The NASA-JPL Control Room Conversations and News Conference Reporting of the Mars Landing on the NASA Channel (Channel No. 346 on DirecTV) was almost exclusively SI early this morning for performance data; distances in meters or kilometers, speeds in meters per second, remaining fuel in kilograms etc. (except for pressure in psia).
It was a disappointment to see graphical simulations of entry into the Mars Atmosphere in mph. I believe, without proof yet in hand, that most of the hardware was engineered in millimeters. Gene Mechtly ________________________________ From: Kilopascal [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 6:38 AM To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: BBC News - Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover set for high risk landing Curiosity has landed safely, but the bad news is that page after page of news articles reported the event in USC, even NASA's reporting. The only metric reporting I could find was the BBC. The BBC is metric only and is using rounded numbers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19078494 At this New York Times link a tweet MSL Curiosity gives some data in metric. Official Touchdown Time: 5:14:39 UTC! #MSL<https://twitter.com/search/%23MSL> Touchdown Speed: 0.6739 m/s Vertical and 0.044 m/s Horizontal - Below nominal, very gentle! #MSL<https://twitter.com/search/%23MSL> 140.6 Kilograms of Fuel were remaining at the Point of Flyaway. That is well ABOVE the tight Margin! #MSL<https://twitter.com/search/%23MSL> http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/curiosity-is-set-to-land-on-mars/ I still don't know if Curiosity is metric behind the scenes and all the reporting is just converted to USC. If it is USC, I guess we can be assured it is the last project that NASA is doing. Future project will be done by private companies, many (if not all) of them already working in metric only.
