Nasa's Curiosity rover set for risky Mars landing

4 August 2012 Last updated at 22:13 GMT

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Nasa's Curiosity rover edges closer to Mars

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Pasadena

Communications from the rover during descent
will come to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Continue reading the main story

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Rover on course for Mars landing

Nasa's Curiosity rover is on course to land on Mars on Monday, where it will search for clues in
the Red Planet's rocks and soil about whether it could once have supported life.

The robot's flight trajectory is so good engineers cancelled the latest course correction they had
planned.

To land in the right place, it must hit a box at the top of the atmosphere that measures just 3km
by 12km.

Curiosity has spent eight months travelling from Earth to Mars.

The robot - -also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - has covered more than 560 million
km.

"Our inbound trajectory is right down the pipe," said Arthur Amador, Curiosity's mission
manager.

"The team is confident and thrilled to finally be arriving at Mars, and we're reminding ourselves
to breathe every so often. We're ready to go."

The rover's power and communications systems are in excellent shape.

The one major task left for the mission team is to prime the back-up computer that will take
command if the main unit fails during the entry, descent and landing (EDL) manoeuvres.


Curiosity - Mars Science Laboratory

Mission goal is to determine whether Mars has ever had the conditions to support life
Project costed at $2.5bn; will see initial surface operations lasting two Earth years
Onboard plutonium generators will deliver heat and electricity for at least 14 years
75kg science payload more than 10 times as massive as those of earlier US Mars rovers
Equipped with tools to brush and drill into rocks, to scoop up, sort and sieve samples
Variety of analytical techniques to discern chemistry in rocks, soil and atmosphere
Will try to make first definitive identification of organic (carbon-rich) compounds
Even carries a laser to zap rocks; beam will identify atomic elements in rocks

Gale Crater: Geological 'sweet shop'
Discover more about the planets

The robot was approaching Mars at about 13,000km/h on Saturday. By the time the spacecraft
hits the top of Mars' atmosphere, about seven minutes before touch-down, gravity will have
accelerated it to about 21,000km/h.

The vehicle is being aimed at Gale Crater, a deep depression just south of the planet's equator.

It is equipped with the most sophisticated science payload ever sent to another world.

Its mission, when it gets on the ground, is to characterise the geology in Gale and examine its
rocks for signs that ancient environments on Mars could have supported microbial life.

Touch-down is expected at 05:31 GMT (06:31 BST) Monday 6 August; 22:31 PDT, Sunday 5
August.

It is a fully automated procedure. Nasa will be following the descent here at mission control at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The rover will broadcast X-band and UHF signals on its way down to the surface.

These will be picked up by a mix of satellites at Mars and radio antennas on Earth.

The key communication route will be through the Odyssey orbiter. It alone will see the rover all
the way to the ground and have the ability to relay UHF telemetry straight to Earth.

And mission team members remain hopeful that this data will also include some images that
Curiosity plans to take of itself just minutes after touching the ground.

These would be low-resolution, wide-angle, black and white images of the rear wheels.

They may not be great to look at, but the pictures will give engineers important information
about the exact nature of the terrain under the rover.

A lot has been made of the difficulty of getting to Mars, and historically there have been far
more failures than successes (24 versus 15), but the Americans' recent record at the Red Planet is
actually very good - six successful landings versus two failures.

Even so, Nasa continues to downplay expectations.

"If we're not successful, we're going to learn," said Doug McCuistion, the head of the US space
agency's Mars programme.

"We've learned in the past, we've recovered from it. We'll pick ourselves up, we'll dust ourselves
off, we'll do something again; this will not be the end.

"The human spirit gets driven by these kinds of challenges, and these are challenges that drive us
to explore our surroundings and understand what's out there."

Curiosity is heading for Gale Crater

The mission team warned reporters on Saturday not to jump to conclusions if there was no
immediate confirmation of landing through Odyssey.

There were "credible reasons", engineers said, why the UHF signal to Odyssey could be lost
during the descent, such as a failure on the satellite or a failure of the transmitter on the rover.

Continued efforts would be made to contact Curiosity in subsequent hours as satellites passed
overhead and when Gale Crater came into view of radio antennas on Earth.

"There are situations that might come up where we will not get communications all the way
through [to the surface], and it doesn't necessarily mean that something bad has happened; it just
means we'll have to wait and hear from the vehicle later," explained Richard Cook, the deputy
project manager.

This was emphasised by Allen Chen, the EDL operations lead. His is the voice from mission
control that will be broadcast to the world during the descent. He will call out specific milestones
on the way down. He told BBC News there would be no rush to judgement if the Odyssey link
was interrupted or contained information that was "off nominal".

"I think we proceed under any situation as though the spacecraft is there, and there for us to
recover - to find out what happened," he said.

"That's the most sensible thing to do. There are only a few instances I think where you could
know pretty quickly that we'd be in trouble."

Step by step: How the Curiosity rover will land on Mars

As the rover, tucked
inside its protective capsule, heads to Mars, it dumps the disc-shaped cruise stage that has
shepherded it from Earth.


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Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover set for high risk
landing
Comments (143)


Nasa news conference after the Curiosity rover lands on Mars


Related Stories
Rover edges closer to Red Planet
Gale Crater: Geological 'sweet shop' awaits Mars rover

One of the most daring space missions ever undertaken is nearing Mars.

Nasa will attempt to land its one-tonne Curiosity rover on the Red Planet to study the possibility
that this world may once have hosted microbial life.

The vehicle is packed with scientific instruments, including a laser that can zap rocks to
determine their make-up.

Curiosity is currently hurtling through space, close to the end of a 570 million km journey from
Earth.

Engineers describe its trajectory as near-perfect and they have passed up the last two
opportunities to make course corrections.

The rover, tucked inside a protective shell, is due to begin its descent to the surface at 05:24
GMT, Monday (06:24 BST; 22:24 PDT, Sun).

A signal confirming it has landed inside a deep depression known as Gale Crater is expected on
Earth about seven minutes later, at 05:31 GMT.

But getting this audacious exploration project safely down will be a colossal challenge.

