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New Curiosity Rover Landing Target May Save Months Travel to Prime Destination
coondoggie writes with an update on the Mars Science Laboratory. From the article: "Even as it hurtles towards an August 5 rendezvous with the red planet, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is being fine-tuned for a more precise landing and better operations once it reaches its destination. NASA today gave a status report for the MSL which was launched November 2011, and is still over 17.5 million kilometers away from Mars. Of major interest today was the fact NASA said it has narrowed landing target for the Mars rover, Curiosity letting it touch down closer to its ultimate destination for science operations, but also closer to the foot of a mountain slope that poses a landing hazard, the agency said."
From NASA: "The larger ellipse, 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) was already smaller than the landing target area for any previous Mars mission, due to this mission's techniques for improved landing precision. Continuing analysis after the Nov. 26, 2011, launch resulted in confidence in landing within an even smaller area [handy diagram], about 12 miles by 4 miles (20 by 7 kilometers). Using the smaller ellipse, the Mars Science Laboratory Project also moved the center of the target closer to the mountain, which holds geological layers that are the prime destination for the rover. ... 'We're trimming the distance we'll have to drive after landing by almost half,' said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager ... 'That could get us to the mountain months earlier.'"
...if you smash land into the damn thing.
Just remember to convert your units correctly!
Silence is a state of mime.
Ellipse? I love how the world is really Gaussian.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Because they completed an engineering analysis and determined that the reduced operational costs and increased science opportunities were balanced by the increased risk. Heck, for all you know there is no significant increase in the risk, and the old landing area selection was based on unnecessarily conservative estimates of the landing precision, so landing further away would be purely detrimental.
Or the on the ground survey's that will be missed by the rover not traversing them. Even the Hubble examination of seemingly empty sky produced incredible results.
I thought they had somehow found a way to get to Mars months sooner.
Imagine my disappointment upon learning that they are landing closer and so just ended up with a shorter drive. (end sarcasm)
In all seriousness, this rover has some amazing hardware that has the best chance yet of finding microbial life on Mars.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
I just wish we could actually watch it land... That is going to be a spectacle.
Why risk it?
Its not like curiosity will be doing anything that is time sensitive. Who cares if you arrive at the site a few months early?
It definitely is not worth the risk of destroying the lander.
If the lander fails before it gets to the primary target, you have a partially or even mostly failed mission. MSL will be a long way from Earth, and many things can happen, so, yes, there is pressure to get there sooner.
Curiosity is the biggest Hail Mary play since Cassini/Huygens. It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece. So this doesn't sound like too big a risk, considering everything else that they've had to account for.
Will Opportunity be in range to take pics of the decent through the atmosphere? Cuz pics or it doesn't count...
Is a 6-wheeled rover really the most efficient shape for a land vehicle on rough terrain? I've seen videos of robots that look like snakes or caterpillars that can land in whatever direction, landing first as a ball before unwinding in the proper orientation. The "caterpillar" will be modular, able to combine and recombine like a Japanese cartoon robot. Should a module be stuck, the mission operator will have the option of abandoning the module so the rest of the robot can proceed with rest of the misson.
A transforming robot would also be nice, but that's too much sci-fi already.
A redacted version of the cyberweapon has been reproduced below for public analysis:
Upon reading the phrase "h3lp from the M@rtians", K'Breel, Speaker for the Council, immediately collapsed into fits of laughter and promptly laughed his gelsacs off.
When a junior reporter asked for comment on the Speaker's Condition, K'Breel, still wracked with peals of laughter, snickered "I once had a podmate who lost his olfactory organ... How did he smell? AWFUL!"
Citizens are reminded in this time of heightened concern to be aware of security risks associated with transmissions from the blue world, but are reassured that they do grow back.
Presumably there is risk associated with distance travelled and time spent travelling too.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I am curious what specific techniques they have refined - how is navigation towards the surface of Mars performed? Is there optical tracking of visual features on the surface (ala Buzz Aldrin or a robotic pilot?) Do they navigate with respect to satellites in known locations around Mars (ala GPS), or celestial navigation? Or is it largely ballistic (based on conditions well ahead of time and predictions based on orbital mechanics, leaving little to final steering corrections?)
Even for a computer.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Actually, we have the world's largest economy and a populace that is by and large so affluent that *obesity* is our epidemic instead of starvation, and people think the sky is falling when they have to choose between netflix and starbucks. I'd rather see this money going to Mars science than to somebody's second SUV, and while it'd be nice to provide for the poor that money could more appropriately be taxed out of your home theater system or the like.
This space intentionally left blank
[Recalculating...]
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
In this case they are directing the thing to crawl around in the least likely area to find life. There are lots of people who want to be able to say 'we looked and didn't find any current life' so they can proceed to endanger any life in the (more likely) places we never looked in, with impunity, for the value of the huge contracts, the dead heroes, and the retro approach: blast everything that goes to Mars from the surface of the Earth (such 20th century thinking!) , instead of learning to build ion-drive spaceships on the Moon and launch them with rail guns from there.
Curiosity is the biggest Hail Mary play since Cassini/Huygens. It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece.
Oh, I don't know, after several successful landers, each employing a different strategy for descent and landing, it seems well within the limits of what we know to be possible. Seems like lots of the landers employed tricky and new methods.
Looking at the new target area, compared to the old, it seems very little more risky that what was previously planned.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Step away from the TV.
Go out side.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Curiosity is the biggest Hail Mary play since Cassini/Huygens. It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece. So this doesn't sound like too big a risk, considering everything else that they've had to account for.
Cassini/Huygens presumably being helped by the Sirens of Titan.
Amen.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It is already going to take either divine intervention or help from the Martians to get that thing down right side up and in one piece.
Unless the Martians are felines, in which case they are probably doomed.
Ezekiel 23:20
That's true, but it takes a long time and a lot of money to build up an infrastructure like this on the Moon or on orbit. Building living compartments, science labs, factories, rail guns on the Moon probably will take decades up to a hundred years or so, given that we start right now with this goal in mind.
So far no nation can put enough resources in to space exploration let alone space colonization. Hopefully it will change soon...