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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:
If mars is a success we can also travel to the next planet. each planet we have is a new experience and new hope for our life to continue
Which next planet?
Going toward the Sun, Venus present the issues of atmospheric pressure and some pretty nasty climate. Mercury is a non-starter.
Going outward, the asteroid belt has some "dwarf planets" but nothing people will likely be living on anytime soon. Jupiter is next up, and gas giants don't make great landing targets. Ditto Saturn, although both planets possess moons that should be targets for exploration in the near term.
Lots of possibilities, but only so much (too little) money.
Just hope for success - but even more, hope that we return to looking outward and up instead of inward and down. How much money and resources have we wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan? Where could we be if we had spent the equivalent on building and exploring? What new advances would we be enjoying now?
Courage and success, NASA and JPL!
"We journalists....are also extremely impressed with scientists, and we will, frankly, print just about any wacky thing they tell us, especially if it involves outer space."
Dave Barry, American Writer & H-U-M-O-R-I-S-T, best known for his weekly newspaper column.
Having fiddled a bit with stringy things, very large kites, and remembering the expensive "tethered" satellite failures of years ago, if I were to point to the most vulnerable part of the landing sequence it would be these "cables" from the sky crane phase.
I would like to see the details of this design, and testing done, because this looks like one area that is the weakest link.(prediction?)
Much more generally is that lacking a heavy lift rocket capable of launching a larger Mar vehicle having a robust decent stage (to significantly) slow the vehicle, to enter the atmosphere, and to land protected from a cloud of dust; this scheme is too clever by half.
It this design works then we will have a new word for miracle, "Marsacle", otherwise a new Murphy's Law, "strings expected to untangle, don't".
Rich, I agree. This looks like there is about a one in a million chance of this technique working. But if it does ; Oh my God, we could do anything. I will be on the edge of my seat
As others have commented the tether sky crane phase, is worrysome, I haven't see much published on tethered experiments, but it does seem problematical.
My previous comments ...
Tether (String Really) see also Ancient Minoan Greek (Clue)
You don’t have this experience so I give it away free. Unwind two or three spools of thread, mercerized military type, (Coats, Corrente, mercer, 5000 metros, Art. No. B963m, 20, COR9902) each having a length of 5,000 meters, I will not tell you how as it makes the story too long. If one of those spools has break, just one, the failure rate is 1/3.
The string is about one hundredth of an inch diameter, strong enough that you will cut your hands if you try to break it. The 15,000 meters had only one break and the three spools took about 90 minutes to rewind each. I am going to round off just make this narrative easier to follow. The sample above is comprised of about 60 million diameters with one defect; the failure rate is 1/60,000,000. Because I have other examples will complete this note using this sample.
If I had to span 200 a kilometers string I need a failure rate of much less than 1/60 Mega diameters. What would have to be? Something: like 1/800 Mega diameters. I will give just a few more examples to allow you to discover the principal I am using, 20,000 kilometers 1/80000 Mega diameters, 200,000 kilometers 1/800 Giga diameters.
This on round number means that to span such large distances I need material that has a defect rate of about 1 in a trillion, which if I guess right is very low defect rate.
That being said the geometry of this design need only one failure in a trillion.
But the manufacturing from original resource materials, on to supply spools, on to trucks, off trucks, into the satellite assembly area, off the spools on to the satellite spool, button up and ship to rocket assembly, payload attachment, launch, rattle, vacuum of space, hot, cold, dry all represent a subject area that needs to be addressed in any realistic deployment.
That subject area may be best addressed by not doing as many of those steps as possible, replacing these by using a manufacturing technique, process, or method directly space to produce the string and deploy it as many times as needed to survive a one in a trillion defect ratio.
If you do discover such a space manufacturing technique you can build space elevator, but in the mean time take course in probability and statistics.
…
Sorry to be so vague
Clue: Theseus had a "clew" which she had obtained from Daedalus. In some versions of the myth it was an ordinary clew, is just a simple ball of thread. See also other variations clew, cleowen, cliwen, clywe ball. More: “clue” - phonetic variant of clew (q.v.) "a ball of thread or yarn," with reference to the one Theseus used as a guide out of the Labyrinth. The purely figurative sense of "that which points the way" is from 1620s.
The simple design where the defect equal in size to the diameter of the tether is enough to break it is just as simple as it was intended. But the trick is to press on one clear idea at a time, kept independent of others to simplify, and reduce distractions.
