Author Topic: Curiosity rover landing soon  (Read 5162 times)

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Marco2001

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Curiosity rover landing soon
« on: July 28, 2012, 05:44:22 AM »
In the world of science a great countdown has started.
Scheduled August 6, 2012 (Monday), on the surface of Mars will land the largest land rover in history ... rover named "Curiosity".

The fact that it's a powerful "beast" you can see below in the linked video. It even comes equipped with LIBS-Laser, for sampling of rocks from a distance.

We all keep our fingers crossed, because more than half of the Mars missions ended as a failure. It may be concluded that on Curiosity will depend the future of manned missions to Mars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw

Poland here. My time: GMT + 1h
Writing a book about Mars. Any ideas? Type to me.
I'am an Astrobiology/Biology student.

Marco2001

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Re: Curiosity rover landing soon
« Reply #1 on: August 05, 2012, 04:04:03 PM »
This is it!
It lands now.
Cross your fingers for Curiosity, and show Mars the middle one for destroying more than half of probes we send there till now.

Quote
With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6, 5:31 a.m. UTC Aug. 6, 6:31 a.m. BST Aug. 6, 7:31 a.m. CEST Aug. 6).

Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon, as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion system.

As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).

http://www.nasa.gov/

Poland here. My time: GMT + 1h
Writing a book about Mars. Any ideas? Type to me.
I'am an Astrobiology/Biology student.

profit004

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Re: Curiosity rover landing soon
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2012, 11:52:22 PM »
Watch it live in about an hour here ->

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/nasatv/

Marco2001

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Re: Curiosity rover landing soon
« Reply #3 on: August 06, 2012, 06:42:07 AM »


Poland here. My time: GMT + 1h
Writing a book about Mars. Any ideas? Type to me.
I'am an Astrobiology/Biology student.