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Subscribe to RSSNASA's Curiosity rover is slated to land on Mars this weekend. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
One day before a multibillion-dollar landing, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is almost perfectly on track to deposit its Curiosity rover in one of the deepest holes on Mars, mission managers said today. Even the weather is looking up.
"Mars appears to be cooperating very nicely with us," Ashwin Vasavada, the $2.5 billion mission's deputy project scientist, told reporters today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A worrisome dust storm in the vicinity of the landing site has evolved into a "fairly harmless cloud of dust," he said — and the presence of water-ice clouds in the Red Planet's thin atmosphere suggests that conditions will be cold and relatively dust-free.
Meanwhile, the 15-foot-wide (4.5-meter-wide) spacecraft is coming "right down the pipe," mission manager Arthur Amador said — so close to the desired track that a scheduled course correction was canceled. The probe is now less than a half-million miles from Mars and speeding up due to the influence of the planet's gravitational field.
Olympic-scale feat
That's not to say that all the worries are over. The trickiest part of the mission still lies ahead, on Sunday night. There'll be a nail-biting descent through the atmosphere. As the probe decelerates from a speed of 13,200 mph (5,900 meters per second), the heat shield will have to protect the rover from temperatures ranging up to 3,800 degrees Fahrenheit (2,150 degrees Celsius).
The climax of the "seven minutes of terror" comes in the form of a never-tried-before "sky crane" maneuver to put Curiosity to the surface. A rocket-powered platform is expected to hover tens of yards (meters) above the ground, lower the one-ton, car-sized rover on three cables, cut the cables loose and then fly itself out of the way.
The landing plan may sound crazy, but the rover is so heavy that it's impossible to use the kind of airbag-cushioned landing that came into play for NASA's earlier rover landings in 1997 and 2004. And if it were put on a legged lander, the rover would be unstable and prone to fall over, said Adam Steltzner, the NASA engineer in charge of the landing team. That makes the sky-crane method the "least crazy" plan NASA was able to come up with, he said.
Team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity Mars rover's final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars.
NASA TV
NASA's Doug McCuistion showed off this graphic indicating that less than half of the orbiters, landers and flyby spacecraft sent toward Mars have been successful.
Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, compared the maneuver to Olympic-level gymnastics.
"Can we do this? I think we can do this. ... But that risk still exists. It's going to be tough," he said.
Live pictures can't be broadcast from the spacecraft, but NASA TV is due to air coverage from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Steve Sell, a member of the team in charge of Curiosity's landing sequence, said we'll be able to see a "cool animation" based on the sparse telemetry being relayed back to Earth. The live broadcast will also show the reactions from scores of scientists, engineers and VIPs gathered in JPL's mission control room.
If everything works right, Curiosity will basically send a text message from the surface, which will be relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and received back on Earth at 10:31 p.m. PT Sunday (1:31 a.m. ET Monday). How will the world find out about success? "You'll probably be able to tell by [seeing] us celebrating," said Richard Cook, the mission's deputy project manager.
What-ifs
If the crucial text message doesn't come through immediately, the Mars Science Laboratory team — and the rest of us — might have to wait hours longer for data to be relayed by Mars Odyssey, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or the European Space Agency's Mars Express. The rover itself isn't due to send its first beep directly back to Earth until Monday afternoon, Cook said.
If nothing is heard by then, it would be "more likely than not that we've had a problem," Cook said.
There's a lot riding on this mission: Curiosity is the last probe NASA is due to put on the Martian surface for the foreseeable future, due to budgetary constraints. The space agency is in the midst of retooling its Mars exploration program to fit an era of tighter spending. If the landing fails, that would deepen the already-serious questions about the future.
On the flip side, success would usher in two years of exploration in one of the most geologically interesting spots on Mars — a crater called Gale that features a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain in the middle. The various layers of rock on the mountainside could reveal a geological record encompassing billions of years, bridging the gap between Mars' warmer, wetter past and its cold, dry present.
