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Subscribe to RSSJet Propulsion Laboratory scientists eagerly await the new, improved Mars rover's touch down to begin the search for life on the red planet. KNBC's Patrick Healy reports.
Anyone who's looked at the "Seven Minutes of Terror" trailer for next month's Mars landing might have wondered whether the planners behind NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission really knew what they were doing — and although the planners insist they're confident, they also say they're nervous.
"There's not a whole lot we can do about it at this point, except just be nervous," said Dave Beaty, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
You can test the mood for yourself by tuning in our "Virtually Speaking Science" talk show at 9 p.m. ET tonight, via BlogTalkRadio or the Second Life virtual world. Beaty and I will be talking about the buildup to the Aug. 5 landing, and taking your questions through Second Life, Twitter (use the hashtag #askvs) and the phone lines. If you can't make it, don't worry: You'll be able to listen to the hourlong podcast via BlogTalkRadio's archive or iTunes.
Experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity rover's landing plan.
Falling into place
All the pieces are falling into place for the Mars Science Laboratory's landing sequence, aimed at putting the subcompact car-sized Curiosity rover down within Gale Crater. On Tuesday, NASA maneuvered its Mars Odyssey orbiter into the correct trajectory to pass over the landing site just in time to pick up telemetry from the probe.
The MSL spacecraft is currently within 2.2 million miles (3.6 million kilometers) of Mars and closing in fast. The big nail-biter is scheduled for just after 10 p.m. PT on Aug. 5 (1 a.m. ET Aug. 6), when the spacecraft is supposed to blaze through Mars' atmosphere, spring a parachute, pop off its heat shield and let loose a rocket-powered sky crane platform that will hover about 66 feet (20 meters) above the Martian surface and lower Curiosity on cables. Then the cables will cut loose and the sky crane will fly itself out of the way, leaving Curiosity to get down to business.
JPL
Dave Beaty is chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"I've met with the engineers," Beaty told me. "I've seen their presentations, and they can be very convincing. But you have to hold your breath a little bit and trust that they know what they're doing."
This multibillion-dollar mission depends on everything working right — and there's even more at stake than just the mission. If next month's landing fails, that could spark even more questions about the future of NASA's troubled Mars exploration effort. The failures of Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander in 1999 led to years of rethinking and retrenchment, and the soul-searching would probably go far deeper in this current age of tightened budgets and downscaled ambitions.
On the other hand, a successful landing would set a sunny tone for what's likely to be years of exploration by the most capable interplanetary robot ever created. During tonight's talk show, Beaty will probably be a lot more willing to talk about that type of scenario, just as he was when I interviewed him on Monday. Check out this edited transcript, and bring your follow-up questions to "Virtually Speaking Science" at 9 p.m. ET.
Cosmic Log: So, there's less than two weeks before the big Mars landing — what's going on there at JPL?
Dave Beaty: We're getting very nervous. There's not a whole lot we can do about it at this point, except just be nervous. But this is a significant thing. It's one of these points in history that may change the trajectory of things that happen afterward, whether we end up with a successful landing or an unsuccessful landing.
Q: What do you see as the outcome for failure, and the outcome for failure? What would that mean to the Mars exploration program?
A: Well, just having a successful landing, by itself, is of course huge good news. It enables the scientific return from the mission to happen, which will play out over the next Mars year — that's two Earth years, more or less. Once the rover lands, it has to raise its antenna, do some checkouts, get moving, and then drive over to this mountain that has the stratigraphy we're interested in.
It's sort of like the Grand Canyon way of looking at rock. You get this beautiful exposure of stratigraphy because of the erosion of this mountain. We want to climb up the side of the mountain and check the layering, like John Wesley Powell did just after the Civil War when he went one-arming up and down the Grand Canyon. That was one of the great geological expeditions of all time, as far as I'm concerned.
The site we want to look at is great. It's a little hard to predict exactly what we're going to see inside those rocks if we end up on the success pathway. We know what we're looking for: What are the rocks? What is the nature of the layering? Are there signals that the layers were "habitable" — i.e., had the potential for a life form to have lived there, had a life form been present. If there's a positive outcome on that, then we would definitely want to send another mission — either back to the same place, to check out whether there's any sign of something actually there; or potentially to another place that has the same kind of layering, but some other kind of characteristic.
