Latest Curiosity Stories

[ Watch the Video: President Obama Congratulates Curiosity Team ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online "What you've accomplished embodies the American spirit." This praise came from President Barack Obama in a phone call from Air Force One to the operations team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in which he lauded NASA's "incredibly impressive" mission in landing the Curiosity rover on Mars last week. Obama's call was both congratulatory and lighthearted....

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Was it wreckage from an extraterrestrial spacecraft? Was it a smudge of dirt on the camera lens? Was it a dust devil that just happened to be in the right place at the right time? As it turns out, it was none of the above. The "it" in question was a mysterious smudge that appeared on a photo taken by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity shortly after it landed at Gale Crater early Monday morning. The origin of the smudge in...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity landing and the early images captured by the NASA rover have garnered a lot of attention over the past week, but they aren't the only ones gaining fame as a result of the mission. In fact, one of the dozens of scientists awaiting the "seven minutes of terror" at NASA's mission control facility on Sunday night was a 32-year-old flight engineer and Oakland, California native known as Bobak...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA is releasing even more photographs taken by the Curiosity rover during its first week of service on the Red Planet. The rover landed on Mars on Sunday night and NASA has been testing the rover out to see if all of its functions work properly. In one of the latest images released by the space agency, you get a full 360-degree view of what Curiosity gets to see on the alien planet in Gale Crater. The panoramic image is in...

[ Watch the Video: Curiosity Lands On Mars ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Since landing on Mars, Curiosity has been uploading tons of data back to Earth, including 3D images taken by its onboard cameras. The first thumbnail was received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory just moments after it was confirmed that Curiosity had a successful landing. From the moment the heat shield was ejected from the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity began snapping photos....

PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies, which oversees funding for NASA, was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to witness the landing of the rover Curiosity on Mars. He released this statement: "NASA has always been a model of public and private partnering - our brightest home-grown entrepreneurs and innovators...

[ Watch the Video: Curiosity Lands On Mars ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Curiosity landed safely on Mars a short time ago and is already transmitting images back to NASA. The first images are low-resolution black and white photos showing rocks, dust, and the rover's shadow taken with the Hazcam camera. According to redOrbit's on-site reporter, Lee Rannals, images started arriving around 10:34 PST, just minutes after a safe touchdown was confirmed. "I...

SILVER SPRING, Md., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Discovery Communications, the world's number one nonfiction media company, announced today the launch of Curiosity.com, the first prong of the company's multi-year, multi-platform content initiative called CURIOSITY. The first-of-its-kind site brings together some of the greatest visionaries, scholars and trendsetters of our time on a proprietary social expert Q&A platform. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110620/PH22609 )...

RIT Professor Invites Students to Explore the World of Color Rochester, NY (Vocus/PRWEB) January 21, 2011 What is color? What does the world look like to the colorblind? And why are rainbows formed? The Color Curiosity Shop has the answers. The educational website for students answers more than 200 common questions about color using short answers, vibrant photos and video. The resource was developed over the past four years by Mark Fairchild, associate dean for research and graduate...

Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time.Engineers and technicians wore "bunny suits" while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet).Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to...