Feb 9, 2013

Man, it’s a whole new world. Every day, I see something new and think to myself “I would have never thought of doing that.” Even with something as simple as potty training. Well, actually that would depend, huh? It felt like a laborious chore to potty train all three of my kids, yet I have a friend with kids the same age as my three who trained hers in...

Feb 8, 2013

Curiosity’s robotic arm is 2.1 m (6.9 ft) long, weighs 30 kg (66 lb) and has a diameter, including mounted tools, of about 60 cm (24 in). The arm helps scientists get up close and personal with Martian rocks and soil. The arm makes use of three joints, the rover’s shoulder, elbow and wrist, to extend it forward and to stow it while driving. The cross...

Feb 2, 2013

Curiosity has seventeen “eyes” that help it to perform its duties. Six cameras help Curiosity navigate around the Gale crater and four cameras perform experiments. The rover has four pairs of Hazcams or Hazard Avoidance Cameras that it uses to keep from getting lost or crashing into obstacles. Each of these cameras have a wide field of vision (120...

Jan 26, 2013

At the heart of Curiosity’s brains are two identical on-board computers called the Rover Compute Element (RCE), which contains radiation hardened memory in order to withstand the extreme radiation from space. Each computer contains 256 KB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM and 2 GB of flash memory. The central processing unit is called the RAD750 and was made by...

Jan 24, 2013

The Mars Science Laboratory Mission is tasked with searching areas of the red planet for past or present conditions favorable for life and conditions capable of preserving a record of life. The object tasked with fulfilling those objectives is a SUV-sized rover named Curiosity. Ten feet long, nine feet wide and seven feet tall, the one ton vehicle is comprised...

Jan 15, 2013

As an avid fan fiction reader, one of my go-to sites for new material is FanFiction.Net, a huge online depository of stories that allows authors to post their own stories and gives readers the ability to review, rate and get alerts on updates. There are some things about the site I don’t like or agree with, but overall, I’ve been a regular there for...