Here on Earth, one of the big issues we face is that the preservation of the signs of life is very uneven. We know that there's life everywhere on Earth, right? And it's been here in sort of the form that we see it when we look out our windows, back to the time of the Cambrian, which is 600 million years ago. But if you look at the sedimentary rocks, they don't all contain fossils, they don't all contain pollen. You've got to look carefully to understand what has happened to the rock since its formation, and whether it would have included the signs of life, and whether those signs would have survived through all the subsequent things that happened to the rock.
It's not a guarantee that we would go back to exactly the same place, but we would certainly want to go back somewhere if we received this encouragement.
Q: And the implications of failure?
A: If it's a bad landing, the question would be, what is the reason why? In my experience, the public and Congress and all the people surrounding us would be accepting of a failure that was just a bad weather day, or if you land sideways on a rock, or some other sort of bad luck that happens because of what Mars has done to us. They tend to be less forgiving of a mistake made by a human being here on Earth. So, those are two very different kinds of scenarios. Just the fact of a bad day doesn't tell you enough to know what the implication might be.
Seven minutes of terror is what NASA is calling the waiting period to find out whether the Curiosity rover has survived what could be the trickiest landing ever attempted. NBC's Tom Costello reports.
Q: A lot of people wonder about how the sky crane is going to work, or whether the heat shield will work properly — the "seven minutes of terror." Is that what you have in mind? Everything that could be done has been done, of course, but if something goes wrong, I suspect people will want to focus on the process for doing something that's never been done before.
A: Almost everything we do at Mars has never been done before. That's what makes this exciting from the point of view of the engineers. They're here to do the impossible. That sky crane landing has some very powerful advantages, if it works. I've met with the engineers, I've seen their presentations, and they can be very convincing. But you have to hold your breath a little bit and trust that they know what they're doing.
Q: If everything works nominally, will we see the sky crane become the main method for getting large payloads down to the surface of Mars?
A: I absolutely think so. For the robotic exploration missions, the bigger question is, do we want the payloads to keep getting bigger? We know for sure that the pathway to eventual human missions has to involve bigger and bigger payloads, because the humans and all their support systems are heavy. This particular landing system will land a payload that's bigger than can be landed with airbags. The airbag would not survive. So it is heading in the direction that we need to follow if we believe in eventual human exploration. Whether the next robotic mission needs to be the same size as MSL — that's an interesting question. We may want to get it smaller, in part to bring the cost down.
Q: What's your role going to be on the night of the landing?
A: I just got my assignment. I will be at Beckman Auditorium at Caltech, with an audience of 1,136 people, which is the auditorium's capacity. I'll be standing in front of them with the NASA feed on the screen behind me, and my instructions are to narrate it like a tennis match. You can interject a little bit of commentary, but you don't want to detract from the main show, which is what's on the screen.
Q: So when will you know if the landing's been successful?
A: The landing itself is at 10:32 p.m. Pacific time, and we've placed both orbiters [Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter] so they will be in position to watch the descent as it comes down. By 10:32 or 10:33, they should have the data to know whether the landing was successful. They may get an ambiguous answer and not know for sure whether it was successful or not successful. That may take a little while longer to sort that out. It's hard to end up with a for-sure crash scenario quickly, because the signals are likely to be less than obvious. But if it's successful, we'll know very quickly.
Tune in "Virtually Speaking Science" on BlogTalkRadio or in Second Life. Dave Beaty and I will be at the StellaNova Small Auditorium, courtesy of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics, at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT/SLT) tonight. If you miss the live event, don't worry: It'll be archived by "Virtually Speaking" on BlogTalkRadio as well as iTunes.
Previous episodes of "Virtually Speaking Science":
- SETI Institute's Seth Shostak about aliens and UFOs
- Paul Doherty on solar eclipses and the transit of Venus
- Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto on spaceflight and Yuri's Night
- JPL's Dave Beaty on the search for life on Mars
- Shawn Lawrence Otto on science and politics
- Ig Nobel impresario Marc Abrahams on silly science
- Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin on Mars exploration
- Propulsion expert Marc Millis on interstellar spaceflight
- Sean Carroll on the puzzling frontiers of physics
- Rand Simberg on the private-enterprise vision for spaceflight
- Martin Hoffert on the future of energy policy
- George Djorgovski on science in virtual worlds
- Alan Stern on suborbital research and NASA's mission to Pluto
- Col. 'Coyote' Smith on the outlook for space solar power
- Tim Pickens on rocket ventures and the Google Lunar X Prize
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Crossing all my fingers and toes for this big basket of eggs!
