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NASA's Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity's precarious Mars landing explained (video) Jun 26th 2012, 01:29 Edited and scored with dramatic tension of a summer blockbuster trailer, NASA's put together a gripping short clip that dresses down Curiosity's mission to Mars for the layman. The "car-sized" rover, set to touchdown on August 5th of this year at 10:31PM PDT, is currently journeying towards the Red Planet on a suicide mission of sorts, with the success of its make it or break it EDL (enter, descent, landing) wracking the nerves of our Space Agency's greatest minds in advance. Their cause for concern? A period of radio silence, dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" for the amount of time it takes a signal to reach Earth, during which the craft will have already either smashed disastrously into the Martian landscape or nestled perfectly down from the ascend phase on a 21ft long tether. The logistics involved are so numerous and prone to error -- slowing the craft from 13,000 mph to 0 mph and then deploying, detaching and avoiding collision with the supersonic parachute for starters -- that it's a wonder the government ever signed off on the project. If it all does come off without a hitch, however, the ladies and gents down at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory certainly deserve several thousand bottles of the finest bubbly taxpayer's money can buy. Click on past the break to gape at the sequence of engineering feats required to make this landing on terra incognita. Continue reading NASA's Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity's precarious Mars landing explained (video) NASA's Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity's precarious Mars landing explained (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |  NASA  | Email this | Comments Bing Maps gets another 165TB of satellite images, Google Earth seen sulking in a corner Jun 26th 2012, 00:57 Thought that Google had cornered the market on free, overhead-view photo mapping solutions? You clearly don't reside in Redmond, because Bing Maps' aerial image library just got another 165TB worth of hi-res data that covers an additional 38 million square kilometers of the globe. To put that in perspective, Microsoft's mapping solution previously had but 129TB worth of such eye-in-the-sky imagery, so this new batch of satellite shots more than doubles your viewing pleasure. Go ahead, check out all the new visuals at the source link below, we promise not to tell the folks in Mountain View. Bing Maps gets another 165TB of satellite images, Google Earth seen sulking in a corner originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |  Bing Maps Blog  | Email this | Comments Nokia's Play To app now available for Lumia devices, enables DLNA-connectivity Jun 26th 2012, 00:28 Hot on the heels of its Camera Extras app, Nokia is again satiating Lumia owners' hunger for expanded features with its recently released (and officially out of beta) Play To app for Windows Phone. For those unfamiliar, this essentially Espoo's take on DLNA, allowing you to stream multimedia from your phone to any DLNA-equipped devices connected within your local network. As My Nokia Blog notes, the app has gladly arrived earlier than expected, and it's free to download just like the company's other Lumia-exclusive offerings in the Marketplace (a.k.a. the Nokia collection). So what are you waiting for? Hit up the Marketplace from your device to download it for yourself and let us know how it goes in the comments. Nokia's Play To app now available for Lumia devices, enables DLNA-connectivity originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 20:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink My Nokia Blog  |   | Email this | Comments Google: Chromebooks now serve web-happy students in over 500 European, US school districts Jun 25th 2012, 23:54 Whatever you think of the latest round of Chromebooks, school districts have clearly latched on to existing models. Over 500 school districts across Europe and the US are currently deploying the Google-powered laptops for learning the web way. Specialized web app packs and that rare leasing model are already keeping the material relevant and the hardware evergreen, but new certification for US ready-for-college criteria will go a long way towards making sure principals everywhere take a shine to Chrome OS in the future. That still leaves a lot of schools going the more traditional Mac or Windows PC route, with the occasional tablet strategy thrown in; regardless, we're sure Google doesn't mind taking any noticeable chunk of the market in a relatively brief period of time. We'll see if there's more reasons for Mountain View to get excited in a few days. Google: Chromebooks now serve web-happy students in over 500 European, US school districts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink TechCrunch  |  Google Enterprise Blog  | Email this | Comments

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