The Mars Science Lab was launched a week ago, and is scheduled to land in the Gale Crater of Mars during August of next year. The object is to place a one-ton vehicle, or rover, called “Curiosity” on the surface to move about for about 690 days. Its average speed will be about 30 meters per hour. Among its other tasks, Curiosity will try to answer the long-standing but unresolved question about whether Mars harbors life.
The Wikipedia page gives a ton of useful information, and this cool 5.5 minute animation shows how Curiosity will land and deploy:
The landing is an extremely complicated multi-step process. Check out the rock sampler at 4:13. I’m not sure which of the many experiments envisioned is shown at the end; perhaps an informed reader will tell us.
Isn’t it amazing what our species has been able to do? Everything involved in this mission to Mars was crafted from the substance and atmosphere of Earth, transformed through the mentation of a big-brained primate.
Professor Martin Brasier—a well-known paleobiologist at Oxford—and his son Alex were invited to the launch and took these two photos, which I reproduce with their permission:
h/t: Rixaeton
Very cool! Let’s hope it fairs better than the Russian probe…
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Or the Mars Climate Orbiter…
“Isn’t it amazing what our species has been able to do?”
A lot more awe inspiring than a burning bush
It is also amazing what a bunch of co-operative bacteria can do with a few billion years.
This is what has puzzled me about the “747 built by a tornado in a junkyard” thing. If the whole Earth is considered a junkyard, with solar and geothermal power circulating matter for four billion years as the tornado, then yes, evolution can produce a 747, or even a Mars rover.
In fairness, I think that somewhat begs the question of evolution. If humans were created by a designer, than it is not a problem that they then create 747s: Still, nothing with the complexity of a 747 arises without some ultimate designer.
I suppose it does elide the way in which the original 747-in-a-junkyard argument is also a form of question-begging, though. But it was always a mere argument from personal incredulity anyway, and so not valid. Personally, I don’t understand how an educated adult could believe in a benevolent personal God — I am personally incredulous that such individuals might exist — but this would be a rather poor argument that theists aren’t real 🙂
I’ve watched that video a few times before. It still excites me. Anyone know what the little bits are the pop off at 1:08 and 1:48? I’m guessing latches that hold the shield on. I just like how such a small thing was included in the animation. And i know some will quibble that there is no sound in space but i think the sound effects are really great.
Looking at the landing stages diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:20090428MSLEntry1.jpg, the first pop-off at 1:08 is the “cruise balance mass jettison.” I don’t have details, but at a guess because the payload is not symmetrical and the cruse phase requires the craft to spin, those are the extra weights used to balance the craft, in the same way car wheels have lead weights attached to the rims.
I think you are right about the heat shield bolts at 1:48.
Did anyone else have a “what tha..?” expression on their face at 2:10 🙂
Actually, reading the Wiki page that Jerry linked to, the things popped off at 1:48 could also be ballast mass used to trim the attitude of the craft as it passes through the atmosphere. This is a spacecraft that has to fly, deploy and land all on software alone. The precise landing point has to be decided by the software based on what it sees.
It is the attitude rockets you can see working during entry and ballistic flight, combined with a deepened understanding of Mars atmosphere no doubt, that does the heavy lifting of shrinking the earlier large landing ellipses (likely landing areas).
Those are interesting rockets, since I am told you can’t reliably ignite them in a supersonic air stream (yet). They are ignited and works behind the shock front slowing the air stream to subsonic speeds around and behind the craft.
And SpaceX has, perhaps wisely, put similar engines on their Dragon capsules. The difference with them pointing down on the sides as opposed to back at the end of the craft as here should mean little for ignition and operation. We will see.
Thanks Rixaeton.
The weights are used to change the descent stage attitude by changing the center of mass. The first weight jettison would be between entry orbit and atmosphere ballistic flight, then between flight and chute attitude I think.
The general EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing) procedure were developed for the Viking landers. Especially the supersonic chutes were developed at cost, because they needed many rocket flights to get right. Now they now how to scale and check them, which is enough.
[Only the landing procedure differ. Albeit the new sky crane is almost a throwback to the Viking rocket engine landing.]
I guess the weights were introduced then. It is a cheap and robust way to change attitude.
Actually not a search for life. Curiosity will deepen the quest for Mars habitability, a search for ability to support life, now or then. It will follow up the successful search for water with a search for organics:
“Curiosity is ‘Seeking the Signs of Life’, but is not a life detection mission.” [Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program.]
