NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase

 

Camera on Curiosity's Arm as Seen by Camera on Mast

The left eye of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this image of the camera on the rover's arm, the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), during the 30th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (Sept. 5, 2012).

 

 

PASADENA, Calif. -- After driving more than a football field's length since landing, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is spending several days preparing for full use of the tools on its arm. Curiosity extended its robotic arm Wednesday in the first of six to 10 consecutive days of planned activities to test the 7-foot (2.1-meter) arm and the tools it manipulates.
"We will be putting the arm through a range of motions and placing it at important 'teach points' that were established during Earth testing, such as the positions for putting sample material into the inlet ports for analytical instruments," said Daniel Limonadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "These activities are important to get a better understanding for how the arm functions after the long cruise to Mars and in the different temperature and gravity of Mars, compared to earlier testing on Earth."
Since the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft placed Curiosity inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), the rover has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters). The drives have brought it about one-fourth of the way from the landing site, named Bradbury Landing, to a location selected as the mission's first major science destination, Glenelg.
"We knew at some point we were going to need to stop and take a week or so for these characterization activities," said JPL's Michael Watkins, Curiosity mission manager. "For these checkouts, we need to turn to a particular angle in relation to the sun and on flat ground. We could see before the latest drive that this looked like a perfect spot to start these activities."
The work at the current location will prepare Curiosity and the team for using the arm to place two of the science instruments onto rock and soil targets. In addition, the activities represent the first steps in preparing to scoop soil, drill into rocks, process collected samples and deliver samples into analytical instruments.
Checkouts in the next several days will include using the turret's Mars Hand Lens Imager to observe its calibration target and the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer to read what chemical elements are present in the instrument's calibration target.
"We're still learning how to use the rover. It's such a complex machine -- the learning curve is steep," said JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates Curiosity.
After the arm characterization activities at the current site, Curiosity will proceed for a few weeks eastward toward Glenelg. The science team selected that area as likely to offer a good target for Curiosity's first analysis of powder collected by drilling into a rock.
"We're getting through a big set of characterization activities that will allow us to give more decision-making authority to the science team," said Richard Cook, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at JPL.
Curiosity is one month into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Arrives Safely on Mars

  Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater.
Robert T. Gonzalez

NASA has done it. The largest and most sophisticated spacecraft ever sent to another planet has landed safely on the surface of Mars. We live-blogged Curiosity's arrival, but for those of you who couldn't watch it live, here's what we saw during the most remarkable Mars landing in history.
That's not exaggeration, by the way. Curiosity's arrival was epic, and — by pretty much all accounts — flawless.
In the days and hours leading up to the landing, the rover was described as being in excellent shape. Last night, at 21:12 PT, a little more than an hour before entering Mars' atmosphere, the uplink transmitter between Curiosity and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena was intentionally switched off. The crew at JPL had guided Curiosity along its journey for as long as it could, but given that it takes light 14 minutes to make the trip from Earth to Mars, controlling the spacecraft directly from Earth was out of the question; Curiosity had been programmed to perform all of its entry, descent and landing maneuvers autonomously. Having no input from JPL meant that If the rover was going to land safely, it was going to have to do so entirely on its own.

All that was left to do was watch and wait, so the crew members at JPL turned to hand-wringing and munching on peanuts.
The snack is a NASA/JPL good luck tradition, and dates all the way back to the Ranger 7 mission in 1964. This screenshot, taken from NASA's livefeed, was captured around 23 minutes before atmospheric entry. The tension at JPL, which had been building steadily for the better part of two hours, was approaching heart-attack inducing levels.
Even Curiosity seemed anxious to arrive. After traveling through space for over eight months at around 8,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft began to pick up speed as it approached the planet, egged on by the ever-increasing pull of Mars' gravitational forces. By the time it hit Mars atmo at 22:25 PT, Curiosity had reached a blazing 13,200 miles per hour. The rover's seven-minute trip from the top of the atmosphere to the surface of the planet (the so-called "seven minutes of terror") had begun.

