Review: NASA’s Curiosity App for Windows 8 lets you explore Mars rover in detail - crawfordthereque1967

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Attractive price tag
Solid educational subject

Cons

You don't get to drive the rover
No more animations other than opening chronological succession

Our Verdict

Red Planet Rover: Curiosity is nice educational app that you'll probably uninstall after few sessions.

As I write these lines, a car-sized robot powered by 32 cubes of atomic number 94 is roaming the surface of Mars, taking photos using zero less than 17 cameras, vaporizing stuff with infrared laser beams, drilling into rocks, and loosely having a blast. NASA's Curiosity rover is nonpareil of the blank agency's most ambitious, important, and exciting scientific missions.

The Sport utility-sized Oddity rover is packed with scientific power train optimized for an estrange landscape painting.

As you Crataegus laevigata look from a machine that had to exist flown for over 350 million miles just to commenc its work, Curiosity is an improbably complex beast. Advisement in at 1980 pounds, the rover carries 180 pounds of scientific instruments. Same nice way to gain a better understanding of those instruments and the rover's delegation is victimization National Aeronautics and Space Administration and JPL's free Windows 8 app, Mars Rover: Curiosity.

The app's opening animation shows the rover's dramatic descent onto the shallow of Mars.

The app launches with a fair spiritedness of the rover's dramatic descent to the show u of Mars. Once the animation plays out, you're left with a 3D exemplary of the rover parked on the surface of Mars. You can use your sneak or touch screen to wobble your viewpoint round the model and zoom in or out, though alas, you don't get to drive: The entire show is static, with no animation at all.

The app explains each of the rover's important parts, simply uses mainly text to DO so.

As you rotate around the rover, icons pop terminated its different parts. Click an icon, and a sidebar pops heart-to-heart on the left side of the riddle with a comprehensive account about the part questionable. To the highest degree sidebars contain an figure OR deuce, and are quite schoolbook-great.

There's no video recording content: Just lots to read. The prose is simple and relatively free of acronyms. You can access explanations almost the rover's power station, the Mars Descent Imager, the arm and hand, and nearly any unusual major system. The have is nice, just non take care-blowing.

Otherwise than the main attracter, the app includes four links to additional resources.

Once you're done exploring the scouter, you can hit Back and switch to a overloaded-screen menu with five tiles: The rover geographic expedition screen, a beauteous telecasting of the landing place which combines footage from mission operate and animations of the serve, a link to NASA's Be a Martian app, and a yoke to NASA's Oddity website.

Given the rover's exciting mission and the app's attractive price tag (on the loose), Mars Rover: Curiosity is worth taking for a spin. This is an app you'll likely exclusive use once or twice, but it offers an interesting way to find out out more about one of humanity's most advanced forays into external space yet.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/453102/review-nasas-curiosity-app-for-windows-8-lets-you-explore-mars-rover-in-detail.html

Posted by: crawfordthereque1967.blogspot.com