Curiosity Lands on Mars, Sends First Picture in Minutes
NASA Curiosity has reached Mars without a hitch.
In a much anticipated event, the most advanced Mars rover touched down on the red planet's surface on Sunday at 10:32 PM PST, one minute behind schedule and only 2.27 miles from the targeted location inside the Gale Crater. It was a landing of stunning precision, given the fact that the signal sent by the equipment takes 14 minutes to reach Earth, which means that, by the time NASA and the member of the Jet Propulsion Lab received confirmation of the beginning of the seven-minute landing process, Curiosity had successfully landed seven minutes before that and began sending data and first images, which reached NASA at 10:34 PM PST.
In a live feed shown on NASA's page, people around the world followed the landing and it appeared to be taking place exactly as planned.
"The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph," said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld in a prepared statement. "My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission's team."
In fact, it was a much needed success for cash-strapped NASA, which is celebrating an immense success and gain in prestige. President Barack Obama previously set the goal for humans to be sent to Mars by 2030 and much more advanced landing of Curiosity, which included several phases of descent and slowdowns of the capsule and its car-sized rover, lend confidence that this goal is realistic and achievable.
At this time, NASA is evaluating Curiosity's instruments and is analyzing the landing site. There are ten instruments on board that have 15 times the mass of the instruments of the payload previously carried by the now immobile Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which landed on January 4 and January 25, 2004. Curiosity is about twice as long and five times as massive as the Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers. It weighs 1,982 lbs and is 9.8 ft in length. It can pass obstacles up to 30 inches in height and will travel at an anticipated average speed of 98 ft per hour.
Its power is derived from a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), similar to the one used by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers in 1976. The power output is 125 watts of electrical power extracted from about 2000 watts of thermal power, which will gradually decrease as the plutonium-238 decays over time. Scientists estimate that there will be about 100 watts of electrical power left in about 14 years. Curiosity can generate about 2.5 kWh per day, in comparison to only 0.6 kWh the smaller Spirit and Opportunity had available.
You should clarify that Opportunity is still active, and that only Spirit is immobile (and, in fact, inactive).
The article says that it should last many years and should still be outputting 100 W of usable power 14 years down the road.
4 for 4 rover landings going from a shoebox size to a VW Beatle.
Can't wait to see what they will dig up with this one; and of course what size #5 will be.
Congrats to the team !
Still, it was great, even if it's been 43 years after the Moon landing.
On Topic . The first picture is every NASA employee celebrating. All 12 of them.
I wouldn't call $2.5B slim pickings, but I'd love to see a mission like this done every month. If Boeing and Lockheed Martin need to be fed, it's better that they make space stuff than weapons.
Unfortunately, it won't. The MSL's radioactive power source will last for 2 years before it expires. While it will provide more operational hours during those first 2 years than the previous solar powered rovers, it'll ultimately be incapable of achieving the same operational lifespan.
There's a relatively narrow window every two years when missions to mars are possible. If you miss it, you have to wait another two years.
Those are not the high res cameras, there the ones used for navigating I think they called them HazCams, they also made mention that the bandwidth was limited during initial... something like 500Kb i think and that the images would be given only a small amount of bandwidth. There still checking to see if it landed on a safe place (no craters, cracks etc) to deploy the arm that has the cam, so the high rez shots will still be a couple of days out.
Also I don't think we really had the time to send back big detailed image even if they prioritized it. They didn't have much of a window for communication the contact with the rover was counted in min after landing. There was enough time to send two 240 pixel shots and two 420 pixel shots before they made mention about the signal being cut off because of the horizon.
You should clarify that Opportunity is still active, and that only Spirit is immobile (and, in fact, inactive).
The article says that it should last many years and should still be outputting 100 W of usable power 14 years down the road.
Funny. Do you have a citation for this? The way I read the article it sound like it will take 14 years to reduce from 125 watts production to 100 watts. I am going to guess that they over provisioned the power generation so the Rover would be available for an extended mission. In fact, I can almost guess that is a guarantee, since they won't be trying to power the one shot ovens on an extended mission. My guess is that the mission can be extended until 14 years or wear and tear sets in, whichever comes first.
I hope this gives us greater understanding of Mars, even though using a nuclear reactor is not of my liking.
Call me when New Horizons reaches Pluto.
hmm, I'm so accustomed to the news articles on Tom's being pointless rehashes of information I heard last week that I didn't even take the time to read through the whole article (important lesson learned).
This is interesting. I wonder why they've said countless times that this power source allows for a mission operating lifespan of nearly two years while at the same time saying the life time of the power source is 14 years? Perhaps they're predicting 2 years of fully operational power, before it or some other component of the vehicle decays to the point where full mission operations are no longer possible?
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/technology/technologiesofbroadbenefit/power/
This, and every other article I've read related to this mission has suggested that the rover will last for two years. This is honestly the first time I've heard that the MSL could potentially be powered for over a decade. I guess when I repeatedly saw that two year figure tossed around, I simply assumed it was a power limitation, since it was always mentioned in relation to the power source.
"The MMRTG optimizes power levels over a minimum lifetime of 14 years."
That is that link you showed.
How the hell you get it has a 2 year lifespan?
Seriously?