Two-thirds of all missions sent to the Red Planet have failed, a good many lost on entry into the
thin but unforgiving Martian atmosphere.



Will try to make first definitive identification of organic (carbon rich) compounds


And yet, the US space agency has high confidence that the high-risk descent strategy its
engineers have devised will deliver an intact vehicle to the surface.

This strategy will use a sequence of fully automated manoeuvres to slow the fall from an initial
20,000km/h at the top of the atmosphere to less than 1m/s at the moment of touch-down.

The last stage in the sequence will see a hovering, rocket-powered crane lower the rover to the
ground on nylon cords.

The manoeuvres have raised eyebrows because of their complexity, but the entry, descent and
landing (EDL) team leader, Adam Steltzner, has emphasised the amount of "reasoned
engineering" that has informed the design.

"I slept better last night than I have in years, and I think that's because it's done - whatever's
going to happen is going to happen," he said.

Nasa will be monitoring the drama from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena,
California.

It is here that mission control will receive the telemetry from Curiosity that has been bounced to
Earth by the overflying satellite known as Odyssey.

Engineers can only watch and wait, however. The 250 million km between Mars and Earth right
now means there is a 13-minute lag in communications.

The mission team knows that when it gets that first signal to say the rover has entered the
planet's atmosphere, the vehicle will in reality have already landed or been destroyed some seven
minutes previously.


inside its protective capsule, heads to Mars, it dumps the disc-shaped cruise stage that has shepherded
it from Earth.


1/8

"It will be really exciting; it always is. It's electrifying but it's tense," Doug McCuistion, the
director of Nasa's Mars programme, told BBC News.

"Everybody white-knuckles through these 'seven minutes of terror', and it's named that for a
good reason."

This is the fourth rover Nasa has attempted to put on the surface of Mars since 1997.

But Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) - dwarfs those previous efforts
in size and sophistication.

The rover will sample rocks for signs that Mars was once favourable to life

Assuming the robot lands safely, it will spend 98 (Earth) weeks scouring Martian soils and rocks
for any signs that current or past environments on the planet could have supported microbial life.

Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site because satellite pictures had spied sediments in the
depression that looked as though they were laid down in the presence of abundant water.

"We see a lot of evidence that water was on Mars in the distant past and flowed across the
surface for maybe millions of years," explained Ashwin Vasavada, the MSL-Curiosity deputy
project scientist.

"This mission goes one step further by trying to understand whether the environments in which
the water persisted were habitable. Were there basic ingredients for life there? We're going to
understand what the conditions were like when life was most likely in Mars' ancient history."

The rover is equipped with 10 advanced instruments. It also has a plutonium battery and so
should have ample power to keep rolling for more than a decade.

Engineers define an ellipse in which they can confidently land
Successive landings have become ever more accurate
Viking's ellipse was 300km across - wider than Gale Crater itself
Phoenix (100km by 20km) could not confidently fit in Gale
Curiosity's landing system allows it to target the crater floor
The rover's projected landing ellipse is just 7km by 20km

(A) Curiosity will trundle around its landing site looking for interesting rock features to study. Its
top speed is about 4cm/s
(B) This mission has 17 cameras. They will identify particular targets, and a laser will zap those
rocks to probe their chemistry
(C) If the signal is significant, Curiosity will swing over instruments on its arm for close-up
investigation. These include a microscope
(D) Samples drilled from rock, or scooped from the soil, can be delivered to two hi-tech analysis
labs inside the rover body
(E) The results are sent to Earth through antennas on the rover deck. Return commands tell the
rover where it should drive next

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

Your comments (143)

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Editors' Picks
All Comments (143)

+5

Comment number 96.

Brian Kemp
6th August 2012 - 7:01

This is absolutely fantastic! Good luck to the mission and one day it'd be great to see Men
and Women on Mars after science such as this.

-59

Comment number 47.

jesus bermudez
6th August 2012 - 5:56

What an absolute waste of money and time. There is no life anywhere else. God created
the universe and earth is the only planet which has life. It was created for our
convenience. This money should have been spent on helping children in need.

-10

Comment number 45.

rioesk
6th August 2012 - 5:54

Absolutely beyond awesome. No one can doubt the dominance of the United States when
it comes to unique thought and implementation. The rest of us have a mountain to climb
to compare with this.

+20

Comment number 16.

Harrygh
6th August 2012 - 0:44

I am so glad this could be tried in my lifetime. Good luck NASA and Rover.

+12

Comment number 8.

MacFanatic
6th August 2012 - 0:19

Just finished watching the documentary on iPlayer and must say its well exciting.

Some people think that the landing is crazy but hey were human at the end of the day. We
do crazy very well!

Good Luck Curiousity!

Comments 5 of 6

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Gale Crater: Geological 'sweet shop' awaits
Mars rover
Comments (238)

Grotzinger leads a team of several hundred mission scientists

More from Jonathan
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John Grotzinger is the project scientist on Nasa's latest multi-billion-dollar mission to Mars.

He's going to become a familiar face in the coming months as he explains to TV audiences the
importance of the discoveries that are made by the most sophisticated spacecraft ever sent to
touch the surface of another world.

The Curiosity Rover - also called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - is set to land on Monday
(GMT) for a minimum two-year exploration of a deep hole on Mars' equator known as Gale
Crater.

The depression was punched out by an asteroid or comet billions of years ago.

The lure for Grotzinger and his fellow scientists is the huge mound of rock rising 5km from the
crater floor.

Mount Sharp, as they refer to it, looks from satellite pictures to be constructed from ancient
sediments - some deposited when Mars still had abundant water at its surface.

From orbit, Mount Sharp looks like Australia.
Gale is named after an Australian astronomer.

That makes it an exciting place to consider the possibility that those distant times may also once
have supported microbial life.

And Curiosity, with its suite of 10 instruments, will test this habitability hypothesis.

Grotzinger is a geologist affiliated to the California Institute of Technology and he recently took
the BBC Horizon programme to the mountains of the nearby Mojave Desert to illustrate the
work the rover will be doing on Mars.

He climbed to a level and then pointed to the rock sediments on the far side of the valley.

