NASA spacecraft barreling toward red planet landing
Source: Agencies |
August 6, 2012, Monday
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AFTER an 8 1/2-month voyage through space, NASA's souped-up Mars spacecraft zoomed toward the red planet for what the agency hopes will be an epic touchdown.
The fiery punch through the tenuous Martian atmosphere at 21,000 kilometers per hour last night was to mark the beginning of "seven minutes of terror" as the Curiosity rover aims for a bull's-eye landing inside a massive crater near the equator.
The latest landing attempt is more nerve-racking than in the past because NASA is testing out a new routine. Curiosity will steer itself part of the way and end on a dramatic note: Dangling by cables until its six wheels touch the ground.
"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I'm confident," Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said on Saturday. "We have the A-plus team on this. They've done everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still exists."
Despite humanity's fascination with Mars, the track record for landing on it is less than stellar. Of the 14 attempts by space agencies around the world to touch down on Earth's neighbor, only six have succeeded. NASA has fared better - one failure out of seven.
In keeping with a decades-old tradition, peanuts will be passed around the mission control room at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for good luck.
NASA will need it. The US$2.5 billion mission comes as the space agency faces a financial crunch. It abandoned a partnership with the European Space Agency to send missions in 2016 and 2018 and, instead, is charting a new future for Mars exploration.
For now, NASA is counting on Curiosity to nail the landing. On the eve of landing day, engineers said the rover looked healthy and on course.
"We're now right on target to fly through the eye of the needle" at the top of the Martian atmosphere, said mission manager Arthur Amador.
Earlier last week, a dust storm swirling to the south of the landing site gave the team some pause. Ashwin Vasavada, the mission's deputy project scientist and Mars weather forecaster, said the storm basically went "poof" and posed no threat.
"Mars appears to be cooperating very nicely with us. We expect good weather for landing," he said.
As Curiosity plummets to the surface, it will rely on the precisely choreographed use of a heat shield and supersonic parachute to slow its descent. Less than a mile from the ground, the hovering spacecraft will unspool cables to lower the rover.
NASA warned spotty communication during landing could delay confirmation for several hours or even days.
The fiery punch through the tenuous Martian atmosphere at 21,000 kilometers per hour last night was to mark the beginning of "seven minutes of terror" as the Curiosity rover aims for a bull's-eye landing inside a massive crater near the equator.
The latest landing attempt is more nerve-racking than in the past because NASA is testing out a new routine. Curiosity will steer itself part of the way and end on a dramatic note: Dangling by cables until its six wheels touch the ground.
"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I'm confident," Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said on Saturday. "We have the A-plus team on this. They've done everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still exists."
Despite humanity's fascination with Mars, the track record for landing on it is less than stellar. Of the 14 attempts by space agencies around the world to touch down on Earth's neighbor, only six have succeeded. NASA has fared better - one failure out of seven.
In keeping with a decades-old tradition, peanuts will be passed around the mission control room at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for good luck.
NASA will need it. The US$2.5 billion mission comes as the space agency faces a financial crunch. It abandoned a partnership with the European Space Agency to send missions in 2016 and 2018 and, instead, is charting a new future for Mars exploration.
For now, NASA is counting on Curiosity to nail the landing. On the eve of landing day, engineers said the rover looked healthy and on course.
"We're now right on target to fly through the eye of the needle" at the top of the Martian atmosphere, said mission manager Arthur Amador.
Earlier last week, a dust storm swirling to the south of the landing site gave the team some pause. Ashwin Vasavada, the mission's deputy project scientist and Mars weather forecaster, said the storm basically went "poof" and posed no threat.
"Mars appears to be cooperating very nicely with us. We expect good weather for landing," he said.
As Curiosity plummets to the surface, it will rely on the precisely choreographed use of a heat shield and supersonic parachute to slow its descent. Less than a mile from the ground, the hovering spacecraft will unspool cables to lower the rover.
NASA warned spotty communication during landing could delay confirmation for several hours or even days.
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