If there is life in the ground, Curiosity may not find it. Instead it, together with its companion orbiter Maven which arrives at 2013, will hopefully plow the ground (literary) for follow up life detection and/or sample return missions.
I think NASA will have to hammer this distinction to the media in the coming months, so that there aren’t any undue expectations that will likely not be fulfilled. The backlash form that will be problematic as always.
As for the particular instrument, it is hard to tell from the video. It could be the CheMin, an X-ray diffraction instrument, or perhaps they mean to depict alpha particle beams as in the APXS (Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer).
Excellent. let’s hope it lasts as long as the previous rovers.
http://xkcd.com/695/
Maybe not. The MMRTG has aged 2 years due to the launch delay (2011 instead of the 2009 target), leaving 12 years nominal life for Curiosity operation.
But the MMRTG uses redeveloped techniques that unfortunately wasn’t as good as the Apollo era RTGs. (First used for Apollo site instrumentation, I believe.)
They deliver less power (for the same amount of radioactives, I think). And a project review this year showed that they are shock sensitive. The landing shock will, perhaps, damage the RTG to generate less power.
Therefore the nominal mission was scaled down from 20 km of traverse to 5 km. (As a comparison, the Gale mound is 5 km high.) That is likely a minimal requirement. Else they actually say outright that the 12 years will perhaps be 3 years…
Nope, I remembered incorrectly: the MMRTG use as much fuel as the Apollo SNAP for higher power, but it weighs more>/a>.
Probably they wanted a better shield as the RTG was closer to the experiments. So I will have to retract “wasn’t as good”.
That is just too sad.
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I meant xkcd, but Torbjörn’s comments too.
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Click the link to see very detailed information about the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) Suite of instruments on board the Curiosity rover. It’s…
However there’s much more in the link.
With parts supplied by the US, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, and Finland, it’s heartening to see the degree of international cooperation in the project.
Now if only we could redirect spending from war to science, we could afford to launch about 300 of these missions per year (or fund great advancements in a wide range of fields).
The “laser eye” of the rover at 4:08 is the ChemCam instrument. It was designed and bulit in my lab: Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, here in Toulouse, France. Check out our web site and our Facebook page for more info! Or follow us on twitter @IRAP_France.
Merci pour l’info, je vais aller voir ça…
Wow that was amazing, what an elaborate method of landing it. I suppose they know what they’re doing but it seems extremely complicated. Must be so exciting to work on a project like this.
Shouldn’t it be obvious that this kind of thing, where it doesn’t need elaborate life-support, doesn’t have to be coddled against radiation, and above all, doesn’t have to come back (Sorry, Rover) – let alone come back alive – is far more practicable and effective in its mission than trying to send humans?
yes
Wow, I just watched this and am very worried. So many thing could go wrong and probably will.
What a blow it would be if it all fails.
Am I the only one with a pessimistic outlook on this? It’s a hideously complicated landing procedure and if it fails, it will be used by politicians to drive the last nail in NASA’s coffin. Their funding will then finally be released to compensate for any potential cuts that might threaten the defense budget.
Yeah, that entry and landing will be a real nail-biter for everyone. I was surprised at the engineering complexity, too, but see from the wiki page that the device is the size of a mini-cooper and weighs a ton. I can only assume that at this size, the air bag tricks from the previous rovers won’t do.
That’s right.
This beautiful .pdf :- MSL SkyCrane Architecture explains the how & why of the chosen system.
NASA’s budget (17 billion) would get lost in the rounding error of the defense budget (1 trillion).
Returning to the Phobos-Grunt mission, briefly, it seems that the ESA have ceased their active search for signals from the mission. They haven’t completely given up, and remain willing to help the Russians in any way they can think of. But it sounds as if the ESA are, essentially, out of ideas. Which doesn’t sound good for Phobos-Grunt.
On a lighter note : I was reading Martin Brasier’s “Darwin’s Lost World: The Hidden History of Life on Earth” (Publisher: OUP Oxford; ISBN-10: 0199548978) earlier this year on the Grand Banks, and a cracking good read it is too. Clearly Prof Brasier is a “geologist’s geologist”.
I look forward to his next book “Secret Chambers: The inside story of cells and complex life” (Publisher: OUP Oxford ;
ISBN-10: 0199644004), and it’s on my wish-list.