"What you see here is a stack of layers that tell us about the early environmental history of Earth,
representing hundreds of millions of years," he told Horizon.

"They read like a book of Earth history and they tell us about different chapters in the evolution
of early environments, and life.

"And the cool thing about going to Mount Sharp and Gale Crater is that there we'll have a
different book about the early environmental history of Mars.

"It will tell us something equally interesting, and we just don't know what it is yet," he said.

Curiosity dwarfs all previous landing missions undertaken by the Americans.

At 900kg, it's a behemoth. It's nearly a hundred times more massive than the first robot rover
Nasa sent to Mars in 1997.

Curiosity will trundle around the foothills of Mount Sharp much like a human field geologist
might walk through Mojave's valleys. Except the rover has more than a hammer in its rucksack.

It has hi-res cameras to look for features of interest. If a particular boulder catches the eye,
Curiosity can zap it with an infrared laser and examine the resulting surface spark to query the
rock's elemental composition.

If that signature intrigues, the rover will use its long arm to swing over a microscope and an X-
ray spectrometer to take a closer look.

Still interested? Curiosity can drill into the boulder and deliver a powdered sample to two high-
spec analytical boxes inside the rover belly.

These will lay bare the rock's precise make-up, and the conditions under which it formed.

"We're not just scratching and sniffing and taking pictures - we're boring into rock, getting that
powder and analysing it in these laboratories," deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, told
the BBC.

"These are really university laboratories that would normally fill up a room but which have been
shrunk down - miniaturised - and made safe for the space environment, and then flown on this
rover to Mars."

The intention on Monday is to put MSL-Curiosity down on the flat plain of the crater bottom.

The vehicle will then drive up to the base of Mount Sharp.

In front of it, the rover should find clay minerals (phyllosilicates) that will give a fresh insight
into the wet, early era of the Red Planet known as the Noachian. Clays only form when rock
spends a lot of time in contact with water.

Above the clays, a little further up the mountain, the rover should find sulphate salts, which
relate to the Hesperian Era - a time when Mars was still wet but beginning to dry out.

"Going to Gale will give us the opportunity to study a key transition in the climate of Mars -
from the Noachian to the Hesperian," said Sanjeev Gupta, an Imperial College London scientist
on the mission.

"The rocks we believe preserve that with real fidelity, and the volume of data we get from
Curiosity will be just extraordinary."

A roving laboratory for Mars

General equipment: MSL equipped with tools to remove dust from rock surfaces, drill
into rocks, and to scoop up, sort and sieve samples

Mast Camera: will image rover's surroundings in hi-res stereo and colour; wide angle
and telephoto; can make hi-def video movies
ChemCam: pulses infrared laser at rocks up to 7m away; carries a spectrometer to
identify types of atoms excited in laser beam
Sample Analysis at Mars: inside body; will analyse rock, soil and atmospheric samples;
would make all-important organics identification
Chemistry and Mineralogy: another interior instrument. Analyses powdered samples to
quantify minerals present in rocks and soils
Mars Hand Lens Imager: mounted on arm toolkit; will take extreme close-ups of rocks,
soil and any ice; details smaller than hair's width
Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer: Canadian arm contribution; will determine relative
abundances of different elements in samples
Radiation Assessment Detector: will characterize radiation environment at surface; key
information for future human exploration
Mars Descent Imager: operates during landing sequence; hi-def movie will tell
controllers exactly where rover touched down
Rover Environmental Monitoring Station: Spanish weather station; measures pressure,
temperature, humidity, winds, and UV levels
Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons: looks for sub-surface hydrogen; could indicate water
buried in form of ice or bound in minerals

The rover is not a life-detection mission; it does not possess the capability to identify any bugs in
the soil or huddled under rocks (not that anyone really expects to find microbes in the cold, dry,
and irradiated conditions that persist at the surface of Mars today).

But what Curiosity can do is characterise any organic (carbon-rich) chemistry that may be
present.

All life as we know it on Earth trades off a source of complex carbon molecules, such as amino
acids - just as it needs water and energy.

Previous missions, notably the Viking landers in the 1970s, have hinted at the presence of
organics on Mars. But if Curiosity could make the definitive identification of organics in Gale
Crater, it would be a eureka moment and go a long way towards demonstrating that the Red
Planet did indeed have habitable environments in its ancient past.

It's a big ask, though. Even in Earth rocks where we know sediments have been laid down in
proximity to biology, we still frequently find no organic traces. The evidence doesn't preserve
well.

And, of course, there are plenty of non-biological processes that will produce organics, so it
wouldn't be an "A equals B" situation even if Curiosity were to make the identification.

Nonetheless, some members of the science team still dream of finding tantalising chemical
markers in Gale's rocks.

Dawn Sumner, from the University of California at Davis, is one of them.

"Under very specific circumstances - if life made a lot of organic molecules and they are
preserved and they haven't reacted with the rocks in Gale Crater, we may be able to tell that they
were created by life. It's a remote possibility, but it's something I at least hope we can find," she
said.

"I am confident we will learn amazing new things. Some of them will be answers to questions
we already have, but most of what we learn will be surprises to us.

"We've only been on the ground on Mars in six places, and it's a huge planet.

"Gale Crater and Mount Sharp are unlike anything we've been to before. That guarantees we will
learn exciting new things from Curiosity."

Horizon: Mission to Mars was broadcast on BBC Two Monday 30 July. Watch online via iPlayer
(UK only) or browse more Horizon clips at the above link.

Your comments (238)

Article written by Jonathan Amos Jonathan Amos Science correspondent

More from Jonathan

@BBCAmos via Twitter
A Mars enginee3 August 2012 Last updated at 07:39 GMT

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Nasa's Curiosity rover on course for Mars
landing


Adam Steltzner expects the new landing system
to perform as designed

Related Stories


Nasa says the big robot rover it is sending to Mars looks in excellent shape for its Monday
(GMT) landing.

The vehicle, known as Curiosity, was launched from Earth in November last year and is now
nearing the end of a 570-million-km journey across space.

To reach its intended touch-down zone in a deep equatorial crater, the machine must enter the
atmosphere at a very precise point on the sky.