Hopefully in the not too far future we'll have something that is a little more tried and true for getting to and landing on other places in the solar system. Along the lines of the SpaceX Dragon ship that is in planning for regular lift offs via Falcon rockets and landings under it's own thruster power. Do that regularly and landing on Mars will be much less nail biting than these "one time custom" missions.
I absolutely have my fingers crossed and will share the "7 minutes of terror" with the folks at JPL. My wife is a PI on a multi-million dollar grant. But she is a psychologist and there is scant risk of anythig going wrong that canot be eadily fix. I simply cannot get my head around the complexity of this event series. It is mind-bending. The risk analysis has to be like something from Dante.
There is an incredible amount of "new" science on this lander, especially in the descent methodology, and even a little new science/engineering literally explodes the risk scenario. The only way to compensate for the added risk is through incredibly increased attention to detail. The "7 Minutes of Terror" (whicdh is hugely worth watching) trailer ends with "Dare Mighty Things" and they did!
I would, however, caution people against using the Curiosity mission as a basis for thinking that we might see men on or near Mars in a decade or so. While it ddn't take us long t go from the Wright Flyer to the Concorde, there was little essential change in the human factor. With long-duration space flight, the human factor is paramount. It takes an incredible weight in life support systems and supplies to get fromhere to there and back. And all during that time the human body will be subjected to weightlessness and cosmic radiation. The results will be massive muscle and bone loss and unpredictable, but severe assaults on human DNA by cosmic radiation.
In theory, we have conquered the effects weightlessness by using centrifugal force to create artificial gravity ala "2001: A Space Odessey." The problem is that just the technology necessary to provide that artificial gravity is about equal in cost, complexity, and weight to the entire ISS. We also know how to shieldhumans against cosmic radiation, but, while not all that complex, the cost and weight are horrendous --- abut that of the Space Shuttle. If you look at the Orion MPCV, you will see that there is really no way to implement artificial gravity or heavy shielding.
In terms of man going to Mars, NASA is trying to skip over the most critical aspects of long-duration space flight --- the human factors --- and go directly for the brass ring, probably a manned visit to Mars' moons. At the current state of the art, this would be a suicide mission plain and simple. We simply do not have the expertise necessary to do it. And that's a huge shame because so many opportunities have been squandered by taking the scientific eyes off the prize.
The biggest thing that went wrong was that after the cancellation of the Apollo program for budgetary reasons, scientists at NASA wanted three things: a massive focus on robotics and AI, a space station at the Earth-Moon LaGrange Point (L1), and a big dumb lifter that could throw the greatest weight, at the least cost and the greatest reliability to the LaGrange points. But the Cold War was on and NASA was dominated by former fighter jocks and test pilots who openly derided scientists as not having the "right stuff." As a result, we got a Space Shuttle whose cargo bay was designed around a KH-series spy satellite (which quickly became obsolete) and which could only achieve Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and couldn't even launch communications satellites because the shuttle could reach altitudes of 130 miles, far short of the 26,000 miles required. And far, far short of the milliopn or so miles to the L1 point.
We also ended up with a space station in LEO that wasl also designed as a "dual purpose" station with military reconnaissance, command and control, and potentially weapons platform uses. But the ISS is still well within the Earth's gravity and protective magnetosphere. The microgravity on the ISS is just enough to render much of the research on protecting men from the effects of weightlessness pretty useless and the Earths magnetosphere actually greatly protects the astronauts from cosmic radiation, by again inhibits the baseline science necessary to combat the cosmic radation problem with any certainty.
So the current NASA strategy is to continue to ignore the scientists and the very necessary step of an L1 space station and go straight from Earth orbit to Mars. And the effects will be the same as a base runner who misses stepping on second base on his way around the bases. He might get away with it, but the chances are diminishingly small.
