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Mars Rover Curiosity Sealed Up For Launch
astroengine writes "On Oct. 5, less than two months before it will be launched, Mars Science Laboratory 'Curiosity' was sealed between its heat shield and back shell at Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The next time the one-ton rover sees daylight will be on Aug. 6, 2012, as the heat shield separates after successful entry through the Martian atmosphere, shortly before Curiosity touches down inside Gale Crater."
Have gnu, will travel.
You folks that spew the China owns half the US don't ever do research do you?
As of January 2011, foreigners owned $4.45 trillion of U.S. debt, or approximately 47% of the debt held by the public of $9.49 trillion and 32% of the total debt of $14.1 trillion. The largest holders were the central banks of China, Japan, the United Kingdom and Brazil.
As of May 2011 the largest single holder of U.S. government debt was China, with 36 percent of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities (16% of total US public debt).
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfhhis01.csv
Curiosity's official name is the Mars Science Laboratory. This thing is massive, like really massive. Instead of a dinky little probe like Sojourner or the slightly larger Spirit and Opportunity rovers, Curiosity is about the size of an SUV. This will be the largest rover ever sent to another planet by an order of magnitude. It will be able to do all sorts of interesting geological experiments. It doesn't have that much direct life searches, which is unfortunate because the original life searches on the Viking probes was so inconclusive (most of the tests were positive but no organic molecules were found. There's been some suggestion that certain chlorine compounds in the soil could have destroyed the organics when heating).
There's a very good animation of the plan for Curiosity landiing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw. The whole process is complicated, involving aero breaking, then rocket breaking and while the rockets hover the whole probe over the ground, the rover is slowly lowered onto the surface. There are unfortunately a fair number of points of failure for this. If it does work though this will be a triumph of modern engineering and give us a lot more knowledge about Mars.
I noticed the wheels are covered with foil and the retro-thrusters look like they have giant rubber stoppers in them. Does anyone know the purpose of these? I am assuming the stopper things would be launched out when they're fired but how does the foil come off the wheels once at Mars? (or is that just a protective covering for until the thing is fully loaded and ready to be launched into space?)
K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, spoke thus:
When a junior translator suggested that an examination of the storage compartments of its mating partner was a logical impossibility for an invader-symbiote participating in the communications nexus known as "Slashdot", K'Breel had the translator's gelsacs surgically removed, placed into a planetary protection environmental chamber, where they were alternately heated, warmed, cooled, and finally exposed to a broad spectrum of ionizing radiation, whereupon their leathery husks could safely be repurposed as portable storage accessories for the mating partners of worthy Council members.
A Titan exploration craft wouldn't likely be a "rover" (although it could be). Anything more elaborate than the Huygens probe will, of course, be nuclear powered, but that's about all we can say for sure. Many different options have been explored, including, but not limited, to:
* Hydrogen-filled balloon (hydrogen doesn't burn on Titan, and all lifting gasses would work exceedingly well in the low gravity/dense atmosphere)
* Nuclear RTG hot air balloon (actually, the math suggests it'd work way better than you'd expect in the extreme cold of Titan; a fixed degree temperature differential is proportionally more lift, conductive losses fall off proportional to the temperature, and radiative losses (the main heat loss mechanism on Earth) proportional to the temperature to the fourth. Combine that with the much smaller surface area of the envelope (low gravity, dense atmosphere), and a mere RTG turns out to be sufficient)
* Either of the above two, as an electric fan-propelled blimp.
* Electric helicopter
* Electric fixed-wing aircraft
* Electric variable-pitch wing aircraft
Of the latter three, the helicopter has the advantage of easy landings but covers the least ground. The fixed wing aircraft covers the most ground but requires a large generator (and thus large, and thus expensive, vehicle) and cannot be trusted to safely land. The variable-pitch winged aircraft combines the advantages of both (landings, recharging between flights while studying the surface, and covering ground rapidly), but offers greater engineering complexity.
Either way, to be sure, a Titan probe would be like nothing we've ever launched before. :) And while Titan takes a lot of delta-V to get to, it's nice that you can aerocapture pretty easily. I find it a fascinating place because of all of the known organic photochemistry going on in its upper atmosphere, and the "tholins" in the Saturnian system in general. We have a tectonically-active Mercury-sized organic chemistry lab operating in our solar system, but we spend our efforts exploring a red rock which has a highly oxidizing regolith that stops organic chemistry in its tracks. Not that Mars isn't worthy of any exploration, but come on, spread the love around. :)
Next to my desk we have an Ire Extinguisher. Our boss is really assertive, so we like the idea of having it.
This page has audio of the Phoenix probe descending through the amosphere
There is an animation of objects moving in the wind
Theoretically, if you had a fast enough light sensor, you could use video capture to record the changing reflections of light on an object due to the Martian wind. Like the old cub-scout science badge experiment of gluing a small piece of mirror to a plastic membrane over a paper cup, then watching the changing reflections of light due to air vibrations.
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