The Virginian-Pilot
©
HAMPTON
Start with the big numbers - 354 million miles to Mars and a spacecraft weighing 7,000 pounds and traveling at 13,000 mph.
Then go to the small numbers - an eight-month journey ending with seven minutes in nail-biting final descent.
Put them together and you've got something that NASA Langley's David Way has worked toward for 10 years: the landing on Mars of NASA's newest planetary rover, Curiosity, scheduled to launch Saturday. More than 100 researchers and technicians at NASA Langley Research Center have worked on the mission.
"When I started this project, my wife and I had a 1-year-old child," Way said. "We now have four kids, and the oldest is 11."
They will all be in Florida this weekend to watch the Mars Science Laboratory mission launch Curiosity toward the Red Planet to look for evidence that Mars had or has favorable environments or the chemical ingredients for microbial life. Way leads Langley's EDL team - that's entry, descent and landing - which has spent a decade ensuring that the rover will nestle down gently right on target in Gale Crater.
That won't happen until Aug. 5, if all goes well.
The project is not without risks. According to the Planetary Society, the score for Mars missions stands at Earth 13, Mars 20. There have been six so-called ties - missions that accomplished some, but not all, of their goals.
Mars' score climbed in early November, when a Russian spacecraft got stuck in low-Earth orbit rather than heading off into space.
Curiosity will be the heaviest object ever sent to Mars, and it will be traveling seven times faster than a rifle bullet when it hits the planet's atmosphere, Way said.
It is his team's job to slow it down.
The EDL team plans to use the aerodynamics of the craft's protective shell to slow it to about 900 mph as it enters the Martian atmosphere, then deploy a parachute to lower the speed to 180 mph. Rocket engines will slow the craft to less than 2 mph for landing.
Langley's Michelle Munk and her colleagues also will watch the launch with interest. A suite of instruments they designed, built and tested will measure, for the first time on a Mars mission, the pressures and temperatures of landing.
"It's been a great experience, to take it from 'Hey, we need this data,' to design, build and test, and now send it to Mars," Munk said.
While the launch will be the culmination for some of Curiosity's workers, it will be just the beginning for Langley.
There will be software to work on and computer codes to ready in preparation to receive the data, she said.
Way said he's worked on previous Mars missions, but never to this extent.
"It's kind of like watching your grown kid go off to college. You do your best and hope you've taught them everything they need to know so they're prepared."
Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
It's not a waste
For those who think space exploration is a waste, you need to do a little research and discover the benefits of the Apollo missions to the moon. It's not what we found on the moon - it's the technology we developed in order to allow us to reach the moon.
Sharon Gaudin wrote an article in COMPUTERWORLD on July 20, 2009 that addresses the technology we now benefit from because of Apollo: "Without the research and development that went into those space missions, top companies like Intel Corp. may not have been founded, and the population likely wouldn't be spending a big chunk of work and free time using laptops and Blackberries to post information on Facebook or Twitter."
Rocket Man!
I hope that they find out where that methane is coming from! I'm not a chemist, but I think that there's only one way or two that generates methane and one is bio decomposition of living organisms. Don't get scared. We can't be the only ones out here in this little corner of one of billions of galaxies! And, that would be a little pompous to believe that would it not?
PS What did Winston Churchill say about the Foo Fighters? ANS: Keep it secret for 50 yrs; because we'll loose the church and we need them right now. 50 yrs has passed, and nobody noticed!
I can't wait until the day of disclosure! Our enemies will then be frenemies, since we'll know that we're not alone and whoe god will be the greater?
I just wonder if they have made the conversion from
feet to meters for this one?
I love watching those
I love watching those intercollegiate robotic competitions that lead to such creations such as the Curiosity rover.
To the economic naysayers here, this is tied to national defense if you peer through all the layers. We gotta get there first, can't let the 'ol guard down.
A waste...
of more money. We live on Earth, we have enough problems that need to be taken care of here that the money spent on this would help. Starving people, jobless people, the deficit. Yet the gov't wants to throw more money away. Throw it our way, we're not thousands of miles away!
Spin-off Science...
You won't be saying what a waste when you need that MRI machine, now would you?
a waste?
A waste is me even replying to this idiotic statement from a give me something for nothing type person. However, get a job, pay some taxes, educate the next generation and get off the government tit. The milk is running dry from your type of mentality. Yes there are many problems here on earth and I doubt you are currently working to solve any of them personally. NASA is a great program that has developed many technologies, broadened minds, and put people to work that actually give back to society. Thank you NASA.
A troglodyte's refrain
For every dollar NASA spends, anywhere from a 2-to-1 to a 14-to-1 return comes back to our economy (depending on the particular program).
Without NASA, you wouldn't have many things I'm sure you take for granted now - from things as critical to worldwide communications, GPS, and vastly improved weather forecasts, to simple things such as velcro, scratch-resistant glasses, shoe insoles, and cordless drills.
NASA conducts research that wouldn't be done by the private sector, simply because the costs involved would not necessarily guarantee a profit. We wouldn't know nearly as much about our universe without orbital telescopes.
But most of all, you wouldn't have the inspiration of the human spirit to explore and understand our universe.
I disagree--I do not believe that space exploration is a waste.
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
-Jeffrey Sinclair- (Babylon 5)
I've been hearing....
..this kind of ignorant claptrap since I was in grade school during the Gemini/Apollo missions. This country spends only about a half percent of the federal budget on space exploration, aeronautics research, and science through NASA. Let's put it in perspective: if we close NASA and simply re-distribute it to the rest of the budget ($3.8 TRILLION), the federal government will only run for an additional 1.8 days. Let's talk "spending it here on earth" by looking at the budgets of Dept. of Health/Human Services ($81B) and Housing/Urban development ($48B). Combined, just these two agencies have over SEVEN TIMES the budget of NASA ($18B). Glad you weren't in charge of funding Lewis & Clark or the U.S. would all still be east of the Mississippi!