NASA's Perseverance Rover Successfully Lands on Mars (theverge.com) 61
NASA's Perseverance rover has successfully touched down on the surface of Mars after surviving a blazing seven-minute plunge through the Martian atmosphere. The rover's clean landing sets the stage for a years-long journey to scour the Red Planet's Jezero Crater for ancient signs of life. From a report: "Touchdown confirmed," Swati Mohan, a member of NASA's entry, descent and landing team, said. "Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars ready to begin seeking the signs of past life." The landing team of roughly 30 engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California jumped from their seats and cheered at the confirmation. Moments after touching down, Perseverance beamed back its first image from one of its 19 cameras. Perseverance hit Mars' atmosphere on time at 3:48PM ET at speeds of about 12,100 miles per hour, diving toward the surface in an infamously challenging sequence engineers call the "seven minutes of terror." With an 11-minute comms delay between Mars and Earth, the spacecraft had to carry out its seven-minute plunge at all by itself with a wickedly complex set of pre-programmed instructions. The moment we learned Perseverance had successfully landed.
Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Funny)
Mild panicked confidence.
I like the guy who, just before touchdown, whispered "We lost the heart beat," and at least three people in the room shouts at him "THAT WAS EXPECTED!"
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Hey, we've all been there, if not anywhere near at that level of technical prowess. You have this minor heart attack even when you're expecting some delay. The fact they're doing this with several minutes of light delay is quite something, and it means if shit hit the fan, it hit like four or five minutes before you knew about it.
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Kinda like in the old days when lights out system management barely worked and a mistake meant you were in for a long drive at a stupid hour. You made a change to network settings. You knew it would take 30-45 seconds for the port to re-enable, but still you started sweating at 25 seconds or so.
YIPEEED (Score:1)
Finally some good news (Score:2)
You're on deck, China.
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You're on deck, China.
Actually, I heard they're already playing WHOs on first...
Rover? (Score:5, Funny)
It has its own helicopter so it's more like a yacht on wheels.
Now onto the helicopter (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not jinx it, but hope we would continue the lucky streak and have the helicopter actually work on Mars.
And then, next stop: Helicopter on Titan!
Re:Now onto the helicopter (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think the Mars helicopter has that kind of range but I appreciate the enthusiasm.
Re:Now onto the helicopter (Score:4, Interesting)
And then, next stop: Helicopter on Titan!
Titan's atmosphere is 240 times as dense as the Martian atmosphere. So getting a helicopter to fly there should be relatively easy.
But a blimp may work better. It could be filled with H2. There is no chance of fire when there is no oxygen. Titan's atmosphere is mostly N2 and CH4.
On to Titan [Re:Now onto the helicopter] (Score:2)
And then, next stop: Helicopter on Titan!
Titan's atmosphere is 240 times as dense as the Martian atmosphere. So getting a helicopter to fly there should be relatively easy. But a blimp may work better. It could be filled with H2.
Or, to avoid having to bring hydrogen to compensate for the leak rate, just heat the atmosphere:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/cita... [nasa.gov]
There is no chance of fire when there is no oxygen. Titan's atmosphere is mostly N2 and CH4.
And of that, mostly nitrogen.
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H2 balloons would probably be an excellent option on Titan, however...
> There is no chance of fire when there is no oxygen.
Not necessarily - not unless you specifically define fire as "an exothermic reaction involving oxygen". There's lot of other exothermic reactions available - oxygen is just the most common oxidizer on Earth because we have free oxygen in the atmosphere, and oxygen is so volatile that it will react with pretty much anything, so in any uncontrolled open-air reaction the end products w
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Actually, I think a helicopter on Titan would be a lot easier due to the thicker atmosphere. But a hot air balloon might be more useful if you can figure out a way to power it.
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Radioisotope blimp would be freaking awesome. It uses the heat waste heat of the electronics, so it might be very efficient.
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A hydrogen or helium balloon would probably be better - *far* more lift per unit volume, which means you can use a much smaller, lighter balloon to provide the same lift. That alone would probably more than make up for the weight of bringing your lift-gas with you.
However, also involving heating for altitude control might be a useful control system. Particularly in such a cold, dense atmosphere where the lift-gas would cool quickly if the heat was shut off.
When they turn on the mic.. (Score:3)
The Council of Elders must be quivering... (Score:3)
in their gel-sacs - the Earthlings have sent a laser-equipped killer robot to occupy the planet! Go NASA!
(for the long-timers here...)
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Posted a comment to that effect in the other story.
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Someone is definitely getting their gelsacs punctured for the failure to stop the invader from the blue planet.
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The strike team deployed by the Council of Elders did manage to sabotage the landing microphone.
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K'breel is probably still hiding from the bombardment of the tungsten weights just before the landing. The Insight lander was supposed to be able to detect their impact,
I miss the K'breel stories. The author had a great sense of humor.
