When I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago for ICCC6,
I took the family to the National Air and Space Museum on the mall. While everyone was gazing at rockets and other bus-sized hardware of glory days past, off in the corner I noticed this, roped off, without a placard even:
What was it? A full sized mockup of the new Mars Science Lab explorer known as Curiosity. Apparently, it would serve as a backdrop to this announcement I found out later.
About the size of a Jeep, it looked ready to rumble on the red planet. I figured they would use the air bag bouncy deployment system that worked so well for Spirit and Opportunity, just super-sized.
But after learning a bit more about how Curiosity will be landed, and watching a video from NASA JPL on the mission sequencing, I was surprised to learn they weren’t using that method, but rather a series of mechanical, dangling drops by wire, and rocket maneuvers, that look more than a bit worrying due to the complex synchronization that must occur. Watch this video:
This artist’s concept animation depicts key events of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012.
My view: there’s a lot more that can go wrong. One thruster rocket failure, or a tangled drop wire, is all it would take to doom the mission. Mars is known for eating missions, with an over 50% failure rate, so adding to the complexity during landing, especially that dangling rover under a hovering rocket, looks mighty failure-prone.
More on the mission here at NASA JPL.
>>NoAstronomy
>>2. Mars is too big, and it’s gravity is too strong, to rely wholly on
>>rockets. Which we did for landing on the Moon.
The Russians used to land men on Earth, using just a parachute and retro rockets.
>>Karmakanze
>>Funny how you’re interested in Mars missions while there are
>>headlines like this around:
>>“East coast hammered by the heatwave:
Funny how you are not interested in northern Europe having no summer this year.
.
The rover was on display at the Permieter Instutute’s 10th anniversary bash in Waterloo last year. It is a lot bigger than I expected. You could ride aboard.
I see now that there are no solar panels. It’s powered by nuclear energy….that deadly plutonium stuff. Surely all the creatures on Mars will develop lung cancer now…./sarc off.
@Dave Worley
Not necessarily. The lack of atmosphere makes a lunar descent and landing more difficult than on a planet with an atmosphere.
In the case of Mars your are incorrect.
Mars has not enough atmosphere to make it easy in terms of using a chute and aerobraking, (for example this landing is going to be 4.5km below the datum, that is a lot of extra atmosphere there using to help land this beast). You need to use technology that incorporates landing devices for both atmospheric and non atmospheric landing, making Mars more difficult to land on than Earth or the Moon.
On the other hand in orbit around Mars is one of the easiest places to go to and land from Earth which of course is Phobos, (easiest in terms of delta V requirement). A space elevator will be a excellent future option (if technically feasible) for landing on Mars and escaping its gravity well.
Maybe “easier” is not the best term, both are difficult in different ways.
Not to be argumentative, but the delivery package would have to haul a lot more fuel if there were no atmosphere.
Yes I agree with that Dave and It will be interesting to see (if ever we do), what system will be used to land humans on the red planet.
The main problem is that there simply is not any existing technology to safely land more than about a ton of payload to the surface of mars. For an excellent discussion of why the ‘Sky Hook’ design and why we won’t be landing astronauts on Mars any time soon go to:
http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/
In my opinion, self assembling robots are a much more viable option, small, cheap, mission flexible and can repair themselves.
W^3
But we can put a manned base on the moon. We have the technology to do it very quickly.
There is a common misconception that we would need some solid pressure container or to excavate caves in order to dwell there. Humans can work in a 5 psi environment. Think about that. That’s less pressure than the average fun jump contains. A base can be a lightweight inflatable structure. Furthermore, folks working there can wear a lightweight pressure suit which would deploy in the event of a sudden loss of pressure. Another common misconception is the amount of time that a person can survive in a vacuum. Check it out, you may be surprised.
We should be engaged in a serious plan to make a base in a crater near one of the lunar poles to set up and operate an observational telescope. Those can also be made now with very lightweight materials, focused with peizoelectric actuators. There are also plenty of scientific and industrial benefits to be derived from such a base. All of this is doable if only a few of our aerospace contractors would develop the cajoles to speak up and offer their expertise. I’m sure there are plenty of folks at NASA and JPL who would be very excited to rise up to such a challenge.
About all we have now is that Branson fellow crowing about shooting a little glider up for a 2 minute non orbital amusement ride into “space”. In a national media interview he had the audacity to describe the flight as about 90 minutes long, somehow neglecting to explain that all but a couple minutes is the ride up to launch altitude under the mother ship, and the glide down. No need for a heat shield, it’s not going fast enough. Of course the reporter never bothered to ask how long one would actually be in space.
Everyone is tired of hucksters. We long to do something real, something tangible, and something we can be real proud of doing. We are seriously lacking in positive goals these days.
Anthony, this might be a good next step for you to help promote something very positive, since the whole fear mongering global warming/climate change fad appears to have finally found its place in history with pet rocks and cabbage patch kids. I expect that someone with your influence could help tremendously to get such a bold idea moving.