One idea is gather all the material properties on one place, if hard to know which ones to follow upon, so I just rely on limited experience, but knowing that dozens of other properties exist and are likely a good source of new possibilities. Cohesion, non Newtonian behavior, elasticity, dozed of properties from elections.
First if we start a single string that breaks, we can imagine that two or more might be better. In fact the string I used above is twisted of three smaller threads that are made up many filaments; after all one defect in 80 million is not all that bad. The experienced fisherman appreciated braided string that allow connection loops without knots, essential for high stress applications, and less breaks and tangles, twisted string is a nightmare of tangles.
Design a new meta-material is a good start to expand the possibilities, and will no doubt prove independently useful, after all this just one place to start, there are others. One principle that is required is that which could be called a meta-design principle, and seems to apply to many technologies in the example above, is to first look at where a design or plan or technique might fail. I mean to “look first”, and get used to the idea that failure will happen, but the clue is that if you look for failure points first, what you are doing is (not developing a negative attitude), but by failing early and often and sooner rather than later, you save valuable, if not irreplaceable, time, time better spend on finding ways that don’t fail. Meta-design principles need to be included the design process first and applied every step along the way in everything else that you work on, to reduce rework and avoid costly catastrophes.
The idea of manufacturing string in space, changes the assumptions enough, to improve the design. Just a little bit like complaining about all the money being spent on space, but finally noticing that is really spent on Earth. Many ideas developed for space, have improved more useful on Earth.
If a space tether were built like the cables on suspension bridge, a starter cable is launched between piers, and provided a support and guide to wind additional cables. The space version has no piers, but developing a pair of satellites, that would hold a starter tether, and provide a whole new set of navigational programs to allow a pair of satellites to hold a very long tether between them.
If we were to have such a starter tether, we would have something on which to wind additional fibers and manufacture a tether with a reduced failure rate.
Next those satellites could make the next extension of a starter tether and the winding process could extend the next section, keeping the failure less a problem.
This is good place to stop, and develop the math to calculate the failure rate, in systemic manner for this simple, build, extend, wind technique. Also the better the base fiber, the longer the extensions considered, to cover the whole distance and the less handling, this keeps the costs down, and form the basis of figuring how much material might be needed, and to include meta-material properties to improve design and control.
Having long tether amplifies problems, and suggests solutions. If the material is too elastic, control become more difficult, a sport kite handling is improved with stiffer lines, allowing longer lines and higher displays.
A meta-material having less stretch, might also be asked to have a damping property, strings vibrate under tension, setting up harmonics. Some if these properties may also be used to control the winding process, and detect problems developing along the tether.
Home Depot is having a really BIG sale on just what you're looking for - right now!
There apparently exists the political will to establish a human presence on Mars but not to stop the Kochs and the Wall Street bankers and China from making this planet uninhabitable.
I don't understand why they don't just use the "bouncy ball" system that the twin rovers had. Simple and it apparently worked.
MB, apparently this "rover" is too fragil to be bounced around. I'm no NASA engineer but this super complicated technique that they are using to land this thing looks like there is about a one in a million chance that it will work. But I like that NASA is taking this risk. I will be on the edge of my seat.
It works for sufficiently small and light payloads, This rover is beyond the point where that's practical.
Consider: There are emergency parachute systems that can lower a small, single-engine aircraft survivably to the ground...but you could never do the same for a wide-bodied commercial airliner. (or even something of business jet size/weight) It's just not practical for any number or size parachutes.
Same idea here...
A couple of video cameras should not be that heavy or take up too much space and use little energy so the public can watch this live (7min delay). We did this on the moon 40yrs. ago (I think our tech. has advanced). The public needs to SEE these attempts as they occur so we can get the public behind space travel to fund it.
This attempt would draw a MEGA audience world wide
"A couple of video cameras should not be that heavy or take up too much space and use little energy..."
1: Sorry, that really is just the way it is. A camera that could do this, is mass that you have to carry all the way there, and would serve no other purpose. It would end up being junked with the 'crane,' after separation. And no high-gain antenna could track Earth or a relaying Mars satellite while doing this.
2: Even Apollo didn't try to transmit live video from the LM while in the act of landing or lifting off. Trust me on this, on July 20, 1969, I was a 15 year old, glued to the TV set listening to Armstrong and Aldrin call out what they were doing, but only animations or a Grumman engineer in a simulator going through the appropriate motions of what he knew they should be doing at the time.