Engineers told reporters on Thursday that they were close to a bulls-eye.

A slight course correction - the fourth since launch - was instigated last Saturday, and the latest
analysis indicates Curiosity will be no more than a kilometre from going straight down its
planned "keyhole".

The team's confidence is such that it may pass up the opportunity to make a further correction on
Friday.

"We are about to land a small compact car on the surface with a trunk-load of instruments. This
is a pretty amazing feat getting ready to happen. It's exciting, it's daring - but it's fantastic," said
Doug McCuistion, the head of Nasa's Mars programme.

Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) - is the biggest, most sophisticated
Mars rover yet.

It will study the rocks inside Gale Crater, one of the deepest holes on Mars, for signs that the
planet may once have supported microbial life.

The $2.5bn mission is due to touch down at 05:31 GMT (06:31 BST) Monday 6 August; 22:31
PDT, Sunday 5 August.

It will be a totally automated landing.



Will try to make first definitive identification of organic (carbon-rich) compounds


Engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, can only watch
and wait.

The vast distance between Mars and Earth means there is a 13-minute lag in communications,
making real-time intervention impossible.

Nasa has had to abandon the bouncing airbag approach to making soft landings.

This technique was used to great effect on the three previous rovers - Sojourner, Spirit and
Opportunity.

But at nearly a tonne, Curiosity is simply too heavy to be supported by inflated cushions.

Instead, the mission team has devised a rocket-powered, hovering crane to lower the rover to the
surface in the final moments of its descent.

Adam Steltzner has led this work for Nasa. He said: "It looks a little bit crazy. I promise you it is
the least crazy of the methods you could use to land a rover the size of Curiosity on Mars, and
we've become quite fond of it - and we're fairly confident that Sunday night will be a good night
for us."

The team is also keeping a sharp eye on the Martian weather and any atmospheric conditions that
might interfere with the descent manoeuvres.

It is the equivalent of August also on Mars right now, meaning Gale Crater at its position just
inside the southern hemisphere is coming out of winter and moving towards spring.

It is the time of year when winds can kick up huge clouds of dust, and a big storm was spotted
this week about 1,000km from the landing site. But Nasa expects this storm to dissipate long
before landing day.

Science editor David Shukman takes a look at a full-scale replica of Curiosity

The first black-and-white images of the surface taken by Curiosity should be returned to Earth in
the first hours after touch down, but the mission team do not intend to rush into exploration.

For one thing, the rover has a plutonium battery that should give it far greater longevity than the
solar-panelled power systems on previous vehicles.

"This is a very complicated beast," said Pete Theisinger, Curiosity's project manager.

"The speech I made to the team is to recognize that on Sunday night at [22:32 PDT], we will
have a priceless asset that we have placed on the surface of another planet that could last a long
time if we operate it correctly, and so we will be as cautious as hell about what we do with it."


inside its protective capsule, heads to Mars, it dumps the disc-shaped cruise stage that has
shepherded it from Earth.
1/8


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r's three favourite words: "Tango Delta Nominal" http://t.co/ycouEBg6

August 2012 Last updated at 13:50 GMT

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Mars data to be analysed by Leicester
scientist

Project architect Adam Steltzner explains how the Mars Curiosity rover is expected to land on
Mars (animation is courtesy of Nasa)


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A University of Leicester scientist says it is going to be "very exciting" to analyse some of the
first data from Nasa's latest Mars mission.

The $2.5bn mission's Mars Curiosity rover is expected to land on Monday.

Dr John Bridges said he would be leading a team from Leicester, the Open University and the
French National Centre for Scientific Research.

He said: "Never before has such a powerful set of instruments and such a capable rover been
sent."

Geological history

He added: "The overall aim of the mission is to determine if Mars has ever been habitable for
microbial life. It's incredibly exciting.

"For the first time we can look at a large amount of material which was deposited from water.

"Were there large lakes which lasted for millions of years or just small amounts of water which
lasted a short period of time? These are just some of the fundamental things we can learn about
Mars.

"The mobile Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) is expected to revolutionise our understanding
of the geological history of the planet."

The rover was launched in November and is scheduled to land on Monday morning beside a
mountain within Gale Crater called Mt Sharp.

Nasa described Curiosity rover as "car-sized" and weighing one ton (900kg).

It is fitted with a robotic arm, high-resolution cameras and a laser, and is designed to be a
walking laboratory.

Martian meteorites

Dr Bridges said he would be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to witness the landing
and to start work on the research.

The University of Leicester said Dr Bridges was one of two UK scientists who would conduct
and analyse experiments during the two-year mission.

Dr Bridges said: "For a number of years now I've studied Mars using orbiting spacecraft data,
also from looking at Martian meteorites in detail. This is the next logical step.

"It's the most powerful rover ever sent to Mars - with more instruments... It can go even further
and perhaps even last longer."

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10 JULY 2012, LEICESTER

University to get 'supercomputer'

07 JUNE 2012, LEICESTER


Nasa
University of Leicester
John Bridges: Mars blog


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Nasa may miss Curiosity Mars rover's
landing signal

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Mars programme director Doug McCuistion: "Is it crazy? Well, not so much" (Courtesy of Nasa)


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Nasa might not be able to follow the progress of its big Mars rover all the way to the surface
when it attempts to land on the planet on 6 August (GMT).

The Curiosity vehicle is aiming for a deep depression known as Gale Crater.

The US space agency will be tracking the descent with satellites, but its prime craft for the task
may not now be in the correct place in the sky.

Engineers have been tackling a fault on the Odyssey satellite and it is no longer in the best
observational orbit.

Unless it can be moved back in the next three weeks, Nasa will lose signal to the rover just as it
is about to touch down.

This will not affect the outcome of the landing because Curiosity's descent manoeuvres are all
performed autonomously, but it will give rise to some high anxiety as everyone awaits
confirmation that the $2.5bn mission is safely on the surface.

"Odyssey right now looks like it may not be in the same spot that we'd expected it to be," said
Doug McCuistion, the director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme.

