A couple of events the past week or so remind me to give a big SHOUT OUT to the techies who love and work among us.
This week's landing by NASA's Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory is nothing short of extraordinary. The darn thing took 8 months to get to Mars, and there was about a 8 minute window of disaster where they had to slow it down from 13-thousand MPH, release a drogue shoot, then this rocket hovercraft kind of doo-hickie slowly lowered the lander to the planet.
Extraordinary doesn't come close to describing the engineering skills that went into getting Curiosity to Mars where it's going to supply us with all sorts of data over the next couple of years. NASA needed the PR shot in the arm too, what with the Space Shuttle retired and us having to hitch a ride with the Russians to get to the space station.
Then there's the Olympics. We've seen some amazing performances, made even more amazing the the digital video technology being used. The best example being events like diving and gymnastics. Spectacular multi-image views of dives to vaults instantly. Plus we're watching on a multitude of video pipelines. As I write this I have one set of events on TV, another on my iPad.
A large number of the folks involved in bringing it to our various screens are actually controlling it all from New York, "Across the pond" from England.
Back to the Mars mission, Curiosity is sitting on a planet about 56 million miles away. How far is that? Well, it can take anywhere from 5-25 minutes for the signals carrying the picture data to reach earth. That's after the 8-month trip to get there in the first place.
The next big test will be to send a probe to Mars, then have it take off and return home to earth.
All of the above proof positive that science and technology is anything but boring. Thank goodness there are still some folks willing to dig deep into the science of it all, so the rest of us non-geeks can sit back and watch in awe.
Which this non-geek is doing!
Brian Olson
Owner/Consultant
Conversation Starters Public Relations
This week's landing by NASA's Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory is nothing short of extraordinary. The darn thing took 8 months to get to Mars, and there was about a 8 minute window of disaster where they had to slow it down from 13-thousand MPH, release a drogue shoot, then this rocket hovercraft kind of doo-hickie slowly lowered the lander to the planet.
Extraordinary doesn't come close to describing the engineering skills that went into getting Curiosity to Mars where it's going to supply us with all sorts of data over the next couple of years. NASA needed the PR shot in the arm too, what with the Space Shuttle retired and us having to hitch a ride with the Russians to get to the space station.
Then there's the Olympics. We've seen some amazing performances, made even more amazing the the digital video technology being used. The best example being events like diving and gymnastics. Spectacular multi-image views of dives to vaults instantly. Plus we're watching on a multitude of video pipelines. As I write this I have one set of events on TV, another on my iPad.
A large number of the folks involved in bringing it to our various screens are actually controlling it all from New York, "Across the pond" from England.
Back to the Mars mission, Curiosity is sitting on a planet about 56 million miles away. How far is that? Well, it can take anywhere from 5-25 minutes for the signals carrying the picture data to reach earth. That's after the 8-month trip to get there in the first place.
The next big test will be to send a probe to Mars, then have it take off and return home to earth.
All of the above proof positive that science and technology is anything but boring. Thank goodness there are still some folks willing to dig deep into the science of it all, so the rest of us non-geeks can sit back and watch in awe.
Which this non-geek is doing!
Brian Olson
Owner/Consultant
Conversation Starters Public Relations
No comments:
Post a Comment