The landing (and ascent*) images you've seen were from a film camera on the LM, not seen until the crews returned, and synced with recorded audio. No live video until after they were down.
(* On later missions, it was possible for Mission Control to remotely pan and tilt the camera on the Moon rovers [and even they could not send live video while in motion, only when parked, and their antenna pointed at Earth] , and were able to see the LM liftoffs via the left-behind hardware. Apollo 17 also got no on-board film footage of their liftoff, because of a problem with the camera I still remember, as they were seconds from liftoff: "This camera's not going to run, without me holding it...aw shoot.") And he had to let it go, to carry out the liftoff.)
"The public needs to SEE these attempts as they occur so we can get the public behind space travel to fund it"
Kevin, if it lands successfully, there will be plenty to see, over the operational life of he rover. And even a space geek like myself (in the Eastern Time Zone) may not be able to follow the events live at that hour...unfortunately, it will be 1:31 AM, Monday morning for me, and like may others in this zone, I will have to get up for work 4-5 hours later. Your audience will be much smaller than you think, for that reason alone, even if live video were possible...
The moment I learned the landing time and day, I knew I might not be able to follow it. Were it 24 hours earlier, it would be no problem. As it is, and as much as I might like it otherwise. I may have to sleep through it, and catch the news as I have breakfast. 'Live' descent video would not change that.
"This attempt would draw a MEGA audience world wide"
Again, take it from an old space geek. This is very cool, but it's not Apollo 11 in interest level. No MEGA audiences, until humans actually get there...and even then for the first two, maybe three times....
...And that's okay, once you accept that audiences, ratings and excitement aren't the reasons we do it, anyway.
Frank, thank you. I was 8 when we landed on the moon. I remember watching it on TV, but apparently I was just watching the guys at mission control in Houston sweating in their white shirts and ties.. The video of Armstrong stepping on the moon was not seen until they came back? We MUST do everything and anything we can to make this mission interesting and exciting to the public. I am most positive the only way we can do this is live footage even if it is live video from mission control. But this must be broadcast by a major network with an exciting host ( the audience will love it and the sponsors will pay big bucks to advertise if there is a very good chance the audience will be large). We NEED to do this to advance and accelerate our exploration in space.
"The video of Armstrong stepping on the moon was not seen until they came back?"
No, that was live. But that was also hours after landing. What you've seen of the view out the LM window of the landing itself was not.
It can't be done while the LM is in flight. Voice and telemetry is one thing, and can be sent to earth via the omni-directional antenna. but video requires the LM parabolic high-gain antenna pointed directly at Earth, and that couldn't be done while in motion.
With smaller signal strengths over interplanetary distances, that's not much different today. You may remember how much harder it was to use the Jupiter-orbiting Galileo probe, because its parabolic antenna failed to unfurl, slowing the possible rate at which data could be sent. from it, because that craft's low-gaiin, antenna is all they could use. And video, even analog video, represents lots of data.
'Shannon's Law' and all that...
The world would love to see live footage of the guys at mission control in Houston sweating in their white shirts and ties as they are trying to control and communicate with this thing as it lands on mars (I'm serious). This needs to be broadcast live so NASA can get America interested again and all the funding they want (and get the NASA team back to work). Even if it fails - the whole chance of success vrs. failure is what sparks everyone's interest. As long as we all can SEE it live as it is attempted
Yes, Kevin.
You have all bumped yer head. The Earth occupies the optimal orbit for things to start happening. It is constantly evolving, much like mankind, but it's scale is incomprehensible. We live in a leaps and bounds era, with technology being the most intrusive bane. Embrace it. Then you wont know hen the end comes. We need to send every DNA sample of everything on Earth, and imbed it in Mars. The Earth will eventuakky change orbit towards the sun, Just like Venus may have when it was in this optimal orbit. We are spiraling in, not out. Humankind has leapt to each planet that presents itself when the galaxy cycles itself.
Of course it will take a few million years, but hey, it's worth a shot!
Smaug, too much fun isn't it? It is in our genes to explore and take dangerous chances in doing so.
My fingers are crossed! What a great mission. And what a gutsy plan. If these guys pull this off, I'm sure we will get some really great science.
I love manned space exploration. But for me, it seems we get so much more "bang for the buck" via robotics.
