Web Viewership Of New Mars Rover Construction Tops Million Mark
PASADENA, Calif. -- More than one million people watched assembly and testing of NASA's next Mars rover via a live webcam since it went on-line in October.NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, also known as the Curiosity rover, is being tested and assembled in a clean room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The webcam, affectionately dubbed "Curiosity Cam" shows engineers and technicians clad in head-to-toe white smocks working on the rover.
Metrics from the webcam's hosting platform, Ustream, showed more than
one million unique viewers spent more than 400,000 hours watching
Curiosity Cam between Oct. 21 and Nov. 23. There have been more than
2.3 million viewer sessions.
The camera is mounted in the viewing gallery of the Spacecraft
Assembly Facility at JPL. While the gallery is a regular stop on
JPL's public tour, Curiosity Cam allows visitors from around the
world to see NASA engineers at work without traveling to Pasadena.
Viewers from Chile, Japan, Turkey, Spain, Mexico and the United
Kingdom have sent good wishes and asked questions in the chat box
that accompanies the Curiosity Cam webstream. At scheduled times,
viewers can interact with each other and JPL staff.
The chat schedule is updated weekdays at:
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl
Months of assembly and testing remain before the car-sized rover is
ready for launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The rover and spacecraft
components will ship to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida next
spring. The launch will occur between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011.
Curiosity will arrive on Mars in August 2012.
The rover is one of the most technologically challenging
interplanetary missions ever designed. Curiosity is engineered to
drive longer distances over rougher terrain than previous Mars
rovers. It will carry a science payload 10 times the mass of
instruments on NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
Curiosity will investigate whether the landing region had environments
favorable for supporting microbial life. It will also look for
environments that have been favorable for preserving evidence about
whether life existed.
Continuous live video of rover construction is available at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
For information and news about Curiosity, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/msl
Social media audiences can learn more about the mission on Twitter at
and Facebook at:
http://www.twitter.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
Source: NASA