After the landing, it'll take several days for Curiosity to get all its instruments up and running. Its first six-wheeled drive away from the touchdown site isn't due to take place until early September.
How will we know if Curiosity has landed safely on the surface of Mars?
Search for organic chemicals
Curiosity's prime task is to look for special types of carbon compounds that could tell scientists whether Mars was potentially habitable in the ancient past, and even whether the conditions are right for microbes to endure on the planet today. The rover's 10 scientific instruments are not designed to detect life directly, but findings from this mission could lay the groundwork for life-detecting missions to come.
Because the rover is powered by radioisotope generators, it's not dependent on solar arrays, as NASA's Opportunity rover is. Opportunity is still going strong in a different spot on Mars, more than eight and a half years after its landing in 2004. John Grotzinger, a Caltech professor who serves as Curiosity's project scientist, hoped that this rover would last even longer.
"Maybe this rover will still be going when humans finally make it to Mars," he told an audience during a talk at a Mars Society conference in Pasadena on Friday.
That line got the biggest applause of all.
More about the Mars mission:
- Why we're obsessed with Mars
- Mars probe provides radiation revelations
- What will we see from Mars, and when will we see it?
- Is there a virtual Mars in our future?
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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Tighter budget constraints? I guess, the priority is no longer space, which is unfortunate. The technology that NASA has developed has more than paid for itself. The American space program should have the priority it had in the 60's. The important things seem to always be over looked and humans should already be on mars, but we are not. I guess the only way to speed up going to Mars is if the earth is threatened with a Mass extinction event.
United States President George W. Bush announced an initiative of manned space exploration on January 14, 2004, known as the Vision for Space Exploration. It included developing preliminary plans for a lunar outpost by 2012 and establishing an outpost by 2020. Precursor missions that would help develop the needed technology during the 2010-2020 decade were tentatively outlined by Adringa and others.On September 24, 2007, Michael Griffin, then NASA Administrator, hinted that NASA may be able to launch a human mission to Mars by 2037. The needed funds were to be generated by diverting $11 billion from space science missions to the vision for human exploration.
NASA has also discussed plans to launch Mars missions from the Moon to reduce travelling costs.
.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars
Too bad WMD, Halliburton,Oil lobby, Defense contractors, and unfunded wars got in the way. But it was a great diversion from the issues of the day for the "Shrub".
It's nice to see that we can send "Herbie the love bug" to Mars.
Its successful programs, such as the planetary probes and space telescopes have for years been given secondary priority to failures like the Space Shuttle and Space Station.
Think where we would be with space exploration if we had scrapped the Space Shuttle decades ago and instead used a cheap heavy lift launch vehicle like the Russian Energia Vulcan which can carry over 100,000lbs into orbit compared to the max payload of 24,400 for the Space Shuttle.
NASA has been a tragedy to US space exploration
How about giving NASA some of the savings from cancelling the upgrades to all those M1A1 tanks, not to mention trying to sell of the extra three thousand that the Army said that they did NOT WANT in the first place? How is it that stimulus spending on tanks is good, but stimulus spending on roads, or NASA is bad?
I wish them nothing but the best of luck.
I will not post my critical post, which I have been posting since I read the landing scheme, because I don't want to jinx it. However, I will say this, if it does fail, before risking such a large amount of resources the next time around on the "least crazy" schemes, ...
.. they should be made aware that the average annual tuition (plus expenses) at a private nonprofit four-year college is about $35,000.
Therefore, $2,500,000,000 / $35,000 = 71,428 new college graduates.
These are the hidden costs of incompetence in government agencies.
Your numbers are a bit off Ad'M. If, as you stated, the annual tuition is $35,000 per year for a four year college, then the cost to graduate would be $140,000. Divide that into the $2,500,000,000 posted and that would account for 17,857 graduates.
... a private nonprofit four-year college ... not an ivory league racist colleges restricted only for the elitists like the people in NASA.
Most people, fortunately, are not arrogant like those elitists in NASA. The average American just wants a normal middle class life for themselves and their kids.
