Trivia
HardWhat Purpose Does The Penny Aboard NASA’s Curiosity Rover Serve?
Answer: Camera Calibration
Among all the high-tech and thoroughly modern paraphernalia covering Curiosity Rover, there is a distinctly vintage accessory. Attached to the deck of the rover is one shiny 1909 Lincoln penny.
What purpose does a penny epoxied to the Rover serve? The presence of the penny is part nod to tradition and part practical use. Geologists traditionally include coins, often pennies, in photographs to show the scale of the samples they are photographing–in that same vein the Lincoln penny aboard the craft can be used for scale reference when presenting photos from the rover to the public.
In addition to providing a sense of scale the penny also serves a more important function as a camera calibration target for the Rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager camera array (along side other calibration targets including a color reference chart, metric bar graph, and stair-step patterns).
Trivia
HardWhat Do Humans Have That Platypuses Do Not?
Trivia
HardThe Largest Flying Creature In History Was The?
Trivia
HardThe First Food Deliberately Cooked By Microwave Radiation Was?
Trivia
Very HardScientists Have Developed An Electrical Wand To Help Fight What?
Trivia
HardCloudflare Uses Which Of These Items To Generate Random Cryptographic Data?
Trivia
HardWho Coined The Term Meme?
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HardThe First Effective Treatment For Syphilis Was What?
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HardThe Target Corporation Runs A State-of-the-Art Lab Devoted To What?
Trivia
HardFAA Regulations Require All Commercial Aircraft Have What Anachronistic Item?