"There may be some changes in real-time communication. We'll let you know as this develops;
we still have more work to do. But keep in mind, there is no risk to [Curiosity] landing. It does
not have an effect on that."

High risk





MSL - the biggest and best Mars mission yet

The 900kg robot's entry, descent and landing (EDL) will be the most dangerous aspect of the
entire mission.

The rover, in its protective capsule, will hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 20,000km/h
(13,000mph) and attempt to slow to just one metre per second to execute a soft touchdown.

This rapid deceleration must be achieved in about seven minutes or Curiosity will smash into the
ground.

Engineers have built a complex EDL system that includes a supersonic parachute and a rocket-
powered crane. Everything must work on cue and in sequence.

It was expected that the Odyssey orbiter would track the whole descent, relaying UHF signals
from the rover right up to the landing and for a few minutes beyond.

But the spacecraft recently experienced a reaction wheel failure.

This device is used to manage the satellite's orientation and momentum in space, and because
engineers have been investigating the issue they have not as yet moved Odyssey back into the
correct orbit to see the full landing sequence - and they may not do so.

This would leave Nasa blind for the final, nail-biting two minutes of the landing operation.

Transmission delay

Antennas on Earth will be following the descent but they will lose contact as Curiosity hurtles
into Gale, one of the deepest holes on Mars. The steep crater walls will block all direct radio
transmission to the home planet not long after the supersonic parachute is opened.

The Europeans' Mars Express satellite will be watching, but its position in the sky means it will
have a similar problem to Earth antennas.

Nasa's other satellite - the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) - will see the whole landing
sequence but it only has a "store and forward" capability, which puts a significant delay in its
data return time to Earth.

MRO's information will not be available to engineers on Earth for three to four hours after the
rover has placed itself on the surface.

As things stand, Nasa could be waiting on Odyssey to make a late pass of the landing site,
perhaps five to 10 minutes after the rover's planned touchdown.

This is projected to be 22:31 PDT 5 August; 01:31 EDT, 05:31 GMT, 06:31 BST 6 August.

This is "Earth receive" time - the time a signal sent from Mars is received on Earth. The 250
million km between Mars and Earth on 5/6 August mean a radio transmission takes just under 14
minutes to pass between the two planets.

"If Odyssey is not able to be moved and it still remains late, that means it will fly over
[Curiosity] after the spacecraft has landed, and we presumably will [then] be able to see
transmissions from it. It would be somewhere between 22:35 and 22:40 PDT," explained Pete
Theisinger, the rover project manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California.

Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) - is the most sophisticated space
vehicle ever built to touch the surface of another world.

Assuming the robot lands safely, it will spend 98 (Earth) weeks scouring Martian soils and rocks
for any signs that current or past environments on the planet could have supported microbial life.

Gale Crater was chosen as the landing site because satellite pictures had spied sediments in the
depression which looked as though they were laid down in the presence of abundant water.

MSL-Curiosity is equipped with 10 advanced instruments. It also has a plutonium battery and so
should have ample power to keep rolling for more than a decade.

It is likely the mechanisms on the rover will wear out long before its energy supply.

MSL-Curiosity will try to land at the base of Gale Crater and then climb the mountain at its centre


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12 JANUARY 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT



MSL - the biggest and best Mars mission



Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory rover


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Gale Crater: Geological 'sweet shop' awaits
Mars rover
Comments (238)

Grotzinger leads a team of several hundred mission scientists

More from Jonathan

John Grotzinger is the project scientist on Nasa's latest multi-billion-dollar mission to Mars.

He's going to become a familiar face in the coming months as he explains to TV audiences the
importance of the discoveries that are made by the most sophisticated spacecraft ever sent to
touch the surface of another world.

The Curiosity Rover - also called the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) - is set to land on Monday
(GMT) for a minimum two-year exploration of a deep hole on Mars' equator known as Gale
Crater.

The depression was punched out by an asteroid or comet billions of years ago.

The lure for Grotzinger and his fellow scientists is the huge mound of rock rising 5km from the
crater floor.

Mount Sharp, as they refer to it, looks from satellite pictures to be constructed from ancient
sediments - some deposited when Mars still had abundant water at its surface.

From orbit, Mount Sharp looks like Australia. Gale is
named after an Australian astronomer.

That makes it an exciting place to consider the possibility that those distant times may also once
have supported microbial life.

And Curiosity, with its suite of 10 instruments, will test this habitability hypothesis.

Grotzinger is a geologist affiliated to the California Institute of Technology and he recently took
the BBC Horizon programme to the mountains of the nearby Mojave Desert to illustrate the
work the rover will be doing on Mars.

He climbed to a level and then pointed to the rock sediments on the far side of the valley.

"What you see here is a stack of layers that tell us about the early environmental history of Earth,
representing hundreds of millions of years," he told Horizon.

"They read like a book of Earth history and they tell us about different chapters in the evolution
of early environments, and life.

"And the cool thing about going to Mount Sharp and Gale Crater is that there we'll have a
different book about the early environmental history of Mars.

"It will tell us something equally interesting, and we just don't know what it is yet," he said.

Curiosity dwarfs all previous landing missions undertaken by the Americans.

At 900kg, it's a behemoth. It's nearly a hundred times more massive than the first robot rover
Nasa sent to Mars in 1997.

Curiosity will trundle around the foothills of Mount Sharp much like a human field geologist
might walk through Mojave's valleys. Except the rover has more than a hammer in its rucksack.

It has hi-res cameras to look for features of interest. If a particular boulder catches the eye,
Curiosity can zap it with an infrared laser and examine the resulting surface spark to query the
rock's elemental composition.

If that signature intrigues, the rover will use its long arm to swing over a microscope and an X-
ray spectrometer to take a closer look.

Still interested? Curiosity can drill into the boulder and deliver a powdered sample to two high-
spec analytical boxes inside the rover belly.

These will lay bare the rock's precise make-up, and the conditions under which it formed.

"We're not just scratching and sniffing and taking pictures - we're boring into rock, getting that
powder and analysing it in these laboratories," deputy project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, told
the BBC.

"These are really university laboratories that would normally fill up a room but which have been
shrunk down - miniaturised - and made safe for the space environment, and then flown on this
rover to Mars."