Brian, we use the robotics to build structures on Mars in which we can stay. Kinda like a huge land based space station. But Mars has much more natural resources we can use to build and live. (ultimate in exciting man space exploration)
Odds in Vegas of this thing landing safely on Mars: 100 to 1. Odds of this thing working if it does land safely on Mars: 500 to 1. (10% of all bets go to NASA)
Mars has weather.
Apparently this "system" cannot compensate for it or even delay/abort the landing sequence if necessary. So if there`s weather in the LZ tough luck? What were the weather parameters tested during the sim sessions?
Does the tether aparatus of this "skycrane" have the capability to compensate for line twist?
Can the powered portion compensate for yaw, pitch and roll moments imparted to it from an uneven or mis-timed tether deployment?
All this because they were afraid of dust intrusion into the rover scientific packages? The people at RTV and Courtalds will be disapointed to hear that I`m sure. Was there any prototyping of a more traditional vehicle architecture with the payload on top and the landing motors on bottom?If so why was this configuration rejected?
Well at any rate good luck, I`ve been very pessimistic since I heard of this landing sequence but hey, it`s just 2.5 billion...
Brian, your concerns are but 1% of my concerns of this landing succeeding. I'm no NASA engineer, but these mutiple super risky complicated sequences of events needed to land this thing makes it look illogical and insane to assume they will all work. It looks like some childish fantasy. But that is what makes it so exciting
Can the timing of this landing be tweeked so it can be broadcast live on TV during the 5-11 time slot? (seriously). We need the live broadcast to be seen by as many of our public as possible. We need the major networks and their sponsors to broadcast this. NBC could show live video from mission control utilizing a very exciting/personable host with exciting scientific guests to make this broadcast a major event. The public will love it even if the mission crashes. The risk of success vrs. failure is the major part of the interest and excitement. This event is a major-major big deal for putting men on Mars for very long extended periods of time. And actuating this goal would be only a few years away if we can get the world interested.
"Can the timing of this landing be tweeked so it can be broadcast live on TV during the 5-11 time slot?"
Unlikely. Even if it were possible to do anything to arrive earlier or later (and I don't think it is), Mars is a rotating target, and it's coming straight in to the planet's atmosphere when it arrives, ready or not. (that is, it's not going to go into orbit first as the Viking orbiter/landers did in 1976, where they had the luxury of waiting out a nearly planet-wide dust storm that delayed the intended July 4th landing to July 20th)
That means, if you want to land in Gale Crater, you time it for when that area is in the crosshairs. Arriving earlier or later (unless maybe precisely one Martian day earlier or later) means coming down somewhere else on the planet.
And arrival at a different time may also affect atmospheric entry speed and angle, I couldn't say. But this will be tough enough without messing with celestial mechanics and a flight path that was worked out long ago...
What's important is that they're awake, alert and ready at JPL, and the probe is given every chance for success. It doesn't have to be timed at the convenience of the rest of us.
"Cut! We were not in a good position for that shot. Let's reset the probe outside the atmosphere and reshoot the shot from a 87 degree angle. Places everyone, aaaand, action!"
It seems very risky, but I sure hope it works! I'll be up watching!
BRING IT ON!!!! Mars here we come!!!
If I was a mission manager, I would of been insistant on curiosity being able to right itself from any position. The more I think about this landing manuever the more confidence I have in it. The sky crane idea does in fact sound a bit off and a real strategic advantage to hitting the landing zone with several smaller, both redundant and exclusive versions, of the earlier types of rovers makes one wonder why a big Nbot lab instead of a half dozen little ones. Still, I do believe the winds are down, were inside a crater, the crane is semi AI, the MSL is hardened, the error zone is much better (wider) than most automated passenger jet landings (instrument landings in fog) are in present day real world. I do worry about landing shock, or even the martian quicksand (we need a real sci name for that stuff). If it gets dug in oppy has way to far to go and it might not be able to unbolt one of the msl arms to use as a lever....hehe....BUT I think we are on the right track here, A lab, a full complement lab. It will detect water, it has too, even if there is no water there, water is still raining down from the cosmos on everything (yea, blame enceladaus why don't cha) at a rate above the ppm threshold of the lab equipment. right? so it's gonna find water. Let's hope it' enough to keep a robotic fuel production in biz for a few decades, meanwhile, if there are fossils and it finds one, this time it can really do some analytics as it abrades it away to nothing....life was most likely on mars, gale crater is an ok place to look for it, not really a bad place to be if it is still there. I have been wondering all week if some type of arctic lichin would survive on mars, and if so, should we send some there? At one time the sun was hotter and larger than now and the earth was like venus and, to some extent, mars like earth, to some extent. magnetic fields et all, let alone life, I do not know. At one time the sun was cooler and smaller, venus was in the goldilocks zone. In fact I am certain we oscillate, as a sol system, through these extremes periodically. The geology of mars will yield us much knowledge, perhaps toss my theory all together, but that is not the point, the point is we ARE trying to answer our questions about ourselves, adding to the knowledge of the race that has always proved vital to our survival, and we are following an urge to explore, for what ever reason, an urge many in the animal kingdom have, but one that man has excelled at. We will go forth and multiply, sure. As americans we lead in this exploration, on land sea air and space. It has been vital and that knowledge has become superficial, subconcious, taken for granted, even denigrated as non productive, in spite of the obvious.
