CURIOSITY: MARS

[He Man]

CONTACT!

Exciting news.

http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/mars/curiosity_news3.html

[mitt]

Pretty amazing.  It still feels overly complicated for what they were doing, but that is an armchair quarterback talking.


mitt

[Le Pirate]

 


glad someone is still doing cool shit with my tax dollars!

[He Man]

Pretty amazing.  It still feels overly complicated for what they were doing, but that is an armchair quarterback talking.


mitt

oh it is. But it was one of the " can you think of anything else better" options. I'm sure we will never see that type of deployment ever again.

[bevel]

oh it is. But it was one of the " can you think of anything else better" options. I'm sure we will never see that type of deployment ever again.

The whole point for the complexity in the landing goes back to what was trying to be accomplished - landing a 4 metric ton SUV on another planet that has 1% of the atmospheric pressure that we have on Earth.

Here on Earth, we can use parachutes to slow down and safely land, because we have the atmospheric pressure creating drag (and deceleration force). At 1% of that pressure, you need a bigger parachute to achieve the same goals, which wouldn't be practical.

Then you have the dust issue. 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure means its very easy to kick up dust, which means you can't use thrusters to get all the way down to the surface (and have immediate connectivity back to Earth). We would have to wait for the dust to settle or blow away, and there's always the risk of damaging some of the equipment with the dust kicked up by using thrusters all the way to the surface.

Spirit and Opportunity made a similar decent, making it to a few meters above the surface and being dropped from the descent platform - but due to their smaller size, NASA could wrap them in giant airbags. For Curiosity, this was not an option, which is where the SkyCrane came in. Holding an altitude and lowering Curiosity to minimize the amount of dust kicked up, while also assuring that Curiosity landed with the rubber side down was freaking brilliant! And the descent platform still had 40% of its fuel left when the bolts fired and Curiosity was safe on the surface - it could have done that for a lot longer.

What I find truly amazing is that this whole process has been "on the books" for over a dozen years, but we finally got to the point where technology could make it possible.

[mitt]

I am not sure what is cooler - the rover landing on mars, or timing and math for a separate orbiting satellite that was coordinated to take its picture during the descent.



mitt

[MendoDave]

Timing and math are cool.



_{When somebody else does it}

[Speedbag]

Bravo, nerds!

[DRKWNG]

[Triple J]