@Ad'M,
A little classist maybe???? It's "Ivy" League for the green stuff covering old buildings. And I would point out that it is the Ivy League schools who are moving to ZERO tuition for "achievement" students (versus "legacy: students that are admitted with only minimum qualification.) I would not think this is racist (Obama went to an Ivy League school and graduated with high honors and was Law Review Editor) or elitist --- the Ivy League schools only admit from 10-30% legacy students, depending on the school. I seriously doube if any "elitist" at NASA was a legacy admission.
My guess is that you did not go to college and just look for ways to slam education. I think the average American wants a better home for his kids than he has himself. And the path to that is still education. The days when people without advanced degrees could send rovers to Mars happened only in dime novels.
Elitist in NASA? Just where did you come up with that idea? Please provide references.
"What a SNOB!"
- Rick Sanitorium
You got it wrong.
Unlike those engineers in NASA, most people are ignorant. That's the truth. They don't want to learn, they don't want to think for themselves.
@AlexG,
I said .. arrogant ... not ignorant. You must be Republican, spinning people's statements so you don't have to think and live outside of your little bubble.
It's " all about mortgage payments " dude (in reference to the space program and in particular the manned space program). If only you knew who told me that it would burst your little bubble and you would get lost in translation into the real world. Keep on dreaming little rich boy.
@Ad'M:
Do you still not realize that you blew the math in your original post?
You said the ANNUAL cost of college was 35,000 and then forgot to MULTIPLY it by 4 years....
Your reading comprehension seems similarly faulty as AlexG was not MISQUOTING you by using the word ignorant, he was giving an alternate viewpoint.
Finally, implying that you somehow have INSIDER information that you cannot share does nothing but further discredit your statements.
I agree with you about Republicans though...
Somewhat realistic but nonetheless disconcerting that human knowledge is still considered not to be a reasonable return of an investment. Maybe someday, after mankind evolves.
Yep. It has always been that the greatest uses for new knowledge were discovered long after the knowledge. Ben Franklin was the world's leading expert in electricity in his time, but it took Tessla and Edison to bring the electric light indoors. Edison is listed second because he wanted it to be DC and Tessla knew how to do AC. Knowledge evolves as well.
so sad that we allowed our polticians to spend us almost broke on unfunded wars, unfunded programs, decades of tax cuts for the rich. We've just so lost our way in this country.
The saddest part of it all.....we just aren't capable of doing big things anymore. And that clearly rules out space.
Good luck.
Mars "The Red Planet" http://youtu.be/z6glstqMc50
Ever Since Humans have looked into the sky, we have dreamed, and
wondered, what is that little glowing red dot in the sky, and what is it all about.Today we have some answers to that question. The first successful flyby of Mars occurred in 1965, by Mariner 4, since then we have sent many landers, and rovers, to its surface, looking to see if there is life, and wondering if someday we may call Mars "The Red Planet" our home. Mars is waiting, for humanity to set foot on its surface, so what are we waiting for ? Lets put a plan, and a mission, together, and let's get it done, for all humanity !
Here are a few photos of our Exploration of Mars "The Red Planet".
Best played at 1080p Full-Screen.
Enjoy the video and have a good day, Tom And Lyn, Thomasp671
Tom, why would we want to call Mars our 'Home".
It's a red rock with no green, no water to speak of, no trees, just a has been
planet. Maybe some unknown resource, but i doubt it. The only thing I can see
from going to Mars is to see if "Life" existed at one time in some form. Which
in itself would be a huge discovery.
But I'll be just fine right here where I have
nice green golf courses, nice blue lakes, air to inhale. By the time it gets
overcrowded on earth, I'll be long gone.
And hopefully we'll make discoveries on how to
get to the next planet further out.
enjoy.
Teraform the planet.
