Countdown to Mars…
I just whipped up a handy dandy countdown script/page so you can stay up to the second* on events:
MSL/Curiosity white-knuckle moment countdown
(subtract 7 minutes for count to ‘terror’)
Some appropriate music as H-hour becomes increasingly imminent:
Gustav Holst: Mars: Bringer of War
* Counter is sync’d to Pacific Daylight/Mountain Standard (Arizona) Time [UTC-0700]
As I scribble, we’re now a little over 3 weeks from ‘white knuckle’ time for the MSL/Curiousity’s high-risk descent to the Martian surface. Given the mission’s cost and high profile, I find it hard to believe that any landing scheme with anything LESS than a 80+% probability of success Could have passed muster with the NASA/JPL higher echelon project management team.
It sure would be a damn shame for MSL to get through launch and an 8-month interplanetary cruise only to crash and burn on arrival! (wouldn’t burn for long though!). Such a sad fate met the Polar Lander when a units mix-up (metric/English) caused the little rover package to auger into the Martian surface in 1999 (oopsie).
NASA has plenty of funding and other problems to deal with to add a catastrophic mission failure to their résumé… Reinforcing my feeling that NASA must have a pretty high confidence of success in that scary-as-hell looking landing scenario. Still, there must be an ‘office pool’ on what will happen on August 5th.
Here’s a test of the landing which was run at JPL mission control (presumably before the real thing was launched). Obviously a ‘full up’ test would be impossible in this case. Anyway, have a look:
P.S.: I wonder if this video would have been made available had the test ended badly…
Comment on July 13, 2012 @ 5:31 pm
As an engineer, the words ‘high precision’ worry me. Especially when being buffeted around in an atmosphere at several thousand miles an hour… even an atmosphere as thin as Mars’. But again, NASA sounds very confident. Let’s hope that NASA knows something we don’t! Well, guess we’ll see soon enough, won’t we?
Comment on July 13, 2012 @ 9:55 pm
22:09:30:43.
My pulse is pounding already.
Comment on July 14, 2012 @ 12:00 pm
Me too. I remember Polar Lander fail day all too well. I took my then 3 yr old son to San Joses Tech Museum of Innovation (The Tech) where the first telemetry was supposed to be streaming in. The museum had a number of cool displays centered around the expected mission agenda and the local chapter of the Mars Society had a booth setup to do outreach. As soon as I walked in I knew it hadn’t gone well. No one was smiling.
It turned out to be a pretty influential day for me. The MS was giving away Zubrin’s ‘The Case for Mars’ so I grabbed one and devoured it. I was totally hooked and attended MS meetings monthly for about the next two years. What a bunch of awesome nerds to hang with! I suspect I plunged in partly out of a feeling of needing to support the low morale stemming from that disastrous mission. Hopefully, if chosen deity forbid it should happen again, a few more contrarians like me will join the fray.
Regarding the likelihood of success, I also suspect 80% is a bit high. By the way they whoop for joy when they find out one of these things survives (not at all like the muted applause in the test video) it’s clear that they are all sweating bullets. If they were pretty sure it would all go fine you’d think they’d sort of take it in stride, but even supernerds are apparently human.
Comment on July 14, 2012 @ 2:35 pm
Nice article on Gale Crater and why it was selected as the landing site.
Comment on July 19, 2012 @ 2:30 pm
Nice.
A nice refresher on Mars and why we’re going there. I even like the goofy ‘surf’ music… Hangin’ ten and ridin’ those gravitational waves in the Big Dark!
Put together by NatGeo UK, the whole 6-part tour of the Solar System is HERE.
A week from tonight, MSL/Curiosity will either (1) miss its Mars-entry burn and spin off into space OR (2) the elaborate ‘sky hook’ maneuver will fail and Curiosity will become an interesting discolouration on the surface… OR (3) everything will work as advertised and it’ll fire up its transmitter and ~20 minutes later JPL will get a text message saying “OK gang – I’m here… It’s cold. So what’s next?”.
I’ll opt for door number THREE please!
M-Day-7 and counting!
