I keep thinking: What if the upper part lands atop the rover?
“I keep thinking: What if the upper part lands atop the rover?”
Watch the “7 Seconds of Terror” Video at the link Equaviator posted. The upper part rockets away after lowering the rover. Pretty fascinating. Hope it works.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/
Ouch. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... ;^)
Your question explains why the JPL engineers for NASA refer to the descent as “7 minutes of terror” - the multiple phases of the descent requiring different engineering solutions for each stage, the total (short) time the descent will take and the long time (14 minutes) between a communication sent from the rover and its lander before that communication is received on earth, means whatever the scientists are being told happened, happened 14 minutes ago and something else - the next stage - is “happening now”, and it will be 14 more minutes before they will know about it. They’ll be “sweating bullets” until the rover is completely landed and safely so.
In case you missed post number 8 on this thread:
Watch live online> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/