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Friday's top headlines won't judge you by your megapixels:

The Curiosity Mars rover cost $2.5 billion, so why are the cameras just 2 megapixels? The answer comes down to time: Time the rover was planned, the time it takes NASA to test, and the time it takes to transmit larger file sizes.

As Apple and Samsung duke it out in court over patents and copycat claims, Google isn't sitting back quietly. CNET has learned that Google is quietly helping out it's Android partner Samsung with legal advice.

Not all NASA news this week has been … Read more

Apple is using Samsung's own words against it in their high-stakes patent-infringement trial.

Apple pointed to an internal Samsung document highlighting the weaknesses of the Galaxy S1 compared with the iPhone as further evidence that Samsung has copied its work. The document, a "relative evaluation report" on the Galaxy S1 and iPhone published in March 2010 and unearthed by Apple, highlights where Samsung's flagship phone fell short of the iPhone.

Apple will draw on this document as proof that Samsung actively compared its products against the iPhone, and made strides to better mimic the blockbuster device. … Read more

The 1976 Viking mission to Mars uncovered some tantalizing, and much-debated, evidence of possible previous life on the big, red planet. Now we have the Curiosity rover over there to really sort things out.

Among other adventures, Curiosity is looking for organic molecules. The discovery of organic compounds could indicate previous life on Mars, though that life isn't likely to look like a toothy, long-headed alien that wants to hug your face.

While we wait for the rover to wander around and report back on its findings over the course of its mission, we have plenty of time to speculate about what it might find. … Read more

Engineers are gearing up to flush entry, descent and landing software from the Curiosity rover's central computer and replace it with programming optimized for surface operations, mission managers said Thursday.

In the meantime, the rover has snapped its first 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in Gale Crater and beamed down an initial set of low-resolution thumbnail frames that provide a hint of things to come. The full-resolution frames will be eight times sharper than the thumbnails, but they must be moved from the camera's memory to the main computer for later relay to Earth.

Frames from a … Read more

Geeks everywhere are riveted by the new images of Mars the Curiosity rover is beaming back to Earth. What you might be surprised to hear is just how few megapixels are involved in bringing those photos to us.

The rover sports 12 cameras in all, but the main imaging cameras have measly 2MP sensors. Wait, what? Was NASA trying to discourage the rover from taking too many vacation snapshots?… Read more

With the masthead fully extended and the Curiosity rover's systems coming to life on the surface of Mars, NASA is beginning to return stunning views of the Red Planet, and today the agency released two stunning 360-degree panoramas from inside the Gale Crater.

Click the images to see the full-size panoramas from the surface of Mars. (And when you're done viewing a full-size version, scroll to the bottom right corner of the image to close it.)

You can see the full-resolution version of the above panorama here.

You can see the full-resolution version of … Read more

While the world is still basking in the glow of NASA's successful landing of its Curiosity rover on Mars, a flight of the space agency's experimental Morpheus lander had a much more unfortunate ending today.

According to Space.com, the lander crashed and burned at Kennedy Space Center this afternoon after its first free-flight test went badly awry.

"The @MorpheusLander experienced a failure, causing it to catch fire," NASA tweeted. "No one was injured. Information will be released as soon as possible."

But Space.com added that in a statement, NASA said that, "… Read more

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Thursday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far.

Not for the first time, and surely not for the last, we bring you another first from the Curiosity rover.

NASA has now released the first full-resolution images from Curiosity, which arrived on Mars late Sunday in a dramatic landing following an eight-month, one-way commute from Earth. The initial images sent back from the newly arrived rover, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, were low-res images, the better to get them back quickly and to help confirm that Curiosity was all in one piece.

The two just-released black-and-white images, which have been stitched together to show as a single … Read more