Ji (G)
Mars is the next frontier for humans to explore, and I have asked myself one question, why should we go to Mars? Mars is the only planet in our Solar System that we can live and make it (over time) like the Earth, it may take hundreds of years, Yes, also we are the only species on the Earth that has the drive and the capability to adapt to what ever environment we set our eyes on.
In the next 20 to 50 years with our technology expanding a hundred fold, we will have the ability to do this. To me what keeps humanity going forward is the great need for a challenge, with out that, we would still be living in the caves. Have a good day, Tom And Lyn
Best of luck!
Our dreams and hopes are always with you!
Don't forget the peanuts!
If anyone has not watched the "Seven Minutes of Terror" video, you really should watch it. Here's the link:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=1090
These are either the craziest or smartest people on the planet, but either way they have the cojones to "Dare Mighty Things." I'll be watching and sharing the 7 minutes of terror with them --- with my fingers crossed.
Chris ... you are so right! Cojones reales y verdaderos! It's crazy, but either way, inevitably, we are going to prevail because they have them, in abundance! - enough for the rest of us! This is just an Hors d'oeuvre from them.
Clarke's Second Law is (paraphrased) that the only way we can find out limits is to press beyond them.
Barsoom
This is indeed an important mission. There are so many unanswered questions that we have about Mars. We need to find out why Martians have green skin and why they speak in such high squeaky voices.
High squeaky voices...helium, of course!
Hey, Alan, well done piece. I must say that you've used your immediate contact with the mission players assembled here in Pasadena to remarkable advantage.
Big Al, I don't know about the squeaky voices, but we might get some notion as to whether our "martians" are farting methane.
Ah! The "methane farting martians"! Bull, it's the invisible martian cows!
@reterry,
I think Roadkill was unaware that unexplained traces of methane are being detected on Mars. Under certain circumstances, methane can be a major marker for life.
Yes, I was aware of the trace methane. There ARE other explanations for it. Volcanic activity, even eons ago, for one.
I for one would like to see Science back in the forefront of popular culture and those NASA elitists should lead the way!!. It seems fewer Americans appriciate science and what American advances in science and mathmatics ment for our econemy. I believe we are seeing the fruits af a general "war on science" in our econemy today. Limited R&D in alternative fuels because climate change doesn't exist, limited stem cell research and wasted time on the evolution "debate" because of religous fundimentilists just to name a few. Lets get excited again tike we were in the 1960's. We have a new competitor in the Space Race...China. Lets invest in our future once again. Go NASA, push the boundry of science and engineering and make America proud!!
@Maxx,
It isn't just hard science that is suffering. My wife is a research psychologist who has always lived on "soft" money as an academic. I have watched her funding environment virtually collapse as R&D money (from the NIH in the case of gerontology) from NIS is down to around 17% of hit high point. If you factor in all R&D for all research, including corporate research, it has fallen to the lowest point, as a percentage of GDP, since just prior to WWI. As far as the economy, this is every much "mortgaging the future" as the national debt.
Au contraire! You should see the spending in "labor reduction while maintaining profits" ... research!
My fingers are crossed. I so want this landing to go off without a hitch. I'm looking forward to the new surface pictures soon.
The landing method sure seems unlikely, sure hope they pull it off.
Water plants may be needed ASAP for the draught areas and the reserviors may also be needed so desparately for the preventive measures of the future draught in USA.
With compelling evidence that NASA faked the lunar landing in the 60's. I have seen the videos and evidence, How can I possibly believe that this mars landing is real. That it is not some computer generated CGI special effect wonder.
Of course it is not real. In fact, the earth is flat. All of these earth-round alarmists are just taking that position in order to get research funding.
Actually, the world is flat, it is space, which the plates rest on, that is curved. See Einstein's general relativity. :-)
Did your video mention that the manned moon missions left reflectors on the moon's surface that scientists still use to measure the distance from the earth to the moon. Thousands of today's scientists worldwide would still have to be conspiring to lie about sending men to the moon...
Ad'm,
Another out-of-kilter remark. No its not. You're wrong again.
