• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Speculating on what Curiosity may find

This was out on Monday. Some folks think Anonymous might be taking a shot at hacking into Curiosity, although not confirmed. I'm not inclined to believe it's Anonymous, personally. Historically, they seem to be motivated by political agendas. I'm not sure how hacking into the Mars rover accomplishes that, unless one of their members has an interest in conspiracy theories and thinks NASA is hiding something. Very odd...
 
^ Breaking news from the rover's twitter feed!!!


I HAVE DISCOVERED LIFE ON MARS! 2h

WAIT. DID I SAY 'LIFE'? I MEANT TO SAY 'ANOTHER STUPID BROWN ROCK'. FUCK. 2h



:p

Just for those of us who don't have a sense of humor, the link in Gaith's post is misspelled, and could represent typosquatting.

The correct link to the Curiosity Rover's Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity, according to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html.
 
It's also a Twitter feed he, and others, have linked to over the last week or so that's a parody of the official one by a much more sarcastic and disillusioned Curiosity rover.
 
This was out on Monday. Some folks think Anonymous might be taking a shot at hacking into Curiosity, although not confirmed. I'm not inclined to believe it's Anonymous, personally. Historically, they seem to be motivated by political agendas. I'm not sure how hacking into the Mars rover accomplishes that, unless one of their members has an interest in conspiracy theories and thinks NASA is hiding something. Very odd...

Amazing the mounting speculation that arose from just one little blip of a supposed "attempt". The communication protocols and intimate knowledge of Curiosity's interface is very likely NOT posted on servers connected to the Internet for anyone to hack into. Plus, the communications equipment used to talk to Curiosity is manually controlled, in addition to there being a very narrow window of time each day when communication is possible--at which point someone is manning the equipment. I seriously doubt anybody from Anonymous could hack into JPL and start overriding Curiosity's programming. If anything, I'll bet that people are just trying to find documents stored about the MSL program and see if they can dig up anything classified.
 
If "Anonymous" can "hack into" Curiosity with the ease they can hack into Facebook or whatever I'll a)be impressed with their ability to talk to totally propitiatory software 200 million miles away b)unimpressed with NASA's ability to secure a remotely operated device 20 light-minutes away.
 
Hack into NASA, sure. Hack directly into any aspect of the rover operations, no way. Every bit of data going back and forth is checked and rechecked and overseen by a team of live people. It would be like robbing Fort Knox while its being visited by the President.

But if by some weird cascade of failures this ever happened and they did fuck with the rover, I say those people should be shot straight to Mars to study the decomposition of human remains on the Martian surface.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top