The part that NASA scientists did get, mostly by flying under the military radar and not drawing attention, has been in the area of robotics. Robots, such as Curiosity, can already deliver much more bang for the buck than manned flight. This is because robotic missions do not need the massive weight of life support systems and all the complexity that these hundreds of additional systems bring. And if a mission, such as the Curiosity mission, fails, it is a bad day at the office rather than having to rename hundreds of junior high schools in the memory of dead astronauts. Money spent at NASA on robotics and artificial intelligence is far more effective than the same dollars spent on current manned spaceflight operations.
The big weakness right with programs such as Curiosity lie in critical realtime computer programming. Since the 1970's the concept of thoroughly testing code has been languishing. While there are only about 500k lines of code in the landing sequence, but even at that small level the idea of thorougly testing the code for all possible interactions and conditions simply does not happen. This has caused repeated failures in the past --- Hubble and Mars landers included. A good analogy is that Apple and Microsoft operating systems have as much as 25% "dead code", code that is there for a reason, but which cannot be directly executed. A robotic mission needs to have zero dead code and zero unanticipated conditions. NASA partially skirted the issue by simply making as many parts of the different computer programs reloadable, so that errors can be corrected as they are found or that new code may be produced for unanticipated situations. But this is only the menatlity that leads computer and software designers to let stuff out the door with hundreds of known bugs and lettng the consumer do their testing for them. Space flight is not as forgiving as Apple users.
Like I say, I will have my fingers crossed. But I am also prepared to rationalize that even a failure would provide data to prevent future failures.
Still hoping for pictures of John Carter, Dejah Thoris and Tars Tarkas.
Seriously, I have high hopes this Mars mission will find traces of past life on the red planet. I'm still betting that Mars was once a living world.
Curious, is there any video of the skycrane system being successfully tested here on earth,
or did the greater gravity make that infeasible?
From all that I have read the greater gravity, and increased atmospheric pressure, makes testing here less accurate.
I wish NASA well and hope it will work as planned. I'll be watching!
Yea Yea USA
To infinity and beyond...
We just happened to visit Florida last week, and went to the Kennedy Space Center. The whole tour is kinda out of date, and still based on the Shuttle as the present, and the Constellation and Orion as the future. The bus driver did mention 'deep space exploration' as the new future, since the Shuttle plus the Constellation/Orion has been cancelled.
SO - in that spirit, it's GREAT to see Curiosity about to get there. I'm excited and I hope things work out for them. But even if it doesn't land properly, it's is about learning and exploring - and that includes engineering things they learn in the lab here on Earth. Successful landing or not, we will learn about the science and technology needed to get us from here to there. :)
Todd was it worth the trip? I was going to go a week and a half ago I just decided to stay at the beach.
Yep, this will be some ride. Wish I were there.
Kirk: Scotty, cut the warp engines! One-quarter impulse power only!
Scotty: I dinna ken, Captain. Mars' atmosphere is too weak! She's gonna blow!
Spock (cooly): Mr. Sulu, deploy the crane.
This rocket powered 'sky crane' method is a perfectly valid method of soft landing hardware on Mars, but there is a possibility that the payload could be flipped upon landing, if it is drifting horizontally too fast or else fails to release as fast as it is hopefully intended to do upon touchdown. Good luck, NASA / JPL!
Win, lose, or draw, this is still one of the most impressive feats of engineering I have ever seen! I hope NASA succeeds in landing the rover safely...and I believe the odds are much better than 50/50 they will. Hats off to NASA's scientists and engineers!
Sailcat, I agree, but I think the chances of this thing landing safely are very slim. But this is what makes it so exciting. I'm on the edge of my seat.
I think the odds may be better than you think, but success is by no means assured. Fingers crossed!
I wonder if they drop tested one of these on earth? That would be cool to watch and a good chance to test the system.
Of course they tested it in every way you can think of and a hundred ways you can't. However, their final plan is obviously too complicated, either from budget or time constraints. Let's hope they come up with something simpler to rely on for future missions.
The gravity on Earth is much greater than on Mars and the effort, technology, and cash required to test such engineering here would be hugely prohibitive as well as unproductive.