It's fake, just a ploy to keep billions of dollars coming in. How come we have not set on the moon again or in the last 20 yrs? Yet they landed on the moon without a computer back in the 60's right?
Um, Johnny, we had a four-bit computer on the Lunar Lander.... It actually got overloaded during the REAL decent. Armstrong had to land manually. They're still looking for that cushion.
Do you believe the Russians faked the lunar rover landing (Lunokhod 1) on the moon too John?
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100318.html
The manned moon missions left reflectors on the moon's surface that scientists still use to measure the distance from the earth to the moon. Thousands of today's scientists worldwide would still have to be conspiring to lie about sending men to the moon...
Conspiracy theorists always miss how inept their conspiracy theories are. What kind of conspirracy is known in every trailer park, but nowhere else?
Here's a conspiracy theory for you: Once a second person joins a "conspiracy" it will immediately fail because of the foibles of human nature.
Maybe there will be a puddle of water up there to look at.
The money has been spent and I'm hoping for success on this mission. But beyond that, I hope that
Congress re-prioritizes spending toward programs that assist those in need during these challenging economic times. Mars, the rest of the planets, and the entire Universe will always be waiting for future explanation so let's address the most critical issues before launching our next rocket to wherever.
Thanks, Alan for a great article. We have Space Weather to check on the Sun, do you suppose at some point we could have Mars Weather to check out weather in the interplanetary neighborhood. That would be incredibly cool...weather for three locations...Earth, the Sun & Mars. To the detractors...don't be Humbugs!
Go USA... Go USA... Go USA (Oh, sorry, Olympic fever.)
Watch this lunar fake theory and tell me how it is real. youtube.com/watch?v=zJk1YTzSWTM
youtube.com/watch?v=zJk1YTzSWTM
We now have nice clear photo's of where we landed on the moon and the paths that the astronauts walked ....
Here's some for you to enjoy ....
http://www.space.com/12835-nasa-apollo-moon-landing-sites-photos-lro.html
John:
Michio Kaku, like a boss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drSqtw0Qywk
The manned moon missions left reflectors on the moon's surface that scientists still use to measure the distance from the earth to the moon. Thousands of today's scientists worldwide would still have to be conspiring to lie about sending men to the moon...
youtube.com/watch?v=zJk1YTzSWTM
The manned moon missions left reflectors on the moon's surface that scientists still use to measure the distance from the earth to the moon. Thousands of today's scientists worldwide would still have to be conspiring to lie about sending men to the moon...
lets see if plato is right..he said at one time mars and earth were very close and there was travel between the two planets...then one day a large planet sized bollide came into our solar system caused the earth to wobble..causing atlantis to sink and it pushed mars way out and caused most of the life on mars to perish...that bollide was then caught by the gravitational pull on the sun and became the planet venus and to this day venus has a reverse spin to it.let see if life did exist on mars..according to plato..there should be evidence.
Stay curious ....
Happy landing "CURIOSITY" ....
I'm glad to see that the major news stations are showing an interest in this mission ....
Alan said he was going to be there for the announcement of the missions landing ....
We may have to excuse Alan after the landing when it's success is found out ....
From all of the popping bubbly be consumed at mission control .... "LOL"
Thanks Alan ....
I meant to type ....
From all of the popping bubbly being consumed at mission control .... "LOL"
Must be the bubbly .... "LOL"
Have fun ....
speaking of weather i thought they were thinking of terraforming mars...i remember them seeding clouds during the vietnam wars and making rain...they must have come a long way since then in controlling the weather...why can't they make it rain in the areas we have drought in the good old USA ?????
Best way to waste government dollars.
Yeah, heaven forbid we spend less than .1% of the National Budget on learning about the universe and how it works. Let's just stick our heads in the sand and pretend everything will be OK. I would rather spend government money on EDUCATION, INNOVATION, and TECHNOLOGY than all the other stupid crap we spend it on. It's amazing we spend more money on war than on education. Glad to see that is working well for us.
Go MSL! Let's show these knuckleheads what's up!