Hello guys!!!

Since I am planning to be home to watch the Mars lander, and many of us I assume will be watching lets watch together!

I can stream the best feed (NASA) via Zoom and we can all hang out and chat in my zoom for as long as we want. Gives us something to talk about in the down time!

I am not posting the meeting details on this page, but I have them up on my website so they do not get crawled. The link below has the zoom login and password.

https://m4urer.com/mars-lander-watch-party/

I will open the room a few hours early to hang out starting around 11am pac time. (2 hours pre landing)

The landing is at 12:55 p.m. PST - 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 18 or (20:55 GMT)

 

Wow, what a great idea @Foo2rama , and very selfless as well. I had planned to monitor the landing in some fashion but just found out I have to participate in mandatory safety training at exactly the same time (on Zoom! Arghh!). Good on you mate for organizing this, wish I could be there with all the OF space geeks.

 

Bummer, would have been great to catch up! Perhaps we do a virtual GTG in a few weeks.... hmm... I like that idea!

 

I might be able to stretch out lunch...

The only thing worse than a meeting is a Zoom meeting.

 

Work will interfere for me, but great idea & enjoy!

 

Nice, short article on the landing, complete with animation of the event here:

https://www.space.com/mars-rover-perseverance-landing-4k-video-animation

 

Awesome, it’ll be around 11PM my time so I should be able to join!

 

Great, the impeachment trial and now this. I need to hit the dispensary.......

 

Oh, this reminds me, I wanted to organise the same for the WRUD(Drinking) Today? thread...
Great idea, not sure I'm interested in Mars but just to say hi

 

Cool! Dr. Melissa Rice, who heads the new camera project for Perseverance, was keynote speaker at the local astronomical society meeting earlier today! Great speaker. The main camera, Mastcam-Z, is hers. To the Curiosity camera, it adds binocular vision, zoom lenses, and changeable filters so Perseverance can highlight parts of the spectrum of particular interest. She will be living her life on the Mars night shift after the landing!

 

So I watched the simulated landing video again and it actually made me wonder why NASA ditched the landing maneuver that was done with Spirit, it seems to be much safer and relays less on things working EXACTLY as they should...
Basically it used a giant airbag that surrounded the entire rover providing a somewhat gentle landing, it still used rockets to slow down but with this I feel like there was more room for error...
Any insight on this?

 

Heavier payload, less risk in landing in an unrecoverable spot. Better positioning in hard terrain.

 

Great idea! I have it blocked out on the calendar so should be able to join.

 

Hope to see many of you tomorrow!!!

It would be great to chat with you guys and gals!!!

Also like I said I will have the room open early, so feel free to come and go as you please!

The Zoom address is at this link.

https://m4urer.com/mars-lander-watch-party/

 

A good description of the Mars landing ~
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8860/nasas-next-mars-rover-is-ready-for-the-most-precise-landing-yet/

 

Who else is ready?

BTW - the asynchronous second hand with respect to the digital display is the result of me having illuminated the display just before taking the picture (stopping the second hand from sweeping while the display is lit up).

 

I plan on tuning in later.

 

What a great idea Phil!!
Despite a few work meetings here and there, I am planning on joining as well.

Looking forward to meeting some new faces...

 

Rooms open!

@Dor_42 & @vbrad26 are here hanging

 

BBC reports down successfully at 20:59 UTC! Edit: time of report -- I thought we should have an 11 minute signal delay?