Click picture to go to interactive description of what is happening above.
Posted on 08/05/2012 11:04:03 AM PDT by hattend
Landing at 10:30PM Pacific...yes, this is early so all the aviation, space, astronomy and science pingers can "get 'er done".
I love these things. I sure hope this one works. I just watched that “7 Minutes of Terror” clip. It appears that there are a lot of opportunities for something to go wrong. These guys have been great so far. I hope this works! I’ve got my fingers crossed.
Any chance I can get this moved to Breaking News sometime today?
My theory is that there is life on Mars. It takes the form of a rather large cat. My fear is that the Lander will come down directly on top of the cat. Yes, my fear is that Curiosity may kill the cat.
5.56mm
[groan]
This is so exciting!!
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(Posted 14 minutes ago.) |
We’ve had a pretty good record when it comes to landing stuff on Mars, but you still cant help but be nervous with those guys.
Thanks for posting! We’ll move this to breaking news early this evening.
Click picture to go to interactive description of what is happening above.
Sure! How about 6-ish?
Ok, after watching the video on Space.com, I’m not too confident this is going to work out.
It is like trying to land a bullet in space on a banana running at full speed without bruising the skin.
I hope they did some extensive testing for that 2.5 billion dollars.
Here is hoping NASA has a great day. If this works the pictures this sends back should be awesome
This landing is so complex, so many things that have to automatically go right. Very little room for error if that. I feel a little shaky about this one!
Sounds great! Thank you!
What time is the expected landing???
I concur, it should moved to breaking news.
If there is life, microbial other forms and or evidence of past life on Mars, there is a real good chance Curiosity will detect it.
I really hope they pull off the landing.
Good luck, Curiousity!
9:30PM Alaska, 10:30PM Pacific, 11:30PM Mountain, 12:30AM Central, 1:30AM Eastern
That is touchdown prediction but we won’t know if everything worked correctly until 13 minutes later.
Thanks hattend.
Landing at 10:30PM Pacific
Approximately 14 or so minutes after landing time, they should know if it was successful.
www.jpl.nasa.gov
Bookmark.
Does this rover have an arm for Muslim outreach? Mars is what Earth will look like someday.
Landing time is 1:31 AM EDT, Monday 8-6-2012
bump
BTW, thanks for posting this.
This could possibly turn out to be the most important mission in the history mankind.
Curiosity is all about detecting life, past or present and is very well equipped to do this.
Totally agree.
Good Luck, Curiosity!
Ping
If I had written the landing sequence code I would be biting my nails to the quick right about now.
Well, they certainly did the testing/simulations, but it is very complicated sequence of operations, almost seems Rube Goldberg or overly ambitious science fiction. Lots of individual probabilities for failures and those are multiplicative.
One is tempted to say they should have gone simple. But then the Russians, who have an excellent reputation for straightforward, no-frills engineering in air force applications, have a very poor record on Mars missions.
So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see whether NASA can pull it off. It will be a real kick if they do and another national deflator if they don’t.
Personally, if it were up to me, I probably would have gone with about three small and simple rovers in a single payload which would separate and land independently (using airbags, etc.). But I hope the NASA approach succeeds.
Mark...
Thanks for the thread. Will be following. I agree with others about the complexity of entry and landing.
I know Spirit died, but does anyone know is Opportunity still operational?
Let’s find a martian, abduct him and probe him for a change.
It’s payback time!
Yes.
Absolutely amazing.
The greatest success of NASA since the moon landings.
Although no doubt Hubble is way up there also!
Hi - I certainly agree with your sentiments.
But doesn’t it feel great to see American Exceptionalism at work?
USA! USA! USA!
I think this mission somehow managed to “fly under the radar” of those who run things these days. Or they would surely have shut it down.
Yup, we’ll be going over the incredible data from HST for many years to come.
BTW, Opportunity was to last about 90 days after landing in 2004.
3000+ days later and thousands of images, and traveling about 24 miles....And it’s still in operation.
/johnny
From the JPL website:
If you know where Gale Crater is, there you go.
Curiosity will land somewhere within a landing ellipse that is approximately 4 miles wide and 12 miles long (7 kilometers by 20 kilometers). The landing ellipse is about 14,400 feet (4,400 meters) below Martian "sea level" (defined as the average elevation around the equator). The expected near-surface atmospheric temperatures at the Gale Crater landing site during Curiosity's primary mission (1 Martian year or 687 Earth days) are from - 130 F to 32 F (-90 C to 0 C). http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/timeline/prelaunch/landingsiteselection/aboutgalecrater/
Wiki says the two rovers sent back over 250,000 images.
And AFAIK there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of hi-res images taken from the various orbiters. And many of those, I suspect, have never really been studied in any detail.
People will call me a fruit-loop, but I think the goal of this mission is to announce they found life.
Because I’m pretty convinced by the history of things that they ALREADY found it and have been trying to figure out a way to tell us.
Cripes, there’s probably 50 species of lichens on Earth that would do perfectly well up there.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/timeline/prelaunch/landingsiteselection/aboutgalecrater/
Location:
4.5 degrees south latitude, 137.4 degrees east longitude
Diameter:
96 miles (154 kilometers)
Elevation:
14,400 feet (4,400 meters) below Martian “sea level”
Temperature Range:
From - 130 F to 32 F (-90 C to 0 C)
Landing Ellipse:
4 miles wide and 12 miles long (7 kilometers by 20 kilometers)
Crater mound height:
3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the crater floor
Local time at landing:
Approximately 3 p.m. Mars local time
We can make Mars the club Gitmo for the rest of the century. Bring your own Oxygen
I've got a Java ap that shows the sunclock orthographic image of the face of Mars. Looks like the landing site is right at the terminator now, and the sun should be rising on it soon.
/johnny
LOL!
(We can name the next one “Satisfaction.”)
I’d like to see them make a lander that operates like the car in the animated movie “Heavy Metal.”
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