They did a lot of testing on the components, but not on the landing package as a whole. No real way to test the entire package and landing scheme on earth - the conditions are completely different. This is truly customized to landing under the conditions on Mars. I have a lot of faith on the engineers, but I too am very nervous. There are too many variables and moving parts for my taste, but then again I'm not a big stakes gambler. They really are going 'all in' on this one.
Unlikely they tested it in the fashion that it will follow at Mars. These things are about as non-multi-purpose as is possible. This thing is built to land on Mars, not the Moon, not one of Mars´ moons, not Meteor Crater, AZ. Components testing only, I imagine. I doubt a realistic test is even possible and would be prohibitively expensive even if it were possible. I´ll be there for the 7 minutes, guys. Good luck to us all. You´re better´n me.
Big fan of the MSL (Curiosity). But I know... as most do, that NASA has been gutted and hung in the meat locker by Mr. Science.
@Arx Ferrum,
If you are trying to politisize Curiosity and referring to the President as "Mr. Science", you are flat wrong. NASA's budget has increased, albeit not hugely, in every year Obama has been President. That is just more Fox crap. But NASA's budget is tiny. The Pentagon spent more money in 2009 on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan than the entire NASA budget in the same year. The Orion/Constellation/Return to moon projects were cancelled because they were never even partially funded under Bush. Cost overruns caused by an inability to quickly and cheaply make the required "new science" discoveries killed those projects and nothing else.
The ill-conceived Space Shuttle is now retired (by Bush, not Obama), freeing up considerable money in NASA's budget, but the big money pit is still the equally ill-conceived ISS. De-orbiting the ISS or turning it over to anyone who wants it would also save a lot of money for other projects without negatively impacting science or planetary exploration at all. Seeding out the more routine work that is based on well-known science and engineering to private companies will also save considerable money in the long run. But as long as that ISS is overhead and sopping up billions from the budget, there will be no manned flights to Mars.
The air conditioning comment is equally fecal, albeit not from Fox. I´ve heard it, it gets repeated, and it´s reported as fact repeatedly, but it remains statistical bunk. (BTW, why do you care what Fox says? They barely exist in my world and.... that´s a good thing.)
The rest of your comment is sound. Survive!
Arx,
Through fiscal 2011, NASA funding has increased or remained very close to the same every year President Obama has been in office. It's still woefully underfunded, receiving only 0.53% of the entire Federal budget for fiscal 2011. There is a decrease in funding for fiscal 2012 (about $700 million or 0.48% of total Fed budget), but considering how the economy is (not) going and the vocal minority of the uninformed "NASA sucks" crowd that's not too bad.
But don't let facts get in the way of good political "bumper sticker" slogans.
The most dangerous man in the United States today is Barak Obama, to space, science, life in general and our economy. That said this landing is dangerous as well and actually I am angry that they are gambling with a Billion or so dollars ( like our President ie: bailout, GM, stimulas, and 7% unemployment) (But I digress), on an engineering theory for landing this puppy. If it fails I think that the budget for NASA needs to be tranferred to Private space contractors who we all know will one day be the explorers and experts in space. I hope I am wrong but I agree, I think the chance of success is slim.
I do not agree with the landing scheme for this very expensive mobile laboratory (rover) Curiosity. The tethers will require to be in full tension to avoid any rotation modes of oscillations just before touchdown. The tethers can also get tangled when they are released, when the rover separates from the crane housing, will they all release at the same time and orientation?
I understand they require a pin point landing for best chance of landing in the crater and at the base of this specific mountain but there are other ways to soft land with precision. The Martin atmosphere is dense enough to glide down with enough control from orbit and/or ground telemetry.
I give this more than 50% chance of crash landing. For $2.5 billion we should have designed a better survivable landing scheme.
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I don't care how sophisticated the force transducers are, attaching the tethers to the crane. Once released the rover will rotate down, like a ball falling in a conical surface. If the rotations are not nulled out by the time it touches down it will touch on an edge and start tumbling.
This scenario may even screw up the control of the hovering crane and the whole system could come crashing down. Very messy landing, scheme indeed, too many degrees of freedom, too many components in the loop. In my long career with servo systems the more components your have in the loop the longer the time constant and so the steady state error when it touches will be an unknown.
