It was an intense time at Auckland Observatory watching live stream of the Curiosity landing on Monday sixth August 2012 on that day, that there were crowds in waiting for military marine style touchdown moment. Thinking back that moment in time was interesting to watch the same control room in which watch back successive landings of Sprit and Opportunity, looking back there was least three generations of rovers, two Sprit and Opportunity, then later Curiosity blue polo shirts are cool team!, whom have the same moment of excitement as they were landing awesomely on the Moon this time Mars for the first time like Apollo 11 did.
NASA-Eyes on the Solar System-Beta
This a web app is interesting, having found it on interestingly on Felicia Day’s tweet which she mentioned on NASA- Eyes on the Solar system, the application is very similar to the other apps of Star walk, and solar walk, the environmentally feel of the user interface, gives you real time translated computer simulation for mostly of the explorational probes position, also the Solar System of its Planets and moons, Dwarf planets. Asteroids, Comet positioning and spacecraft.
Also it’s quite helpfull to visualize where, how the process of the landing is performed in real timeish events and conditions.
One interesting thing about this Java based web application is it gives you directionally control of a 3d environment, changing the date and time view of what you would see during that temporal time stamp moment either it’s forward or past. Also it has its multimedia feed showing updates of each different item it has.
Like to know more check out the NASA –Eyes on the solar system.
NASA-Explore Mars: Curiosity-Beta
This other web application came through a suggestion from a friend to check it out it’s pretty cool, it give you daily outline stories of what’s going on with Curiosity, also puts you in a 3D computer modelling environment of Gale Crater, where’s MSL- Curiosity (Mars Surveyor Lander) is home to for is duration off its mission, tanking around with its six wheeled self, exploring and adventuring where the team Curiosity at JPL takes it to.
Like to know more check out Explore Mars:Curiosity.