Curiosity snapped mid-flight by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter NASA has released the first photo of the Curiosity rover in flight, after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO) HiRISE camera snapped a shot of the spacecraft parachuting down to the Martian surface. The MRO was 340km away from Curiosity as its parachute was deployed, slowing the craft from around 900mph to 180mph, before …
I am absolutely, stunningly, gobsmackingly impressed.
I've been waiting for this since I watched Neil Armstrong take that first giant leap... roll on the first (wo)man on Mars. And then out to the asteroid belt and the rings of Saturn, where the water is free and the sun shines all day!
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Nah. Just set a mother of an MTU :).
Basically, you have the satellite problem here - if you wait for an ack before you commence transmission you'll have missed the window. Instead you work out when the relay will be in range and set it to burst. You do the same on the Earth side, and just make sure you catch the acks coming in later (otherwise you'll just have to do it again).
Long distance comms is a whole different ballgame, and I think they have this down pat. Hats off - a job *seriously* well done.
I thought he looked more like Michael Madsen myself (think 'Bud' from Kill Bill)... but either way I wouldn't want to be the person who put him in a bad mood!
I loved his response to the second question of the first press conference... some twit (without a sense of occasion) asking a technical question about what image compression they used to back the photos. " Yeah... I absolutely can't answer that. My colleague can fill you in later. Next question!"
I was glad to see that the Reg's man asked a question that elicited better replies (mission / Rover life time, time scale)... The engineers comparing the mission to a family's drive across the US, but with four hundred scientists asking if they can stop and look at things along the way.
Amazing. I went to bed last night worried that we get get the Beadle 2 treatment. But luckily (or rather because of a well planned and executed project) the EDL was a complete success.
But to call all those scientists and engineers fat (actually "Round 400 scientists and 300 engineers") is a bit offensive.
Oh, unless you meant 'around.'
Well done NASA.
"The rover's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) has been operating through the flight to let NASA monitor the potential hazards astronauts making the trip would have to face"
Yup, like the high toxic hydrazine crash site. I'm no scientist but I assume being in space it won't just dissipated over time? wouldn't that be sort of like saying "Mars colonisation probably won't happen in my life time, so lets leave that mess for future generations!"
Because what they didn't want huge clouds of sand and grit all over their lovely new rover, nor did they want to drop it into a new hole. They probably also wanted to avoid the risk of the rocket exhaust damaging the rover, or the landing stage falling onto it.
These are all reasons why it was a sky crane and not just a boring old rocket landing stage.
This does raise the question what they'll do next time. Using a sky crane was obviously too easy.
Maybe we can do a few backflips and loop-the-loops on the descent, then maybe do a commando-style, "tank-drop" from the back of a low flying aero? While doing mach 1? (which isn't that much slower than on Earth) Or maybe some sort of HALO?
$orkplace (a space lab) has an instrument recovered from the first Ariane 5 launch (the one which blew up).
After falling several miles to earth, being dug out from under 8 feet of swamp mud, washed multiple times and sitting on a shelf for 12 years, it still has enough traces of hydrazine on it to be considered a toxic hazard.
"$orkplace (a space lab) has an instrument recovered from the first Ariane 5 launch (the one which blew up).
After falling several miles to earth, being dug out from under 8 feet of swamp mud, washed multiple times and sitting on a shelf for 12 years, it still has enough traces of hydrazine on it to be considered a toxic hazard."
Toxic hazard for a certain standard of toxic hazard, I expect. The standard being what could be a problem with an impressionable jury rather than what will give you burns or cause lung problems.
It being an instrument, the extra caution may also be a result of possible reservoirs of material inside that could be opened up later.
Also, it may be UDMH which is considered a carcinogen, though I thought the Ariane V used MMH.
Anyway, hydrazine can be worked with, and can be relied on in ways that other propellants can't be. The level of what's considered an unreasonable hazard in the office is different than on a launch pad or test stand (one does not normally expect hydrazine burns in the office.) ;)
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