You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.
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Mars Science Lab Animation

Mars Science Lab Frame 2

The coming Mars Science Lab mission video is available with various resolution options here (they are also downloadble!). This animation doesn’t focus as much on the trip to Mars as the MAAS ones have in the past, I would imagine that NASA wanted to highlight all the advanced science this mission will be performing instead of focusing on the long cruise to get there.

Mars Science Lab Frame 3

Take a look especially at the part of the mission where apparently they actually shoot a laser beam at various targets and take measurements of, what I would imagine, are the gasses emitted from such a burn. It also illustrates the process by which MSL will be taking soil and rock samples for in-depth investigations. This mission is exactly what it claims to be… a roving Science Lab on Mars. This is as close to having astronauts on the surface as our current technology can allow… that is… without actually sending someone… which our current technology does allow.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 7:47 am and is filed under Mars, Spacecraft, Video/Movie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Mars Science Lab Animation”

  1. Kevin Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

    Just an FYI … the stills from the MSL rover animation you have up on your site are not from Dan Maas.
    This was made in house at JPL

  2. thomas Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

    WHAT!?

  3. thomas Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    Did I assume that?… I can’t image I claimed that without having seen that somewhere. It does look awfully Maaslike.

  4. Kevin Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

    Hi … I know for sure that it wasn’t him kuz I worked on it … myself and one other guy here at JPL.
    If you saw it listed somewhere that Mr Maas did it, they where mistaken.
    Not that I consider it a bad thing to be mistaken for Maas’s necessarily … he does great stuff.
    Actually … I’ll take it as a positive review. :)

  5. thomas Says:
    September 19th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    well, revised… i can add a credit to you or a link if you want. this post actually got me in the “astrosphere” page on universetoday.com and i got crazy traffics that day. so… thank you.

  6. wanderingspace » Blog Archive » Curiosity Begins Says:
    November 26th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    [...] last wrote about this mission in 2007. Now it is actually upon us. So never mind the launch… what is remarkable about this trip is [...]

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