I will be impressed if the land it and hope they do.
Im thinking of getting the telescope out just to look at Mars tomorrow early morning. Not that you can see the landing sight, but more to see Mars for real and know its atempting the landing.
That makes it all seem more realistic.
Ive got a 12 inch Dobsonian, so if there are no clouds the view should be pretty good. Jupiter is up as well early morning, thats always worth looking at.
I’m really stoked about it! The head engineer on the landing system reckons it’s the best way, and I guess he should know- but it does seem like an awful lot to go wrong.
I suppose you’ve got to compare it with previous missions- Spirit and Opportunity had relatively simple landing processes but without much control- they really didn’t know where they’d end up and it was possible that they’d land somewhere crap, or bounce into a cliff face. It worked out well but it was a bit risk, this way they’re adding complexity but reducing other risks.
Due to land around 05.31 GMT, so around 06.31 BST. I guess we won’t actually know if all’s gone well till around 18min later, think that’s the delay in radio comms frm mars.
Waits for someone to put me right, to the second 🙂
I can imagine the meeting where some American pr type states,
“right, I have worked out how we are going to secure funding for the next 10 years, what we need is a supersonic parachute! now gout there and design me a mission that uses a supersonic parachute”
I can imagine the meeting where some American pr type states,
“right, I have worked out how we are going to secure funding for the next 10 years, what we need is a supersonic parachute! now gout there and design me a mission that uses a supersonic parachute”
And bloody impressive it is, too! The ‘chute, that is.
It all started as a joke. Some mid-level administrators at NASA had the thankless job of working on annual budgets, year after year. After compiling thousands of pages of documents for the budget every year, they wondered if anyone even bothered to read any of it. So they hatched a plan to find out. “We’ll ask for billions of dollars to put a radio controlled car on Mars…”
As above, seems a complicated way to land, but they must know what they’re doing.
I have visions of it landing, then the wire cutters not working, and the crane flying off taking the lander with it, or a good landing, followed by the crane’s engines failings and crashing on top of the landing.
Hope it goes well, shame we’ll never see video of the landing, it will be amazing.
Spooky the battery will be Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator – a warm bit of ‘radio active metal’ with a ‘big bunch’ of thermocouple turning the heat into electricity. Similar to the ones they stuck in Voyager that’s been ‘working’ since 1977 – all be it very faintly now.
Quite an amazing thing to do, just over a hundred years ago the Wright Brothers flew the first powered plane and now we can land stuff on another planet and drive it around, astounding.
We can do this yet still people die of hunger etc, humans are a strange breed and no mistake.