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Events began unfolding rapidly. Less than two minutes after atmospheric entry, JPL confirmed that Curiosity had established a connection with NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, and that the satellite was, in fact, relaying data to Earth. Direct contact between Curiosity and Earth is dependent upon line of sight communication (depicted here with pink dashes). Curiosity was scheduled to lose sight of Earth over the Martian horizon a few minutes after entering the atmosphere, but before landing on the surface of Mars. Odyssey would therefore play a crucial role in relaying real-time signals (depicted here in blue) to Earth. There had been doubts over whether Odyssey would be a) in the right position, and b) able to relay communications to Earth during Curiosity's landing. The fact that it had managed to accomplish both was a huge success. Things only got better from there. Another two minutes passed, and NASA received word that Curiosity's supersonic parachute had deployed successfully, and that the rover was decelerating toward its target, Mars' Gale crater. At 22:30 PT, NASA confirmed that Curiosity had made radar contact with the ground and was traveling at 86 meters per second.
At 22:32, JPL erupted. "Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Alan Chen. "We're safe on Mars."

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Our favorite sideburn-sporting rockabilly engineer Adam Steltzner, leader of Curiosity's descent and landing team, was understandably excited:

Minutes later, even more good news arrived when Curiosity beamed back its very first black and white photos of the Martian surface, including these awesome shots showing the shadow of Curiosity in the Mars afternoon sun (on the left), and a view of one of the rover's wheels (on the right). The images appear dusty because the HazCams that captured these photos still had their lens caps on.

In the days ahead, Curiosity will begin unpacking its various scientific systems, and verifying that they're all in good shape. It is then that we will receive even bigger, color pictures from Mars. If Curiosity's Mastcam instrument is successfully deployed and in working order, NASA predicts we'll have our first 360-degree color panoramas of Curiosity's landing site as early as Wednesday or Thursday. Once curiosity is all unpacked and has a good feel for its surroundings, it will set out on its scheduled two year mission, in search of the building blocks of life.
A lot has been said about the overwhelming success of the mission thus far. According to Steltzner, "we landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful." President Obama weighted in as well, describing the landing as "an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future."
But one of our favorite summaries of the night's accomplishments came from JPL director Charles Elachi shortly after touchdown.
"Tonight was a great drama," he explained matter-of-factly. "Tomorrow we're going to start exploring Mars... And next week and next month and next year, we'll be bringing new discoveries every day, every week, to all of you.
"Our Curiosity has no limits, and we will explore the solar system."

Internet Found Missing Apple IPhone

How the Internet found David Pogue's missing iPhone

Two of the Prince George's County police officers who tracked down David Pogue's missing iPhone show off the recovered device.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Pro tip for thieves: If you're going to steal an iPhone, make sure it doesn't belong to a famed New York Times tech columnist.
The story unfolded on Thursday like a real-time detective caper, in which local police were aided by a tech blog, Twitter, an app and GPS.
It began just before 11:30 a.m. ET, when Times writer David Pogue tweeted that his iPhone had gone missing while he was riding an Amtrak train. He used Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) free "Find My iPhone" app to track it, which revealed a screenshot of his phone's location in Maryland.
Tech blog Gizmodo flung itself into the chase.