The intention on Monday is to put MSL-Curiosity down on the flat plain of the crater bottom.

The vehicle will then drive up to the base of Mount Sharp.

In front of it, the rover should find clay minerals (phyllosilicates) that will give a fresh insight
into the wet, early era of the Red Planet known as the Noachian. Clays only form when rock

relate to the Hesperian Era - a time when Mars was still wet but beginning to dry out.

"Going to Gale will give us the opportunity to study a key transition in the climate of Mars -
from the Noachian to the Hesperian," said Sanjeev Gupta, an Imperial College London scientist
on the mission.

"The rocks we believe preserve that with real fidelity, and the volume of data we get from
Curiosity will be just extraordinary."


General equipment: MSL equipped with tools to remove dust from rock surfaces, drill into
rocks, and to scoop up, sort and sieve samples
Mast Camera: will image rover's surroundings in hi-res stereo and colour; wide angle and
telephoto; can make hi-def video movies
ChemCam: pulses infrared laser at rocks up to 7m away; carries a spectrometer to identify types
of atoms excited in laser beam
Sample Analysis at Mars: inside body; will analyse rock, soil and atmospheric samples; would
make all-important organics identification
Mars Hand Lens Imager: mounted on arm toolkit; will take extreme close-ups of rocks, soil and
any ice; details smaller than hair's width
Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer: Canadian arm contribution; will determine relative
Mars Descent Imager: operates during landing sequence; hi-def movie will tell controllers
exactly where rover touched down
Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons: looks for sub-surface hydrogen; could indicate water buried in
form of ice or bound in minerals

The rover is not a life-detection mission; it does not possess the capability to identify any bugs in
the soil or huddled under rocks (not that anyone really expects to find microbes in the cold, dry,
and irradiated conditions that persist at the surface of Mars today).

But what Curiosity can do is characterise any organic (carbon-rich) chemistry that may be
present.

All life as we know it on Earth trades off a source of complex carbon molecules, such as amino
acids - just as it needs water and energy.

organics on Mars. But if Curiosity could make the definitive identification of organics in Gale
Crater, it would be a eureka moment and go a long way towards demonstrating that the Red
Planet did indeed have habitable environments in its ancient past.

It's a big ask, though. Even in Earth rocks where we know sediments have been laid down in
proximity to biology, we still frequently find no organic traces. The evidence doesn't preserve
well.

And, of course, there are plenty of non-biological processes that will produce organics, so it
wouldn't be an "A equals B" situation even if Curiosity were to make the identification.

Nonetheless, some members of the science team still dream of finding tantalising chemical
markers in Gale's rocks.

Dawn Sumner, from the University of California at Davis, is one of them.

"Under very specific circumstances - if life made a lot of organic molecules and they are
preserved and they haven't reacted with the rocks in Gale Crater, we may be able to tell that they
were created by life. It's a remote possibility, but it's something I at least hope we can find," she
said.

"I am confident we will learn amazing new things. Some of them will be answers to questions
we already have, but most of what we learn will be surprises to us.

"We've only been on the ground on Mars in six places, and it's a huge planet.

"Gale Crater and Mount Sharp are unlike anything we've been to before. That guarantees we will
learn exciting new things from Curiosity."

Horizon: Mission to Mars was broadcast on BBC Two Monday 30 July. Watch online via iPlayer
(UK only) or browse more Horizon clips at the above link.

Your comments (238)


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John Grotzinger at Californa Institute of Technology
Sanjeev Gupta at Imperial College London
Dawn Sumner at University of California Davis


Comments



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0

Comment number 238.

ColadadelCid
5th August 2012 - 23:27

It would have made for an interesting biological experiment if the craft carried along the
most resistant life from Earth a cockroach and had it released on the Martian surface. If
the thing lived and scampered away unharmed imagine what that would mean. But by the
time Earthlings actually set foot on Mars they likely might need to bring along some
roach spray and plenty of it.

+1

Comment number 237.

Cnut the not so Great
5th August 2012 - 23:05

231. SBTC

What?

John 3:16 16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".

Have you actually read Genesis. It's seven days.

+3

Comment number 236.

disgustedofdymchurch
5th August 2012 - 22:52

Why are they sending a Rover? Wouldn't a Mercedes be more reliable?

+1

Comment number 235.

Eggleman
5th August 2012 - 22:42

It is amazing what advances in science have done since we reached the Moon in 1969. I
seriously doubt many people would have predicted this level of technology to reach, let
alone see Mars in such detail to come so quickly.

0

Comment number 234.

MickClayton
5th August 2012 - 22:34

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5O1TX55H_index_0.html

Comments 5 of 238

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Nasa Mars rover mission lines up on target
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News




MSL - the biggest and best Mars mission yet


Related Stories
MSL - the biggest and best Mars mission
Russia asked to join Mars project

Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), currently en route to the Red Planet, has had its course
corrected to put it on target for an August landing.

The 900kg rover is flying through space at 4.5km/s following its launch on an Atlas rocket from
Florida in November.

Wednesday's manoeuvre ensures MSL is properly lined up on Mars, leaving the Atlas, which is
following behind, to miss the planet.

The roving lab is aiming to land inside a 150km-wide bowl called Gale Crater.

It will use its sophisticated instruments to assess whether the location has ever had the conditions
capable of supporting life.

The course correction involved firing the eight thrusters on MSL's cruise stage in a planned
sequence that lasted almost three hours.

The cruise stage is the support vehicle that is carrying the rover to the Red Planet. The laboratory
itself is tucked away inside a protective cone-shaped capsule.

All of this equipment will have to be jettisoned for MSL to make its landing, expected to take
place on the morning of 6 August (GMT).

The thruster firings initiated what is expected to be the biggest change in course for the probe
during its nine-month, 570-million-km-long journey to the Red Planet.

Further manoeuvres, however, will still be needed to precisely point MSL at its destination, with
a last correction being made perhaps just before the mission's entry into the Martian atmosphere.

Changing course like this mid-way through a cruise is standard practice.

