RWC snaps New Mars pics

1 or 2 new snaps by NASA's RWC (Rover with Camera) Curiosity.

first pics

It will be 2 weeks before we see more pics from the 'real' cameras, that's how long it takes just to run diagnositics!

more: Building Curiosity

Cameras

NASA inadvertently endorsed Windows XP at the landing party... no wonder they're going under, still paying off Windows licenses!

Windoze

Comforting to know they're using the Professional edition, and not Home Basic

XP is still the only Windows software that actually worked reasonably. Vista is one of the main reasons I switched everything to Mac.

Amazing, how they spent billions to build this machine, those dust free suits must have cost a pretty penny and then first thing I see when I look at the landing pics is these gigantic dust marks on the lens. Wonder how they are going to clean that?

Frankly I think they used the wrong people to build the machine. They should have let the guys from monster trucks build one. Just in case there is something out there, make a proper statement.

"Oh your radio trigger works from the next room? Ours works from the next PLANET! In your face Pocket Wizard, BOOYA!" (NASA scientist in my head)

Creepy fellow that one

Interesting to see the cameras are only 2 megapixels. But i suppose they will stitch the images to make larger ones.

From what I understand those cams are just used for steering so small images constantly sent (webcam style).
It does have proper high res cameras as well but they still were doing diagnostics etc before starting to send those images.

They might want to also edit out alien footprints etc before publishing..

The 'proper' cameras are indeed low-res, because bandwidth is limited to +-30MB/240Mbits per day, and they were designed and approved in 2004.
(Talk about sticking to the spec!)

Images transmitted are kept to the smallest possible (and it's just a bunch of rocks anyway).
Of more interest are the soil samples and analysis, which will take up a lot of the bandwidth, and navigation... not much room left for HD image-greedy public :)

We can forgive their low-res though, the cameras can capture a wider range than the visible spectrum.