 
It posted a story about Pogue's dilemma just 20 minutes after his tweet, and writer Kyle Wagner spent the next several hours digitally pursuing the device.
Gizmodo posted information about the area where Pogue's iPhone was located, including Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) Street View images. Then Gizmodo contacted local police in Prince George's County.
For any would-be heroes, Gizmodo had a warning: "Carmody Hills-Pepper Mill Village area has nearly twice as many murders as the national average, and more than three times the average number of assaults."
Many followed the story on Twitter as it unfolded, tweeting tips and advice to Pogue and local police. The semi-satiric hashtag #PoguePhoneSeriousEmergency sprang up.
At 2:25 p.m., a local police officer contacted Gizmodo and offered to "at least go knock on the door." But the officer, whom Gizmodo kept anonymous, explained that the situation was tricky. The iPhone's GPS isn't 100% accurate about the device's exact location.
Then things happened quickly: The iPhone was on the move, from the driveway to inside the house. Pogue sent Gizmodo overhead shots of the house where it appeared to be located.
"Over and over and over, I pinged the phone, so that the officer might hear it as he toured the house," Pogue wrote later in a blog post recounting the tale. "My heart was in my throat; it was a cat-and-mouse game of GPS versus possible Bad Guy."
At about 5 p.m., Prince George Police Department media rep Julie Parker tweeted at Pogue that officers had located his iPhone, proudly displayed in a photo with two of the cops who found it. She promised to FedEx the phone to Pogue.
On Friday morning, Parker tweeted that no one was arrested for the incident because it was "unclear if the phone was actually stolen or misplaced." Police finally tracked the phone down in the backyard of a house in the area indicated by the "Find My Phone" tracker.
Pogue said he's not going to press charges.
It was a happy ending for Pogue, but some on Twitter questioned whether the police would have worked so hard for iPhone owners who don't write for the New York Times.
Parker insisted in a tweet that the Prince George department would have done the same for anyone, though she noted that it's "rare to recover" a stolen iPhone.
Others marveled at the Internet's ability to mobilize -- but wondered whether a lost iPhone was worth the effort.
As Business Insider writer Matt Lynley asked in a tweet: "Does it feel weird to anyone else that the Internet basically prompted the police to go digging for a phone, of all things?

 

New iMac To Arrive In Between Late 2012 To Early 2013

By TechGadgetsWeb 

In this year’s World Wide Developers Conference Apple have announced upgrade of almost every computer that they provide. The announcement of WWDC at San Francisco is largely appreciated by millions of fans and followers around the world.  But some people feel that they did not give enough concentration to professional desktop computer. After finishing the keynote at the event the apple CEO Tim Cook answered few questions that were sent to him by email. One question was related to this matter. In his answer Mr. Cook said that the professional desktop users are very important for the company and the apple team is up to a new project regarding the pro customers of apple that is most likely to come at the beginning of next year. In his word that upgrade is “really great’ and the professional will love it.

However there are rumors that iMac may come sooner that the scheduled time. The new model of Macbook pro that was shown in this event matches the specs of the previously leaked details of a fifteen inch non retina display. According to MacRumor the leak was legitimate. The leaked specifications of the new iMac described this upcoming as iMac13, 2. The device will run on 3.4 GHz Core i7-3770 which is a quad core processor. The machine will have one 4 GB 1600 MHZ Random Access Memory (RAM) and operate on Mountain Lion, OS X 10.8. The mountain Lion is the next generation Operating System of Apple that is scheduled to release on July of this year. If you still have any doubt about this new iMac specification then you should listen to the New York Times reporter who wrote that the ignorance shown by Apple to the desktop computer makes us think about the future of this genre of computer. Although an inside informer of his assured him that one upgrade is in the process that will come by late 2012.

Exclusive: iPhone 6 Photos

Exclusive: iphone 6 Photos

If you are still getting rid of conceptual iPhone 5 phones, then I reckon you are late for. The stakes have moved as much as the iPhone 6 Photos, an inspiration where the home button is gone to live in the left side of your telephone (brought into use the thumb), leaving an enormous screen space for an individual to enjoy. In this particular mockup, Antoine uses ergonomic grip quite cleverly and formulates it with dimensions 125 mm x 63 mm utilizing a 4.9-inch screen. Obtain a first round of concepts, it seems interesting enough, what do you think?

