Curiosity Rover on Track for Monday Landing
Curiosity, the car-size, one-ton rover is bound for arrival on Mars at 1:31 a.m., EDT on Monday, Aug. 6.
The landing will mark the beginning of a two-year prime mission to investigate one of the most intriguing places on Mars.
› Everything You Need to Know About Landing
› What to Expect From The First Pictures
Also check out this link for more interesting information: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
Comments
Maxime, that would be an interesting engineering problem. I wonder if the right props and motor combination can be found for the required lift. They would probably have to be big props with a relatively high speed motor.
Dear Friends,
FOXTEAM organize an event and wait online the landing check here ...
the idea is to meet the other friends in skype and comment the live video from nasa ...
http://www.virtualrobotix.com/events/curiosity-mars-landing
Join Us Online ;)
Yeah, didn't realize that it was so huge. Maybe they should have split the experiments in to multiple smaller rovers. One would think that swarm/networking technology has evolved to a point where it would become feasible. That way if any one of the rovers did not survive, at least some of the experiments could still be done. I hope it survives the landing. Would love to see the footage from this one.
Dave had a good rant about it. After designing many autonomous landing systems & crane systems, the landing is actually easier than the takeoff & cranes are a lot easier than something that flies, but it's never been tested in the actual environment.
A few links about this amazing mission:
A real time (and more!) java tracker from NASA: http://eyes.nasa.gov/exit.html
The latest episode from Robots Podcast on JPL Open House 2012JPL Open House 2012 :
http://www.robotspodcast.com/podcast/2012/07/robots-jpl-open-house-...
An overview of MSL Curiosity and its mission: http://robotpig.net/aerospace-news/mars-science-laboratory-msl-curi...
And the amazing video from JPL showing the full mission, from launch, martian atmosphere entry, skycrane landing and geological sampling:
La descente périlleuse de Curiosity sur Mars par LeNouvelObservateur
First, here is a pretty cool web-based simulation of the mission that you can control:
http://eyes.nasa.gov/player/exit.html
Second, here is a pretty good picture to give you an idea of how big Curiosity is:
The airbag decision was down to weight - Curiosity weighs a lot.
They reckoned that airbags big enough to land it would be too big, too heavy and probably burst on impact anyway - drop a man on an exercise ball and it's a cushion, drop a car on it...
It dangles below the rocket pack because they don't want it covered in the backwash of the exhaust - or to carry around an empty rocket backpack for the rest of the mission.
All the apparently crazy ideas have good reason - but it still adds up to one interesting ride!
I'm going to be up early on Monday watching NASA TV, fingers crossed...
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