A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

One crazy fact about Curiosity's landing on Mars!

Definitely a major milestone in Space exploration. Let me start here by congratulating NASA.

Just in case you did not know:
1. It takes 14 minutes for the signal from the Rover to reach Earth.
2. It takes approximately 7 minutes for the Rover to land on Mars after it touches the Mars atmosphere.

Here goes the crazy fact: By the time, we, on Earth, get the signal from the rover that it has touched the Mars atmosphere, the rover has already landed safely or got destructed somewhere!!

Everything was automatic, with no chance for course correction. With more than 500,000 lines of code and Zero margin of error... Absolutely phenomenal !!

Check out some cool videos on the NASA website:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=18895

Credits: www.nasa.gov

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