I fully expect success from this mission. Again, just the fact that WE, the USA have put it right there on the exosphere of the planet right now, is a success. But more so. Our country really needs a success right now. We have become quiet disrespectful of one another, chanting and chargilling each others accomplishments, dreams and ambitions as though we ourselves are somehow granted a magic cloak of invincibility. The heat, the economy, the ugly politics the world wide discontent and many factors like energy distribution and such have us all in a bad place. We need something we can all look at with pride and say: THAT IS WHAT COOPERATION IN AMERICA CAN DO, THE IMPOSSIBLE.
We have done it before, we will do it again. If MSL should not succeed, the clamor will continue (will anyways), and they will want to blame the guy who went down to the corner store and got the metric part not the standard part. But if it does, and I know it will, We may all look each other in the eye, and with respect, say, we are america WE DO WHAT WE WANT, WHEN WE WANT, AND WHY WE WANT. Pride we need and pride we earn. Only we can stop we. FORWARD!!!!!!!!
Success OR failure on Mars simply means some elite scientists will have shot another few billion dollars of taxpayer money into space to justify their jobs. You won't go to Mars. Your grandchildren won't go to Mars. Your great grandchildren will still be saying "Why did my great grandparents let the government WASTE all that money instead of funding medical research?" A few large investors will 'own' Mars and all its resources, but the average citizen on earth will never receive any of the benefits of those resources because it will all be used in industrial applications to MAKE MONEY for those few investors (or their heirs, since nobody will be around long enough for it to benefit anyone who is alive today.)
You must be a lot of fun at parties
Your crystal ball, please...?
that sure is one way of looking at it. Sounds more like a defeatist attitude than a fact filled diatribe on the cons of mankinds expansion of knowledge. deal, we send you back your buck 2.98 you got invested in curiosity and you stay off the us hiways??
I'd like to ask Beaty or anyone else at JPL if Curiousity will eventually upload the 3D scene recognition imagery it used to pilot itself to a landing ? Will JPL also get a download of Curiousity's EDL ( Entry-Decent-Landing) computer data from the last minute or so of the landing to analyze how this thing really performed ? I would think so... but ?
Once Curiousity is sitting upright on the surface it dumps that EDL program and data and goes into Surface mode. I hope we have a chance to parse the actual entry and landing with a fine tooth comb , because if this works , Skycrane will be the method used in most if not all future Mars lander missions.
Still wondering about the Soviet Phobos II orbiter that ceased function after taking this picture...
Marina Popovich, the Soviet's Chuck Yeager, blurted out the truth.
The object cast a shadow on the surface of Mars and thus could not have been a photographic "artifact" from the camera.
Ok, where to start? Well how about the whole "Soviet" part. Soviet Union has not been around for 22 years so it is a RUSSIAN PHOBOS craft. There has been only one of those so I have no idea where 2 came from. The one they launched failed to even leave Earth orbit so could not have photograph anything on Mars. I think that preaty much answers your post.
Bearing in mind that our current (science) president would love to finish gutting out NASA, a MSL failure to land would give the excuse to do just that.
And yet the NASA budget was slightly increased under the 'gutting' President...
(Of course, if your idea of 'gutting' was the cancellation of the Constellation project, that well deserved to be shut down, as does its resurrected ghost, the Space Launch System. If you mean the Shuttle, the decision to retire it after the completion of ISS, and the beginning of the process to do so, was made in 2004. That completion was going to fall on the next guy's watch, whether Obama, McCain, Clinton, or whomever, no matter what...)