I wish and hope it does land safely because this is the most sophisticated mobile laboratory yet and it is a good site. The mountain is high enough with gentle slopes so we can gather tons of data on the history of the planet. So good luck.
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http://www.planetaryprobe.eu/IPPW7/proceedings/IPPW7%20Proceedings/Presentations/Session5/pr478.pdf
Sorry I can't see equal tension in all the tethers during the 20 sec from separation to the snatch event.
Also, only one snatch event of 2 sec duration, really? A slight gust of side wind will challenge this event, surely. Allowing for 2 or even 3 snatches would have been more prudent, but I am guessing the fuel expenditure did not allow it? Also allowing a single 2 sec transient for a 12 sec event?
Another observation, if the attachment point on the rover are representative as shown in the power point the horizontal force components in the transducers are order of magnitudes smaller that the vertical. i hope you are using to scales or error terms since the time constants will be different.
Good luck.
Although a winged landing on Mars is technically feasible, but physically impossible at the current time. For one, you'd need extremely long, extremely wide wings or para-sail made of ablative materials that don't exist. Try to land with stubby wings (like space shuttle wings or even 747 wings) in Mars thin atmosphere and the craft would drop like a rock. Two, neither NASA nor any other country or company has the heavy lift capability to get such wings or para-sail to Mars. Three, even if we had suitable wings and the heavy lift capability to get them to mars, after the dive from space, a craft with the bare minimum lifting surface for a glide landing in Mars thin atmosphere would be traveling at around 2000 MPH. We're not talking about on a wide, 10 mile long graded runway. we're talking about on the cratered, gullied, hilly, rock and boulder shrewn surface of mars.
So what you are telling me is that we are not yet capable of landing a payload beyond the previous two rovers. That's fine, so why rush it? Why rush to risk $2.5 billion dollars of valuable assets with such an amateurish scheme.
One snatch event of 2 sec duration, really? I doubt that they even know where each cable will be up the stress / strain curve when it snatches. I certainly hope they do not go solid or the shocks will compromise the landing.
This landing scheme is something one would expect from under graduate student's science project, not NASA.
Good Luck!
"This landing scheme is something one would expect from under graduate student's science project, not NASA."
I guess they should have consulted you? Face it, you don't have all the data they do, you don't know what materials were used, you have no idea the margins - and yet you play arm chair quarterback. I'm an Engineer. I would never comment on a design unless I had all the data the designers did. Its that simple.
I know a lot of cargo helicopter sling pilots and crew who would disagree with your tension-torsion crane tether concerns. This is doable, and the rover is robust enough to take a few shakes and bounces and stay upright. Remember, this thing flies in visually with scene recognition in 3D.
I'm more concerned about the devices which spin off heavy counterweights to alter the entry capsule's center of gravity...twice. When you read through the entire checklist of things that have to go right for this landing to work, the Skycrane seems pretty nominal , actually.
What are the Las Vegas bookie odds on this ? They bet on anything.
@Dewdle,
I don't think the helicopter sling pilots would never agree to "drop" their payloads on cables, they "lower" it down with properly balanced hoists and winches releasing the cables slowing off drums.
NASA, in their infinite arrogant nature are planning to, a) "drop" the rover and cables in a 12 second duration, (release them to the random forces, gravity and wind, of Mars, b) "catch" all the cables and rover with a 2 second snatch event, and c) touchdown on at least three corners almost simultaneously to the snatch event.
Keeping in mind that the skycrane is trying to stay upright and stationary within a very small envelope with four thrusters with all these variable forces on each cable underneath it and the Martian gravity and winds (which orientation can vary and is unknown with respect to magnitude. (hard to test for on Earth, hence I don't think the test environment was simulated 100% during the qualification tests)
So ... can you count the number of failure modes during all this mess? My point is there are just too many degrees of freedom is a very short time duration and hence it would be almost impossible to define a sufficient "nominal" range, (a tolerance band), to reach the final outcome, touchdown on three corner wheels and pre-define shocks capable of survival.
Good Luck.
Fingers crossed for a safe, uncomplicated landing NASA/JPL! Because what I really want to see is the rover find some fossils sticking out of the rocks some where. And not just micro organisms, but something cool with a spine and a rib cage. (That'll have a few heads spinning.) Happy landing everyone!
