NASA's next Mars Lander

Trippy said:
:Shrug:
May come down to orbital considerations - MRO and Odyssey both required orbital burns to get them into position, but they both have the same orbital inclination - 93° where Mars Express has an orbital inclination of 86°.

Based on that alone it simply may not have been feasible, especially once fuel is taken into consideration, to Mars Eexpress into position, and doing so would probably have required action days to months ago.
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Mars Express could potentially change its angle to Martian equitorial plane to match the needed 93 degrees with the 7.5kg of fuel left...or not....
 
youreyes said:
Mars Express could potentially change its angle to Martian equitorial plane to match the needed 93 degrees with the 7.5kg of fuel left...or not....
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Then it would no longer be in its science orbit, and there would still be no gaurantee that it would be at a useful altitude.
 
Trippy said:
On the one hand, the idea of the sky-crane gives me the willies. On the other hand, Viking 1 and 2, and Mars Phoenix all performed soft landings with related - but not identical technology - the key difference being that none of the others were required to hover.
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excuse me but the hoveing sky crane technology with the rover dangling by the strings...that has not been tested on Mars. The airbag landing was tested, this is totally new.
 
youreyes said:
right side up would make it fail, the thrusters are on the bottom of the vehicle.
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KilljoyKlown said:
If that's what you think, you need to do a little research. They aren't calling the delivery system the skycrane for nothing. ...
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That is an untested system. What can a wind do to it? Make it swing, perhaps be a near full amplitude of the swing (tilted wrt the horizontal etc.) when it is cut free, etc. I included the "right side up" part of my wish as that does not seem to be 100% assured - especially with some bad luck of wheels of one side getting caught on small bolder as it makes ground contact.
 
Billy T said:
That is an untested system. What can a wind do to it? Make it swing, perhaps be a near full amplitude of the swing (tilted wrt the horizontal etc.) when it is cut free, etc. I included the "right side up" part of my wish as that does not seem to be 100% assured - especially with some bad luck of wheels of one side getting caught on small bolder as it makes ground contact.
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I understood it as you stating that if the rover lands right side up. Anyways, the Gale Crater (as pinpointed by ESA's Mars Express) has got some steep inclines.
http://blogs.esa.int/mex/files/2012/08/Gale_Crater_3d1_H.jpg
 
youreyes said:
excuse me but the hoveing sky crane technology with the rover dangling by the strings...that has not been tested on Mars. The airbag landing was tested, this is totally new.
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I didn't say it had been.

Re-read what I actually said:
Trippy said:
On the one hand, the idea of the sky-crane gives me the willies. On the other hand, Viking 1 and 2, and Mars Phoenix all performed soft landings with related - but not identical technology - the key difference being that none of the others were required to hover.
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The landers I mentioned all used retro-rockets to slow their descent for a soft landing, not airbags. So while the sky crane has not specificaly been tested on mars, related technology that had to achieve many of the same things as the sky crane has been successfully used to perform soft landings on mars. The key difference between those landings, as I mentioned, is that where in the case of the others the retro thrusters were to reduce speed and touch down softly, the skycrane must hover at a fixed altitude no more than some maximum value.
 
Curiosity on Twitter said:
MarsCuriosity I'm inside the orbit of Deimos and completely on my own. Wish me luck! #MSL 16 minutes ago
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And so the time of puckered sphincters begins.
 
Watching the live-stream of this.. I don't think puckered sphincters is an apt description. At this point, having seen the video of what needs to happen for this landing to be successful, I would imagine their sphincters are tucked up under their tonsils.
 
I picked my children home from school early and we watched it live.. God that was intense..
 
Azl5Nm6CQAAn-jG.jpg:large

first image
 
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