More Curiosity...

U.K. colleague Paul H. sends along this nice BBC piece and the animation below:


And here's another variation, with William Shatner:

Reminder: the Seven Minutes of Curiousity...

This coming Sunday night is when Curiousity faces its seven minutes of terror as it lands on Mars.  I'll be staying up (very late for me!) to watch the coverage...

The Curiosity Challenge...

On August 5th of this year, at 10:31 PDT, the Curiosity Rover is scheduled to plop down onto the surface of Mars.  It is by far the most advanced probe anybody has ever attempted to land on any planet, and (assuming it lands successfully) we expect it to produce great science data at least through its primary mission.

Curiosity is also the biggest and heaviest probe anyone has ever attempted to land on Mars, and this meant some tough engineering problems to solve.  The engineering solution involves an advanced ablative heat shield, the largest supersonic parachute ever designed, a rocket-powered sky crane, high resolution descent radar, and a completely autonomous computer-controlled landing system.  Every bit of this has to work perfectly, or the Curiosity landing will fail (as so many previous Mars landings have failed).  For those of us who, like me, are more excited about robotic probes like Curiosity than we are of the manned space program, this landing is real edge-of-the-chair stuff.  It's also a spectacular feat of engineering in its own right, completely aside from the rover itself.

The video below is a sort of mini-documentary, very nicely done, about the technology developed to set Curiosity down on the surface of Mars...

Opportunity Rises...

We're talking about the Opportunity on Mars, the pluckly little rover that just keeps on going and going.  It's been “asleep” for the Martian winter, and yesterday finally got enough power to motor up and roll around a bit.  All systems are working just fine.  Over the next few weeks, Opportunity will get more and more sunshine on its solar panels, and will do increasing amounts of exploration work around the Endeavour crater where it's currently located.

In a few months, barring some mishap, Opportunity will be joined on the Martian surface by a new rover, this one named Curiousity.  This new rover is much bigger, longer-lived, and more capable than Opportunity – but for those of us who have been avidly following the adventures of Opportunity (and it's lost sibling, Spirit), Curiousity will be hard put to match its predecessors...

Feynman on Curiousity...

Another beautiful video: