Curiosity Lands in Gale Crater. The mission team cheered wildly after Curiosity, the largest and most sophisticated interplanetary lander ever built, descended through the thin Martian atmosphere and made a successful, pinpoint touchdown inside Gale crater.
In the hours leading up to the arrival of Curiosity rover on Mars, the mood at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was upbeat but understandably tense. Engineers had tested and retested every phase of the complex atmospheric entry, descent, and landing (EDL) — a perilous "seven minutes of terror" during which the spacecraft would slow from 13,200 miles per hour (nearly 6 km per second) to a dead stop. Although optimistic — they believed the chance of success to be better than 95% — the team had nonetheless steeled itself for the possibility that something might go wrong.
Would Curiosity "fly" itself to a small landing zone on the floor of Gale crater? Would the parachute deploy on time? They needn't have worried. NASA / JPL / Univ. of Arizona. Mars Rover Pulls Off High-Wire Landing : The Two-Way. Hide captionAn artist's rendering shows a rocket-powered descent stage lowering the one-ton Curiosity rover to the Mars surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech An artist's rendering shows a rocket-powered descent stage lowering the one-ton Curiosity rover to the Mars surface. The best place to stand in the entire solar system at 1:14 a.m. ET Monday was about 150 million miles away, at the bottom of Gale Crater near the equator of the Red Planet. Looking west around mid-afternoon local time, a Martian bystander would have seen a rocket-powered alien spacecraft approach and then hover about 60 feet over the rock-strewn plain between the crater walls and the towering slopes of nearby Mount Sharp. A gangly vehicle, about the size of a small car on Earth, descended from the spacecraft on nylon cords amid blowing crimson dust. Fourteen minutes later, news of these strange happenings reached the people on Earth who were responsible: "Touchdown confirmed!
" Our earlier updates appear below. Update at 4:05 a.m. Scientists Look To Martian Rocks For History Of Life. Hide captionMmm, nice rock!
This rover's looking for secrets to the history of life on Mars. Photo Illustration Courtesy NASA Mmm, nice rock! Space powers propose roadmap for flight to Mars. Martian countdown: One-way ticket to Red Planet in 2023. Published time: June 01, 2012 10:41 Edited time: June 01, 2012 15:12 Image from mars-one.com The Dutch have long fought with the sea to acquire lands.
Now they seem to have decided that it is easier to send people to Mars than to search for more space here on the solid earth. Meet Mars One, an ambitious plan to set up a human colony in 2023. The team behind Mars One unveiled an astonishing plan to establish a human settlement on the red planet in just a bit more than a decade. So if you have a person you owe a lot of money or may be your roommate or boyfriend/girlfriend is too intrusive – there is an option! But you might be better off not warning them that showering is not an option during the trip. The problem with flights to Mars has always primarily been that it was unclear how to bring the crew back. Organizers of this safari admit that sustaining human life on Mars is no trivial feat, but they believe it is far easier and safer than bringing the crew back to Earth. NASA seeing red: $2.5 billion Mars rover to dig for proof of life. Mars Anomaly Research Home Page.
The Farsight Institute. Mars Orbiter Glitch Means NASA Might Not Hear Curiosity's Landing Signal. NASA will lose the signal from its brand-new Mars rover one minute before it touches down on the Red Planet in three weeks, project managers say. This won't affect the rover's autonomous airdrop descent, but it could make for some harrowing moments as engineers wait for the long-distance beep signifying Curiosity is safely home. The aging Mars Odyssey orbiter is one of three spacecraft NASA plans to use to track the Mars Science Laboratory's nail-biting descent and landing.
But last week, normal adjustments to its orbit took an unusually high toll on its attitude control systems. The spacecraft moved slightly in its orbit and briefly put itself into safe mode. Mars Rover's Marathon Search for Water. NASA releases most spectacular pic of Mars ever taken - Phenomenica. How NASA plans to land a 2000 pound rover on Mars. Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life' — New results question the finding that the Mars Viking experiments did not find life. — The analysis was based on studying the mathematically complexity of the experiment results. — The idea is that living systems are more complicated than purely physical ones, a concept that can be represented mathematically.
New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week. Mars Tornado: VIDEO Shows Stunning 12-Mile Dust Devil. By Richard A.
Kerr on 5 April 2012, 2:06 PM Earth may have terrifying tornadoes, but when it comes to dust devils, Mars has us beat.