iphone 6 Right Side Photo

iphone 6 Right Side Photo With Screen Light

iphone 6 Left Side Photo

iphone 6 Left Side Photo With Desplay

iphone 6 Right Side Photo With Bottom

iphone 6 Right Side Photo With Bottom and Desplay

iphone 6 Back Side Photo

iphone 6 Left Side With Volume Button Photo

iphone 6 Back Side Photo

iphone 6 Back and Front Side Photo

iphone 6 Back and Front Side Photo With Desplay

iphone 6 Top Side Photo

iphone 6 Top and Back Side Photo

Roll Your Data With eRoll

by Maher Singh on August 1, 2012

Roll Your Data With eRoll

While tablet devices an example would be Apples iPad are good for reading the news on various sites, many folks still find them cumbersome to transport around with them. But when using the advance of flexible displays, such as the one that Sony is busy doing something on, we could be seeing portable devices with rollable flexible displays, allowing us to easily support a gadget which can be used to learn the news. The eRoll concept is one such device. It looks such as a stick of a kind, and you’ll be ready to go for it the flexible display, easily acquiring the information you want on any readable display. Pretty nifty, huh? Now all they’ve to do is get this a fact, and we’d adore to review one.

Side eRoll Photo

Open eRoll Photo

Close eRoll Photo

iPhone 5 unveiling reportedly set for Sept. 12

Flurry of rumors also predicts advent of Apple iPad mini, new iPod touch, and iPod nano

By John Cox | Network World

Apple's iPhone 5 is due to be unveiled on Sept. 12, according to posts on three separate news or rumor websites. The new phone will be released before the end of the month, they say.
The latest iPhone rumors are being accompanied with a flurry of others: that Apple also will announce at or near the same time a new smaller version of the iPad (the so-called "iPad mini") as well as the iPad 4, a new iPod nano, and a new iPod touch.
[ Stay ahead of advances in mobile technology with InfoWorld's Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]
SCUTTLEBUTT: iPhone 5 rumor rollup for the week ending July 27
APPLE IPHONEYS: The iPhone 5 edition
iMore's Rene Ritchie, citing anonymous "sources who have proven accurate in the past," says Apple will hold a special event on Sept. 12 to unveil the next iPhone, which will be released nine days later on Friday, Sept. 21.
Ritchie's sources don't seem to have any new details on the phone's features. He repeats what could be called the iOSphere's Rumor Consensus: it will have a 4-inch, 16:9 screen, based on what's called "in-cell display" technology (creating a thinner screen assembly), a smaller dock connector, and a smaller SIM card. Together, these "should leave lots of room for the LTE radio we learned about earlier in the year, and the bigger battery to go along with it," he says.
Two other sites, The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog and The Verge, also cited sources saying Apple will hold an "event" the week of Sept. 9, but couldn't say it will be for the new iPhone.
John Paczkowski, at AllThingsD, posted that "Sources tell AllThingsD that Apple is currently planning an event for the week of September 9th, with Wednesday being the date on which it will likely be held. And while we haven't yet confirmed the event's focus, history suggests it will indeed be the new iPhone."

"Our own sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that date," posted Dante D'Orazio, at The Verge. "It's still not certain what will be announced at the event, but it seems very likely that it will be the next-generation iPhone."
As evidence for a "big fall product cycle" from Apple, Paczkowski says "you need only look at the recent spike in the company's prepayment for inventory components."
"According to Apple's latest 10-Q filing, prepayment for inventory components rose $1.15 billion sequentially in the June quarter," Paczkowski writes. "That's a big increase, one that puts such prepayments at their highest level in four years -- 12.6% of Apple's total sales, according to Wells Fargo Securities analyst Maynard Um. And as Um notes, they're a good indicator that Apple is ramping up for a big product launch -- or several of them."
There's a big difference between a big product launch and several product launches. In the case of iPhone and iPad, Apple is making them available in new, and big, markets, notably China. Just to have more iPhone 5 handsets available for sale will require expanded "inventory components" and production capability, for which Apple plans to spend around $8 billion this year.
The Loop's experienced Apple watcher, Jim Dalrymple had a typically laconic comment on the rumored Sept. 12 iPhone event: "Yep."
Apparently based on the same sources, iMore's Ritchie also claims Apple will announce the iPad mini, which "will be exactly like the 9.7-inch iPad, only scaled down to 7.x-inches," and a new iPod nano.

John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for Network World. Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnwcoxnww Email: john_cox@nww.com Blog RSS feed: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/2989/feed
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Tags: iPhone, Consumer Electronics, iPad, Smartphones, Apple