It took the better part of four billion years to develop spines and rib cages on earth. What makes you think there was enough time to do the same on Mars?
Maybe on Mars spineless attorneys and politicians never evolved, so backbones would have been more common.
This is going to be like the last amazing achievement, with all the space-geek scientists (gotta love space-geeks of all kinds) jumping around and going crazy and all their pocket protectors flying around the room.
I'm pretty confident in the minds behind America's space program. What's left of it.
GO DELTA V
GO ULA
www.ulalaunch.com
Next Launch August 2nd.
I want to see mission control in Houston with the guys in their white shirts and ties monitoring and communicating with this thing as it tries to land = NASA back in bussiness (the public will love seeing this)
Kevin, like most other such planetary missions, this will be controlled (as much as one 'controls' anything with speed-of-light delays like this) from the NASA/CalTech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, not the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. Their responsibility is manned missions.
And NASA never was 'out of business.' The end of the Space Shuttle was that, and only that. Little else changed.
I don't get it: why so complex? We got two very effective rovers--Opportunity and Spirit--onto Mars using much less complicated technology. Wouldn't it be smarter (and much safer) to deposit two more similar rover on the surface using proven technology?
This rover is bigger, carries more instruments and carries its own power source (not solar) so it is quite a bit heavier and should be more durable.
However, you have given me an idea. Land the rover in two pieces, so the airbag mechanism can be used, and have the wheeled/powered part "pick up" the science package and connect to the rover portion.
Nah, the sky crane is much easier.
The landing ellipse for MER was 10s of km across. Aim two spacecraft at the same point and they could be 10-20 km apart, which is a LOT of driving to get the two pieces together. You'd only want one driving part (otherwise you have 2 copies on the surface), and the driving part needs the big solar panels/RTGs.
The 'airbag' approach scales up only so far. Beyond a certain point, it's not practical for large payloads. MSL/Curiosity is beyond that point.
Too many degrees of freedoms to cope with here for the tether system. Ad'm has raised very valid concerns. Primarily is the near-impossible need and task of simultaneously achieving full tension on all tethers to prevent wild oscillations and gyrations of the rover before severing the tethers. I do not necessarily agree that it all be about perfect. There may still be some allowance for variances in achieving simultaneous full tension before release; given possible counter-balance dynamics the wheel train design could provide upon landing, for example. That said this servo loop systems does seem to be somewhat stressed with too many components and nodes to get a better handle as to its steady state error - regardless of the perturbation analysis methodology one may had applied (i.e., Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis, etc.) in determining it.
Jose, how in God's name will this super complicated and profoundly risky technique work? It seems more outragous then any sci-fi movie that I have ever seen. It looks like there is about a one in a million chance that this will work. This is blowing my mind.
Stay curious ....
Happy landing "Curiosity" ....
you know what... it may be a little crazy but that's how we advance. We need to be a lot more adventurous if we're ever going to get off this rock. 2.5 billion isn't even a drop in our annual budget. Good luck guys.
Point, BINGO. But the public needs to see this super risky move LIVE on TV using real video camaras'
It will be "live", but it takes a few minutes for a signal to get here from Mars.
Like Tony said, "live" is a relative turn when you are receiving signals from Mars. Also remember that "real video cameras" take space, weight and energy, all of which are in short supply for rovers. There is a lot of haggling and designing of mission-critical equipment that go on each rover, and luxuries rarely make the list. I understand what Kevin is saying, and agree to a point, but it all comes down to what will fit in the box.
Kevin, in addition to the speed-of-light delays mentioned above, from what cameras would the public see it? The rover can't use its cameras until after it has landed, hopefully intact. Cameras on the aeroshell would be an unnecessary weight and power drain. If you get a signal that X or Y or Z event has happened, seeing it won't tell you much more.
And there's certainly nothing already on the ground that's going to see it.
Frank, we could have already set up cameras and antennas using the "bouncey ball" missions. NASA needs to think in terms of exciting ALL the PUBLIC if they wish to recieve support and funding ergo further advancements of space science. (and what about live satillite video from our satillites who already orbit mars?)
