Curiosity Mount Sharp Photo

http://spaceindustrynews.com/curiosity-mount-sharp-photo/1015/

by littlesparkvt • 14 years ago

55 31 14 years ago

spaceindustrynews.com

cantbecool• 14 years ago

I wonder how much data costs per kilobyte from Mars?

nazgulnarsil• 14 years ago

MARGINAL COSTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

Dylan16807• 14 years ago

They'll probably keep the link relatively saturated, so it's easy to calculate the cost per unit data.

mixmax• 14 years ago

Since there's probably nobody else using the line - nothing.

Or more accurately: The fixed cost for getting the dataline installed is extremely high, but once it's there and has no other use than sending data back to earth it's almost free to use. The only cost is the electricity used, and since it's on a nuclear battery that will run for many years you can discount that.

In other words: Send as much data back as you possibly can. Prioritise it and send the most important first of course, but don't ever let the line sit idle.

allardschip• 14 years ago

Sending $$ might not be much. Receiving is another story.

wmf2• 14 years ago

On the Earth side there may be contention since AFAIK the Deep Space Network is shared by multiple missions.

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

How did I miss that this thing was running on nuclear power. I guess I just assumed battery + solar.

Pretty sweet! It can run for a minimum of 14 years. I don't recall the last rovers using nuclear?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory#Rover

slurgfest• 14 years ago

If you wanted to estimate value, you could do that based on the fixed cost you mentioned, as well as the ground-side operation and maintenance costs (including salaries).

And assuming you were talking about the market price of using the channel for just anything, add some valuation of the opportunity costs of not using the line for the things NASA will use it for.

edit: why bother saying this? Private industry is entering space, professionals who know something (unlike me) will be very interested in figuring out the value of things NASA has been doing.

Sharlin• 14 years ago

Actually, as the "line" consists of the orbiting satellites acting as relay stations, it is very much shared with the orbiters' own science missions.

Most of the time the link is going to sit idle; an orbiter is only overhead a few times a day, a few minutes at a time. So there will be scheduled bursts of communications. AFAIK the Curiosity-orbiter bandwidth is about 2Mb/s, and the highest-speed orbiter-Earth link is up to 6Mb/s (that of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter--MRO has returned more data than all other Mars missions combined.)

Curiosity also has two antennae that allow direct communication with the Earth (when it's over the horizon) but they are too slow (hundreds of bits per second) for heavy-duty image downlinking.

sukuriant• 14 years ago

Less than a text message.

moe• 14 years ago

If 3GB is exceeded, an additional 1 GB is automatically provided at a rate of $10 for each additional 1 GB.

Domestic Long Distance and 50 SMS are free.

akjetma• 14 years ago

I've been more interested in what the bandwidth and packet loss rate are like.

joshAg2• 14 years ago

I don't have a source I can find easily, but I believe the older rovers had a 10Mbs uplink.

redwood• 14 years ago

I'm not on Mars, but here in Bangladesh I pay for "unlimited" broadband, but when I exceed 100k/s for a few hours in a given day, I am throttled down to about 3K/s for the next 24 hours :(

dools• 14 years ago

Instagram should have done the colour corrected version with a filter. PR opportunity: MISSED.

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

Maybe after the main objectives are completed, NASA could recover some of the money by drawing people/companies' names/logos on the ground, then taking pictures and sharing them online :-)

bobbles• 14 years ago

"Click here to promote your status update on the surface of Mars ($100000)"

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

I noticed the robot got its finger over the camera in the upper right corner. :-) Nice shot though.

asadotzler• 14 years ago

Color corrected? I think they mean "colorized". Hazcams don't have multiple color filters, just a red bandpass centered around 650 nm. Any color here is basically manufactured.

hybrid11• 14 years ago

Anyone know what picture compression format they are using?

wmf2• 14 years ago

Maybe one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICER http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCSDS_122.0-B-1

jebblue• 14 years ago

The Viking photos taken on Mars in the late 70's are pretty cool too.

airlocksoftware• 14 years ago

Does anyone know the bandwidth of the connection to Curiosity? Closest thing I was able to was the Spirit rover with 258 kbit/s.

uxp• 14 years ago

I've read that when the MSL Rover Relays through the MRO (which seems to be the LIDAR communications) the link is about 2Mb/s, but a constant direct link to Earth over UHF is only 500 bits/s

nitrogen• 14 years ago

They colorized the wheels and sky, too, rather than separating them for more realism. I like mine better[0] ;), but a lot of people dislike that I used Earth's sky color instead of the more boring Martian reddish brown.

[0] http://nitrogen.posterous.com/curiositys-view-of-mars-in-pse...

Curiosity Mount Sharp Photo

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