Comment on July 29, 2012 @ 8:50 pm
NASA MSL page
This is pretty damn fancy stuff! ‘Autonomous software’ in the context of the split-millsecond precision required for the Entry-Descent-Landing (EDL) requires some extra consideration. I believe there may be some ‘next level’ techniques going on with the bit-blasters at JPL. Again, ‘autonomous’ implies that the software must be able to ‘improvise’ to at least a certain extent. To react in real-time to changing or unexpected conditions is key here I suspect. The ability to access data (again in real-time) from the Reconnaisance Orbiter during descent gives additional ‘eyes-on’ capabilities…
Nature also affords a small advantage… Mars’ gravity being only about 1/3 of Earth’s. Where we’re used to a free-fall acceleration rate of ~32 feet per second per second (32ft/s²), reaching a ‘terminal velocity’ of about 125mph depending on how much of a ‘drag’ you are
. Falling on Mars accelerates as ~3.8ft/s². Mars’ atmosphere is only a trace of Earth’s, but the reduced gravity balances things out, so the terminal velocity is just a touch higher than on Earth. Still, deceleration from 130mph to 0mph in ZERO seconds is NOT covered in the MSL warranty…
Terminal Velocity
But this additional info should give us increased confidence in a happy outcome this coming Sunday. We shall see, shan’t we?
H-142 and counting. Here we come, Mars!
Comment on July 30, 2012 @ 9:16 pm
The latest:
Yup, locked and loaded… You’d almost think the propeller-heads in Pasadena actually know what they’re doing!
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 12:55 am
No mysterious silences yet… I’m almost cautiously optimistic. Get out of my head MPL and Beagle. Please let me enjoy this one.
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 6:21 am
It’s an artistic venture, judging from the video. Of course it will succeed, just because it’s so improbably cool.
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 7:19 am
perhaps this thread should be the one titled – “I Believe”
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 7:33 am
After studying up on the EDL scheme a bit, I’m feeling a little better about it… but it’s still a bit of a crap shoot (a $2.5B one)… I’ll be glued to it Sunday night though!
non-sequitur for Max:
“Holy Ukulele Batman… I was just askin’!”
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 8:23 am
Update:
Comment on August 1, 2012 @ 3:04 pm
Mars-3 update:
JPL is sounding pretty confident…
Comment on August 2, 2012 @ 4:21 pm
I believe.
Comment on August 2, 2012 @ 4:53 pm
Mars-2 status update:
Any red flags are being kept well ‘in-house’. To use ‘Mercury-speak’: everything appears to be ‘A-OK’ and ‘nominal’. A final trajectory tweak was deemed unnecessary and was cancelled earlier today.
Nonetheless, Landing Lead Engineer Adam Steltzner is no doubt already sweating bullets… So MANY ways that the MSL can wind up a smoking wreckage on the rusty surface, and only ONE way for it to go RIGHT!
But if there are any takers, I’ve got $5 that says it goes like clockwork late Sunday night…
Comment on August 3, 2012 @ 7:07 pm
Mars-1 status update:
Well, Curiosity is now being slowly awakened after an 8+ month ‘beauty sleep’ in the Big Dark. It’s kinda like “Honey, wake up and put your shoes on, we’re almost at Grandma’s”… From here on out, MSL/Curiosity is on its OWN till it either lands or crashes… EDL engineer Adam Steltzner said today “From a reasoning standpoint, I’m very confident. But from an emotional point of view… I’m TERRIFIED.”
Comment on August 4, 2012 @ 3:34 pm
Jeremy and I are all in. It aint gonna do no MPL on us this time. Been there seen that.
Comment on August 5, 2012 @ 9:11 pm
Yippee!
Comment on August 5, 2012 @ 9:32 pm
Think there’s a little joy in that room?
Comment on August 5, 2012 @ 9:40 pm
As the cyber-fates would have it, my Wi-Fi router chose Sunday to deprive me of access to the internet. At least this time the problem doesn’t seem to mean I need a new computer (I hope). Finally! Back on line (ca. 6 August 1845 UTC).
Fortunately for me, CNN broke away from non-stop coverage of yet another mass murder, this time at a Sikh temple of all places*. America the Insane.
CNN International cut Live to JPL around 10 pm to witness the ’7 Minutes of Terror’ as MSL/Curiosity made its plunge into the wispy Martian atmosphere.
The 14-minute light speed delay confused things a bit. Project Scientist Joy Crisp explained to CNN’s John Zarrella and viewers that Curiosty was ALREADY on the surface (one way or another)… we were just waiting on those slowpoke photons to let us know which way it went. But as the various milestone verifications came in, it became clear that we were seeing a textbook execution of the highly complex E-D-L program. And right on time, confirmation finally came (“10001000 10110101 10101101 00101010 10100101 00001010 10010111 01010100…“) [or words to that effect].
Somebody pointed their iPhone at the TV and captured what I saw:
(the guy in the lower right pacing back & forth like an expectant father in the final shots of the Mission Control room is Adam Steltzner, who I’ve referenced in previous updates. NOBODY in that room was more relieved than he!)
First ‘thumbnail’ image from Curiosity on Mars
showing a rear wheel and some Martian soil.
Today, Ladies and Gentlemen, WE ARE ALL MARTIANS!
* On which more later.
Comment on August 6, 2012 @ 11:46 am