Okay, so you want to spend (coming from those same public pockets) the cost of another separately launched Mars landing mission, just to place cameras on the ground, to watch a following lander (which it'll miss, if Curiosity comes down so much as a half-mile from where the previously placed cameras are) come down?
That is so not going to happen.
I'm confident,they will get it right,but come on guys,we were able to do 6 soft landings on the Moon in the 60-70's with a human cargo on board and then take off.Let us build on what we can do real well.The lowering of the space craft by cables,just makes me a little nervous.Landing space craft on another world is tricky,few have gotten it right,you can't just throw money at it and expect to succeed,but this is a little nerve wracking.
thomas, Unlike the moon, Mars has an atmosphere and significant gravity (like earth) and if you think about it we always use the oceans for splash downs. This is like placing a jeep on a highway from space without damaging it.
Kevin, Mars' gravity is less than Earth, about 38% of Earth's gravity, and the atmosphere at the surface is less than 1% of Earth's, which is less than the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. So, yes, significant compared to the Moon, but not necessarily significant when compared to Earth.
Thomas, if you watch the video, it explains that the reason for the cables is to prevent dust from covering the craft and damaging instruments.
Thats what they want to answer,is there evidence for past life,is their life now,what really happened on Mars.But it may take a manned presence to find the answer's to your question.
thomas, I am all for a manned mission. If NASA is ready to take frequent big risks that the public can see and watch with their own eyes live; It will excite the public to no end even when we fail misserably. As long as NASA can be super risky and frequent with their attempts, the public will love it if they can SEE it with their own eyes LIVE and NASA's budget will have no limit. People live for exciting and dangerous exploration into space.
I will definitly be watching this on 8/5. I had no idea that our tech. has advanced to this unconceavable level. Looking at the specifics of the decent; It seems like it is a one in a million shot that it will succeed. Did I hear we have already found H20 on mars? If that is true, the possibilities of manipulating and building a bio - atmosphere are endless. Holy cow am I glad I read this article. This is super exciting and I hope all the major media outlets cover this live.
If this works, NASA will be back in bussiness.
NASA is still in business, and was never out of business. Did you forget about Spirit & Opportunity, Dawn, New Horizons, Cassini, Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's many Earth Science missions, etc? That's a short list, there's much more.
Considering out-of-the-box, creative thinking and engineering innovation, this feat may be unparalleled. But if I may be a bit analagous, I recall when I was teaching my son how to play golf. I told him to watch a video of Annika Sorenstam. My son said, "Dad, I don't see to much there". "Exactly!", I repsonded. Her swing was simple with as few moving parts. Not a lot that could malfunction.
Perhaps, we will glean a great deal of knowledge and technical knowhow from these new ideas. But, I also hope they translate into something meaningful with respect to human space travel advancements.
This is a billion dollar project and public needs to see this with REAL video LIVE for NASA to get off the ground again. NASA needs public support to survive and the only way they will get it is if the public can see these events live with actual real video.
With the transmission delay between Earth and Mars, "live" is not live. Also, the space, weight and power requirements of such a video camera may not work on rovers, who need compact, lightweight and low voltage.
But I completely agree with you on using video like that to boost public support of NASA. Or, at least, to educate the uninformed about ALL that NASA does for this country.
If we can get Russia, China, Japan and other Nations on board to create a type of ground based space station on mars, it can be actuated. Have we been able to grow any vegitation on the space station? It should be easy. If we can get these other Nations on board, we can frequently ship anything we want to mars one week after another to build anything we want (ie green house buildings ect.) just using our current tech. procedures.
"Have we been able to grow any vegitation on the space station?"
Short answer: Yes.
Getting (or even needing...I don't believe we do) everyone else to play nice together to make a Mars base, is a whole other political and economic matter...
Just as a matter of fact (and I'm surprised Mr. Beatty doesn't know this). If the landing time is 10.31pm PST and it takes 13.8minutes for the signal to travel to Earth, you are not going to know whether the landing was successful or not at 10:32 or 10:33 or 10:30-anything !
In fact the landing time is predicted to be at 05:18 UTC(GMT) which is 10:18 pm PST and so the earliest landing confirmation is ~10:31 pm, if Odyssey works correctly.
Regards,
Sorry, I meant PDT not PST in above comment.
I call BS...
But still, to awesome for words. Good Luck!