Re:How many People of Color helped with this landi (Score:5, Funny)
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Europe still hasn't had a successful Mars mission yet.
Well, the UK jettisoned. That's got to count for for at least practice..
ESA [Re:How many People of ...] (Score:3)
Europe still hasn't had a successful Mars mission yet.
Mars Express [esa.int] was (and is) fully successful.
Possibly you meant that ESA hasn't had a successful surface mission yet. Cross your fingers for Exomars 2022 [esa.int] carrying the "Rosalind Franklin" rover, launching next year.
One more small step (Score:2)
One more small step for humans, one Large step for humankinds.
Congrats, its great to see that the software that controlled the automated decent worked like it was supposed to.
Way to go Mars team!
Why a 'sky crane'? (Score:2)
I understand the reasons to develop this kind of 'sky crane' landers in the long term. However NADA have struggled to get their packages down in one piece and this was an incredible risky approach.
Re:Why a 'sky crane'? (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand the reasons to develop this kind of 'sky crane' landers in the long term. However NADA have struggled to get their packages down in one piece and this was an incredible risky approach.
Maybe because it worked fine the last time they tried it 9 years ago?
At any rate, what are the less risky alternatives? This rover is kind of big to safely bounce around in balloons, and direct landing on its own rockets would kick up huge amounts of debris and gum up the works.
Re:Why a 'sky crane'? (Score:5, Informative)
However NADA have struggled to get their packages down in one piece
Citation please. NASA has been kicking ass. There has not been a single NASA Mars mission failure in *22 years*.
Re:Why a 'sky crane'? (Score:5, Informative)
Due to the lesser density of Mars' atmosphere a parachute to the ground is not going to work - it's be so large you'd never get out from under it and probably still can't slow enough. So that won't work.
Powered landing to the ground will kick up rocks and dust and damage/destroy bits of the rover - so also not going to work.
Earlier missions that were smaller used the bouncy ball approach - after slowing under a chute, inflate a large bubble around it and let it bounce several times. Makes it hard to build the actual rover/lander because it has to handle those hits. Not feasible for these larger generations of rovers.
So they came up with this method. That has now worked twice.
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And even with MER, which were the last mission to use the airbag approach, they had to add retrorockets to the parachute system to reduce velocity immediately prior to impact. MER was right on the limit of what can be done with the airbag approach.
Nice orbiter China, we'll park ours in a crater k? (Score:1)
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Battlebots!
2.7 billion dollars! (Score:2)
That's more than a million dollars a pound for the 2263 lb. rover.
I remember NASA stating that each shuttle was a billion dollars a piece in the 1980's, and even back then I thought that was expensive.
And the team members fist-bumping each other... Well, I guess times really have changed - when I grew up, if a nerd saw knuckles coming for him, he instinctively ducked. I guess today's nerds never got bullied.
Engineering Courage (Score:2)
Minutes-of-terror not withstanding, this has to be the ultimate demonstration of engineering that is self-confident enough to even attempt such a thing.
Just asking, but why is the first picture a low-res monochrome snap that is distorted by a dirty portal? I hope that isn't going to be that camera's normal operating mode.
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They said there was a protective shield over the lens. Later the protective shield is or was removed.
Re:Engineering Courage (Score:5, Informative)
The first image is from a small "hazard avoidance camera" that is used for navigation. It's blurred by a lens cap that is used to protect these cameras during landing - it's clear plastic to make the first image possible before they do anything else (because everyone likes pictures). There is a much bigger, fancier, mast-mounted camera that will be used for taking prettier pictures once they have everything up and running.
Team ROver (Score:4, Funny)
Now, If we could get Perseverance to meet up with Curiosity, NASA could race them.
I know I would :)
Mars 2020 and Life (Score:5, Interesting)
*..*
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Kubrick would be proud! (Score:2)
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That you know of. The Starchild's influence can be subtle.
No gold, no diamonds... (Score:2)
Even though the Curiosity was moving along the ancient riverbed.
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On Earth almost in every river one can find gold dust. However, no gold was found on Mars yet. Even though the Curiosity was moving along the ancient riverbed.
And in some solar systems planets literally are made of diamonds. Not all planets are the same.
Hobo corpse. (Score:2)
No Cause For Alarm (Score:1)
Following reports of a new alien war machine in the ancient Fal'leesh river delta, K'breel, speaker for the Council, stressed that again, there was no cause for alarm:
"This is the last, futile gesture of the disease-ridden apes that foul the sinister blue planet third from our star. We will persevere, no matter the risks, no matter the costs. Our gelsacs swell with pride at the thought of the Enemy's inevitable self-immolation augered by their fitful attempts to travel among the stars."
When Junior Reporter