Planetary protection protocols drawn up by scientists demand that space missions limit the
amount of earthly contamination they take to other worlds, and while MSL was prepared to
exacting standards of cleanliness the same could not be said of its Atlas launcher.

The rover is tucked inside a protective shell attached
to the cruise stage

Wednesday's manoeuvre guarantees the upper portion of this vehicle, which has been trailing
behind the rover after giving it a final push, cannot now impact Mars.

MSL, also known as Curiosity, is the biggest, most capable spacecraft ever sent to touch the
surface of another planet.

Getting down on to planet will not be easy; most efforts have failed. But the Americans have a
good recent record and they believe a new rocket-powered descent system will be able to place
the rover in one of the most exciting locations on the planet.

Curiosity will investigate a central mountain in Gale Crater that is some 5km high.

It will climb the mountain, and, as it does so, study rocks that were laid down billions of years
ago in the presence of water.


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Mars Science Laboratory


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Comments (101)

An elevation model of Gale crater made using data from Europe's Mars Express orbiter. MSL lands on
the lower, nearside of the central peak, which rises more than 5km above the crater floor

More from Jonathan

The delivery of Nasa's Mars Science Laboratory rover, known as Curiosity, to the surface of the
Red Planet is a mouth-watering prospect.

The $2.5bn robot is by far the most capable machine ever built to touch another world. Consider
just the history of wheeled vehicles on Mars.

In 1997, the US space agency put the toy-sized Pathfinder-Sojourner rover on the surface. It
weighed just over 10kg.

This was followed seven years later by the 170kg, twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit. Their
instrument complement combined (5kg + 5kg) was equal to the total mass of Sojourner.

Now, we await Curiosity - a 900kg behemoth due for launch this Saturday. Its biggest instrument
alone is nearly four times the mass of that teeny robot back in '97.

"It's the size of a Mini Cooper with the wheelbase of a Humvee," is how project scientist John
Grotzinger describes the rover.

So, we're expecting great things from Curiosity. A big machine to address some big questions.


General equipment: MSL equipped with tools to remove dust from rock surfaces, drill into
rocks, and to scoop up, sort and sieve samples
Mast Camera: will image rover's surroundings in high-res stereo and colour; wide angle and
telephoto; can make high-def video movies
ChemCam: pulses infrared laser at rocks up to 7m away; carries a spectrometer to identify types
of atoms excited in laser beam
Sample Analysis at Mars: inside body; will analyse rock, soil and atmospheric samples; would
make all-important organics identification
Mars Hand Lens Imager: mounted on arm toolkit; will take extreme close-ups of rocks, soil and
any ice; details smaller than hair's width

Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer: Canadian arm contribution; will determine the relative
Mars Descent Imager: operates during landing sequence; high-def movie will tell controllers
exactly where rover touched down
Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons: looks for sub-surface hydrogen; could indicate water buried in
form of ice or bound in minerals

Mike Meyer is the lead scientist on Nasa's Mars exploration effort: "MSL plays a central role in a
series of missions of looking at Mars and determining whether or not it has the potential for life.
It is capable of going to a region and exploring that region, and telling us whether or not it has
been, or may even still be today, a habitable place - something that could support microbial life."

Engineers have designed a new entry, descent and landing system they say can put the roving
laboratory down on a button.

OK, so this button is 20km wide but the accuracy being promised is an order or magnitude better
than previous technology, and it has allowed researchers essentially to go where their heart
desired.

They've chosen a near-equatorial depression called Gale Crater. It's one of the deepest holes on
Mars - deeper even than Valles Marineris, that great scar that tears across one quarter of the
planet.

Scientists believe Gale will be the geological equivalent of a sweet shop - so enticing and varied
are the delights it appears to offer.

"This crater is about 100 miles across and it has a central mound that's about three miles high,"
explains Grotzinger.

"The important thing is that the central mound is a series of layers that cut across the history of
Mars covering over a billion years. So, not only do we have high-resolution images showing we
have layers in this mound, but also because of the spectrometers we have in orbit flying around
Mars, we can see minerals that have obviously interacted with water."

The intention is to put MSL-Curiosity down on the flat plain of the crater bottom. The vehicle
will then drive up to the base of the peak.

In front of it, the rover should find abundant quantities of clay minerals (phyllosilicates) that will
give a fresh insight into the very wet, early epoch of the Red Planet. Clays only form when rock

relate to a time when Mars was still wet but beginning to dry out. Go higher still, and MSL will
find mostly the "duststones" from the cold, desiccated world that Mars has now become.

But even before all this, MSL will land on what looks from orbit to be alluvial fan - a spread of
sediment dumped by a stream of water flowing down the crater wall.

If the science on this fan proves productive, it could be many months before MSL gets to the
base of the mountain.

The rover has time, though. Equipped with a plutonium battery, it has the power to keep rolling
for more than 10 years - time enough to scout the crater floor and climb to the summit of the
mountain.

"We are not a life detection mission," stresses Grotzinger.

"I know that many of you would like to know when we're going to get on with doing that. But
the first and important step towards that is to try to understand where the good stuff may be. And
in this case a habitable environment needs to be described.

"This is an environment that contains a source of water, which is essential for all life as we
understand it on Earth; we need a source of energy, which is important for organisms to do
metabolism; and we also need a source of carbon, which is essential to build the molecular
structures that an organism is composed of."

You may be wondering why these sorts of missions don't look directly for life, and the reason is
pretty straightforward. Those types of observations are actually quite difficult to make, and the
truth is we don't really expect to find microbial communities thriving at the surface of present-
day Mars. The conditions are simply too harsh.

Little one: the Sojourner rover now looks like a toy
compared to MSL

But go back further in time, and the situation may have been very different. It seems pretty clear
now that when life was getting going on Earth more than three billion years ago, conditions on
Mars were also warm and wet.

But the traces of those ancient lifeforms on our own planet are now very hard to read, and often
require instruments that would fill a room. Not even a machine the scale of Curiosity could carry
them.

So, MSL will restrict itself to the habitability question, and it will do this using a combination of
10 instruments.

The rover has instruments on a mast that can survey the surroundings and assess potential
sampling targets from a distance. These include cameras and an infrared laser system that can
excite the surface of a rock to betray some of its chemistry.

