 2020 rover will have a descent imager and record full color video along with sound during the descent.
Pictures or video are not the point of the mission. And it was nowhere certain that we'd even get that initial picture right away, as it depended at least one of the two experimental MarCO nanosats doing its job as a relay. They successfully did just that which was great; otherwise we'd have had to wait for several hours for one of the orbiting assets to relay the data. Radio doesn't work if there's thousands of kilometers of rock in the way, as you might know.
Not really, they didn't take the money to mars, the green papers we created to symbolize value are still hanging on here on earth, on the hands of the people that one way or another helped to create this probe.
While I acknowledge your disinterest for exploration, most of the good parts of your life would not exist if none of your ancestors had genes pushing them to explore.
Adapting to land, surviving new climates, expanding worldwide helped establish global logistics that give you the lithium-ion batteries, the sandy processors, the oversea cables that allow blancheneige to watch Disney cartoons on demand.
It so happens that the story doesn't end with just planetary Internet communications.
Yes, ultimaltely the same people whose decisions led to you being able to have an internet to connect to and whine on are the same ones who took a few dollars from your paycheck and are using them to explore Mars.
ultimately the same people as in literally not the same people? the one with a vision to improve and unleash a global network from its inception at DARPA or CERN vs those who made the choice to work on sending pointless rovers in outer space for the past 20+ years?
You do know the vision of CERN is particle physics, don't you?
...so you are praising CERN for accidentally inventing WWW, and at the same time blaming NASA for not (yet) producing a tangible consumer technology, from a Martian probe that literally just landed?
you seem to be tacitly implying that better outcomes will come from those government subsidized endeavors rather than the revolution happening in the same field from the private sector. if that's your claim it's a ludicrous one. major impetus were provided by government research -- most of which knew where to stop once visionary entrepreneurs picked up the ball and took it to the next level.
I'm not particularly talking about NASA, but the green papers created to symbolize value don't mean anything. Thousands of man-hours that could have been spent on something else are gone.
I am a bit worried that I might be feeding a troll... but in case I am not: How is studying the universe, and in particular a prospective second home for humans, not virtuous?
I didn't say anything about what the money was spent on (in fact, I specifically said I'm not talking about NASA), I was addressing the fallacy that because the little pieces of paper are still on earth, that means that nothing of value could have been lost.
as a physics PhD who spent 5 five years working with top cosmologists from around the world, I think I can provide a good answer: "studying the universe" today amounts to endlessly churning out rehashed fairy tale theories on arxiv in hopes of getting a publication no one will ever read only to obtain a grant that will let you do the exact same thing for another year.
As a physics PhD student this answer of yours mystifies me. Even in the last ten years there has been exciting progress (even when restricting oneself to a subset of the field like cosmology or high energy or astronomy or the intersection of these three). Better knowledge of CMB, exciting new neutrino measurements, gravitational waves to name the stuff off the top of my head.
But you were specifically complaining about studying Mars: if the goal is to give up and just live the most boring, safe and stagnated existence there is, then yes, we should stop exploring the solar system. Economic and cultural progress will slow down to a craw, but some people are content with that.
what you are referring to are the top 1% of researchers in their fields from whom you constantly hear about. the other 99% which account for the majority of grant money just keeps peddling nonsense for a living just so you can hear about their brand new idea of a dark cosmic gluon that could be produced by a yet unforeseen backreaction 10^18 ms after the big bang. give me a break. not that it's entirely their fault, given that it's either that or they'll be shunned by their "scientific" peers.
I'm all for space exploration and pushing the boundaries of humanity. which is why I'm rooting for companies like Space X or Virgin Galactic, not a relic of the cold war that keeps sending over-funded space junks in orbit so a bunch of cowboys can study how the respiratory cycle of frogs are affected in zero g.
