Just tell me what's under the box!

August 14, 2012 6:34 AM

Question about the Mars Curiosity rover and its power source.

Like many of the rest of you, I've been following Curiosity's reports back to the mother planet since it landed. The pictures are amazing, especially the color panoramas like this one. But if you look at the nuclear powered heat exchanger, you can pretty clearly see that part of it is blacked out. Is part of this technology classified? Does anyone know? I'd greatly appreciate any further information or reading that anyone can give me to assuage my curiosity (yuk yuk).

posted by Osrinith to science & nature (11 answers total)

the radiation probably affects the camera, so it may be designed not to look directly at it, like many spacecraft (like the hubble telescope) are designed to avoid looking directly at the sun.
posted by sexyrobot at 6:43 AM on August 14, 2012

Here's a video with some more info and views of mockups
posted by ghharr at 6:44 AM on August 14, 2012

Not sure about the precise details in this case, but it is far more likely to be 'Export Controlled' under US ITAR/EAR policies rather than actually classified. This is a lesser classification that is not secret per se, but still have strict guidelines regarding sharing information with foreign nationals (how 'strict' varies strongly by nationality)
posted by McSwaggers at 6:44 AM on August 14, 2012

Usually the black boxes merely indicate part of the photo mosaic that has not yet been returned to Earth or, for whatever reason, were corrupted on the way from Mars to Earth.
posted by inturnaround at 6:45 AM on August 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yup, It's more likely to be a missing tile in the panorama rather than censorship.
posted by zamboni at 6:53 AM on August 14, 2012

Glitch in the panorama. It's fine in this version.
posted by smackfu at 6:55 AM on August 14, 2012 [5 favorites]

Also, it's worth mentioning that pano is from a third party and they may have taken more liberties to get a good photo than are strictly necessary. Like painting in the sun.
posted by smackfu at 6:58 AM on August 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Oh, also, if you want more information nasa has a whole website devoted to Radioisotope Power that has information on NASA's Radioisotope Technology in general, and some on curiosity in particular.
posted by McSwaggers at 6:58 AM on August 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

the radiation probably affects the camera,

Shouldn't be a problem. It's all alpha radiation, which doesn't penetrate.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:17 AM on August 14, 2012

Its gotta be data loss. RTG's are ancient technology (1950s). This is like blacking out the horse on a buggy.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:46 AM on August 14, 2012

Awesome, folks. Thanks!
posted by Osrinith at 7:46 AM on August 14, 2012