Seven Minutes of Terror :) Curiosity Mission

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On August 5, 2012 NASA space mission Curiosity will land on Mars after a two year voyage to the Red Planet.

Team members of the Curiosity mission dramatically share the challenges of Curiosity's final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars.

See the video Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror

I highly recommend it to help appreciate what it's like to land on Mars.

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Other spectacular videos telling the story of the Curiosity Mission can be found HERE

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mission homepage is HERE

Ever wonder about the distance from Earth to Mars?
That link contains a really cool photo of Mars taken from NASA's Viking spacecraft, which launched in 1975.

Steve
Space Junkie

 

[gooblax]

That's nuts! mg: I wouldn't like to be in charge of that horizontal manoeuvre and getting it back to 0 horizontal velocity.
I had enough trouble getting motors to start and stop on the experimental Mars Rover at uni. :/

 

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If you can?t get to a Mars Science Lab landing party on August 5, 2012, one website will bring the party to you.

Explore Mars, a not-for-profit, has joined up with several space-faring organizations and firms to create Get Curious. It?s a one-stop shop for all things concerning Curiosity, the centerpiece of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission (MSL).


Read more: Universe Today

 

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For complete article, please visit: High-stakes Mars mission relies on untried 'sky crane'


The entry, descent and landing of the Mars Science Laboratory requires autonomous steering, a supersonic braking parachute and an innovative "sky crane" technique to lower the nuclear-powered rover to the surface of the red planet.
(Credit: NASA)


The moment of truth: Curiosity touches down on the floor of Gale Crater. Cables connecting the rover to its rocket-powered descent stage are severed, freeing the science lab for initial checkout.
(Credit: NASA)

 

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Curiosity Homepage (NASA) including the Mission Countdown Clock

For extraordinary details about the landing, the mission and about Mars, see the attached Press Kit

 

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Imagine a space vehicle accelerating into Martian atmosphere at 20 times the speed of sound, 13,000 miles per hour. Outside the heat shield breaches 1,600?C. Seven minutes later, the Rover must be at 0 miles perhour.

The parachute deploys and moments later lander and capsule separate. Rockets thrust the lander a distance away and it hovers above the Martian surface. Finally it lowers its rover to the surface.

That's if everything goes according to plan.

It takes 14 minutes for the radio signal to travel back to Earth at the speed of light, so Curiosity will have either landed safely or will have crashed and we won't know for seven minutes. Those are the seven minutes of terror.

Mars rover has a considerable Canadian connection

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Mars rover has a considerable Canadian connection

Mars rover has a considerable Canadian connection
By David Thurton, CBC News
Aug 3, 2012

Curiosity's mission begins early on Aug. 6


Video: Mars landing anticipation 2:29

The Mars rover, Curiosity, is scheduled to land at 1:31 a.m. ET on Aug. 6, on the red planet's Gale Crater, an area that scientists think will help unlock many secrets.

While Canadian scientists are at work on the mission, space enthusiasts worldwide plan to party and watch a live broadcast of the landing.

"The objective of the mission is to look and see if Mars ever had, or still has, the conditions to support life," said St?phane Desjardins, director of space exploration projects at the Canadian Space Agency. "We're expecting a great discovery from this mission."

Not only are a number of Canadians piloting Curiosity from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), they'll also direct the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS), a Canadian-designed component on the rover that's key to the mission's success.

The APXS was designed by a team of scientists from the University of Guelph, led by physics professor Ralph Gellert. The Canadian Space Agency footed the $17.8 million bill.

Searching for evidence of water on Mars
The APXS is a small box which functions like an X-ray machine that "determines the elemental composition of rocks, like how much silica and iron are inside," says professor Mariek Schmidt, a Brock University volcanologist.

Discovering certain minerals may indicate if water existed in the past, or even today on Mars.

"I expect to be surprised and I expect that all of us will be surprised," Schmidt says. Schmidt is part of the team of Canadian scientists working on the Mars mission. She's also one of the team members at the JPL who will be piloting the rover.