It's also got instruments on the end of a 2.1m-long arm for close-up inspections. These include a
drill that can pull samples from up to 5cm inside a rock.

And MSL has two big lab kits inside its body to do detailed analysis of all the samples it takes
from rocks, soils and even the atmosphere.

One eureka moment for this mission would be if it could definitively identify a range of complex
organic (carbon-rich) molecules, such as amino acids.

organics. It would be good if Curiosity could bury all doubts. But it will be tough.

Even in Earth rocks where we know sediments have been laid down in proximity to biology, we
still frequently find no organic traces. The evidence doesn't preserve well.

So, getting a positive result on Mars would be a triumph for the MSL team. Although, I guess
one should make it clear - just finding complex organics does not indicate the presence of life
because we know these carbon molecules can have non-biological origins, in meteorites, for
example.

Nonetheless, it would help to build a case that at least the necessary preconditions have existed
for life on the Red Planet at some point.

We can then think about how we might go about testing for life itself, although I think the only
real solution will be to return rocks for analysis in those room-sized instruments here on Earth.

Your comments (101)


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Move to open sky for spaceplanes
China in space: Running fast to catch up
Super-chilled robot ready to slice and dice

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Comment number 101.

Shift That Paradigm
26th November 2011 - 20:16

I'm very relieved that the launch went well.

Between now and next August when Curiosity lands it's probably a good idea to fix our
money system otherwise a gaping black hole awaits us and all our endeavours might all
be for nothing.

Usury/interest must go and we need a resource-based economy and not a money-based
one.

We really do need a paradigm shift and soon. We can do it.

0

Comment number 100.

Jones_the_Steve
26th November 2011 - 18:34

Robert Lucien and Powermeerkat,

I wasn't belittling the Russians. My point was that many people complain about the cost
of space science but don't realise the benefits that having a huge scientific and industrial
base working on extremely difficult tasks brings. It isn't just Teflon and velcro. Glad the
launch went well.

+1

Comment number 99.

Robert Lucien
26th November 2011 - 17:51

#94 powermeerkat
, 56.Jones_the_Steve, Shift That Paradigm.

Curiosity just lifted off on an Atlas 5 and the Atlas 5 is powered by Russian technology,
specifically Buran technology, specifically the RD-180 rocket. A good thing since its
about the most powerful and reliable rocket in current use (both Atlas and the RD-180). -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

-3

Comment number 98.

BobBall
26th November 2011 - 13:12

21. Tom Ray
24TH NOVEMBER 2011 - 19:44
Where can I get one of the batteries that will drive the Curiosity lander artound for 10
years?

Personally, it will be fingers crossed that the rocket launch goes well. Otherwise the USA
may suffer serious radiation contamination from the plutonium batteries on Curiosity.

0

Comment number 97.

Whizz1967
26th November 2011 - 10:58

Knights of Cydonia,now that is art

Comments 5 of 101

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The reaction from the Nasa control room as the robot landed

More from Jonathan

"I hope to do something as great in my life in the future, but if I don't - this will have been
enough."

Adam Steltzner has had a little time to reflect on the historic touchdown of the Curiosity rover on
Mars, although he confesses the adrenaline of the past few days means he hasn't himself yet
landed back on Earth.

The man who led the Nasa team that devised the "crazy" system to get Curiosity on the ground is
still buzzing.

"It is a triumph. It is a triumph of ingenuity and engineering, and it's something the team should
be very, very proud of," he says.

For a few days, Stelzner became the face of this mission.

His engaging personality and presentation, allied to his rock and roll looks, meant he was a
natural magnet to the news cameras.

In those remarkable pictures from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory control room, he was the one
pacing around and pointing.

Steltzner and the Curiosity landing system now go
their separate ways

And all eyes were on him - the master of ceremonies.

The worst part, he says, was waiting for the rover in its descent capsule to touch the top of the
atmosphere.

About nine minutes out, the capsule detached from the spacecraft that had shepherded it from
Earth.

There was then a hiatus before the real action began. "Those nine minutes were horrid."

If you haven't watched the moment of touchdown, you can see it in the video at the top of this
page.

"I wanted three confirmations that we were safe on the ground," Steltzner told me.

"I had three different people looking at three different pieces of data. The first thing you heard
was 'Tango Delta Nominal', which was touchdown nominal coded up so the world would not
erupt into applause.

"Then Dave Way said 'RIMU stable', which meant the inertial measurement unit on the rover
indicated that it was not moving - so, that told us we weren't dragging the rover with the
skycrane.

"And then I looked over at Brian Schratz who was sitting in the EDL comm. His orders were to
count to 10 and then tell me if he was still getting persistent clean UHF signal, which meant the
descent stage wouldn't have fallen back on the rover. He said 'UHF persistent'.

"I pointed at Al Chen who called out 'touchdown confirmed'. The room erupted and the world
learned we'd just made it to the surface of Mars."

Steltzner wanted to be sure the skycrane descent stage had not crashed on top of the rover

Where do you go after you've done something like that? Steltzner is unsure. He's out of a job
now. He has to write up a report on the landing and hand it to Nasa's top brass, but then he's got
to find another project.

"Will engineer for food", is how he advertises his skills.

The frustrating part about all this is that the extraordinary landing system devised by Steltzner's
team appears to be a one shot affair.

The skycrane was supposed to be used again in 2018 to put a pair of rovers on Mars, but then
this joint European and US plan was scrapped. Technical drawings can get filed away
somewhere, but the expertise that makes them real is all too often allowed to just drift apart.

Instead of building on success, space agencies have an infuriating habit of going back to zero and
starting all over again.

I know this is an oversimplification, but it seems that everything must be bespoke. We design
something once and then we design something different. This appears to be the way with
planetary exploration at any rate.

Contrast the approach with communications satellites which come off a production line. Their
unit costs are substantially less as a consequence.

Given the opportunity, Adam Steltzner is in no doubt where he'd like to land next: "We should
be going to Europa, the moon of Jupiter that is the most likely place in the Solar System to have
existent life."

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