Schmidt's driven previous Mars rovers and laughs when asked how to steer one. "People would ask, 'Where's the joystick?' but it's through code and computer programming," Schmidt said.

Curiousity, about the size of a golf cart, is five times heavier than its predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity. And this new space vehicle has a whole lab on board.



Mars rover parties around the world
Before Canadian scientists even take Curiosity for a drive, they'll be glued to monitors at the JPL in Pasadena, Calif., throughout Sunday night and into Monday morning.

Schmidt and other scientists will be at a special event at the space centre. "I'm sure it's going to be a real party atmosphere," she said. "There might be champagne."

Several Mars landing parties are planned around the world, too.

Bill Nye the Science Guy and about 3,000 others are expected to attend Celebrate Curiosity: A Party on Mars, just minutes away from the NASA space center in Pasadena.

This is one of about 40 Mars parties that will be happening around the globe, including one in Toronto.

Successful landing uncertain
Many of these events attract more than science enthusiasts, because part of the curiosity about Curiosity is the burning question: Will it even land safely?

Not even NASA can guarantee an answer.

Imagine a space vehicle accelerating into Martian atmosphere at 20 times the speed of sound. Outside the heat shield breaches 1,600?C. The parachute deploys and moments later lander and capsule separate. Rockets thrust the lander a distance away and it hovers above the Martian surface. Finally it lowers its rover to the surface.

That's if everything goes according to plan.

It takes seven minutes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth, so by the time NASA mission control finds out how the landing went, Curiosity's fate would already be determined.



"That's just a tense thing to go through by yourself, in front of your TV or computer at home," Jonathan Moneta, the organizer of Toronto's Live Curiosity Landing Party, told CBC News. "We wanted to create a party so that we not only celebrate but also experience it together with each other as support," Moneta said. The guests at the Toronto party will watch the landing on NASA's feed. Special events for younger kids are also planned.

The last rover?
Space exploration fascinates Moneta. But he and his friends decided to host the Mars party because they felt the landing was not getting the attention it deserved. Moneta, who manages smart energy start-ups, said space exploration doesn't excite people anymore. And that's reflected in the budget cuts to both Canada's space program and NASA.

"NASA's budget has been cut so much that this is actually the last rover that they're intending on sending to a planet at the moment," Moneta said. "Usually by the time they're ready to send a rover, the next major planetary expedition has already been in the planning stages. At the moment there is nothing like that."

Moneta hopes the images Curiosity beams back will awaken new interest in space exploration.

 

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It takes seven minutes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth,

This is a typo error in the CBC article; the actual time for a radio signal to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light is 14 minutes. Curiosity's descent is seven minutes, so the so called seven minutes of terror is the time of uncertainty from the time Rover is scheduled to land and the time Mission Control receives the signal to confirm the safe landing.

Time of Mars landing: 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5 PDT (1:31 a.m. Aug. 6 EDT, 05:31 Aug. 6 Universal Time) plus or minus a minute. This is Earth-received time, which includes one-way light time for radio signal to reach Earth from Mars. The landing will be at about 3 p.m. local time at the Mars landing site.

Landing site: 4.6 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude, near base of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater

Earth–Mars distance on landing day: 154 million miles (248 million kilometers)

One-way radio transit time, Mars to Earth, on landing day: 13.8 minutes

Total distance of travel, Earth to Mars: About 352 million miles (567 million kilometers)

Source: Nasa Press Kit

 

[David Baxter PhD]

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Aug 21, 2012

This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated using thumbnail data. The result was applied a heavy noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening for best visibility.

The video plays at 15fps, or 3x realtime. The heat shield impacts in the lower left frame at 0:21, and is shown enlarged at the end of the video.

Image source: Mars Science Laboratory: Raw Images

Fun fact: The first mission to Mars, Mariner 4 in 1965, returned a total of 634 kb of data, including 22 photos.