Mars landing will cap work of NASA Langley researchers

The Virginian-Pilot ^ | November 23, 2011 | Diane Tennant

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HAMPTON

Start with the big numbers - 354 million miles to Mars and a spacecraft weighing 7,000 pounds and traveling at 13,000 mph.

Then go to the small numbers - an eight-month journey ending with seven minutes in nail-biting final descent.

Put them together and you've got something that NASA Langley's David Way has worked toward for 10 years: the landing on Mars of NASA's newest planetary rover, Curiosity, scheduled to launch Saturday. More than 100 researchers and technicians at NASA Langley Research Center have worked on the mission.

"When I started this project, my wife and I had a 1-year-old child," Way said. "We now have four kids, and the oldest is 11."

They will all be in Florida this weekend to watch the Mars Science Laboratory mission launch Curiosity toward the Red Planet to look for evidence that Mars had or has favorable environments or the chemical ingredients for microbial life. Way leads Langley's EDL team - that's entry, descent and landing - which has spent a decade ensuring that the rover will nestle down gently right on target in Gale Crater.

That won't happen until Aug. 5, if all goes well.

The project is not without risks. According to the Planetary Society, the score for Mars missions stands at Earth 13, Mars 20. There have been six so-called ties - missions that accomplished some, but not all, of their goals.

Mars' score climbed in early November, when a Russian spacecraft got stuck in low-Earth orbit rather than heading off into space.

Curiosity will be the heaviest object ever sent to Mars, and it will be traveling seven times faster than a rifle bullet when it hits the planet's atmosphere, Way said.

It is his team's job to slow it down.

The EDL team plans to use the aerodynamics of the craft's protective shell to slow it to about 900 mph as it enters the Martian atmosphere, then deploy a parachute to lower the speed to 180 mph. Rocket engines will slow the craft to less than 2 mph for landing.

Langley's Michelle Munk and her colleagues also will watch the launch with interest. A suite of instruments they designed, built and tested will measure, for the first time on a Mars mission, the pressures and temperatures of landing.

"It's been a great experience, to take it from 'Hey, we need this data,' to design, build and test, and now send it to Mars," Munk said.

While the launch will be the culmination for some of Curiosity's workers, it will be just the beginning for Langley.

There will be software to work on and computer codes to ready in preparation to receive the data, she said.

Way said he's worked on previous Mars missions, but never to this extent.

"It's kind of like watching your grown kid go off to college. You do your best and hope you've taught them everything they need to know so they're prepared."

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This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. (Courtesy photo | NASA/JPL-Caltech)

In other Mars news, there's this.

Stranded Mars probe sends further signals

More attempts have been made by the European Space Agency (Esa) to contact the stricken Russian probe Phobos-Grunt - with partial success.

Communication with the craft as it passed over Australia was achieved again on Thursday, but not all of the commands prompted a response.

Phobos-Grunt was launched two weeks ago on a mission to visit one of Mars' moons, but became stuck in Earth orbit.

Engineers still hope to fix the probe and get the mission under way.

But first they need to be able to talk with it. Europe's 15m dish in Perth was the first to successfully make contact with the spacecraft in a fortnight of trying by tracking stations around the globe.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Time to pull the plug. Mars has nothing to do with our problems and NASA is another budgetary white elephant. The glory has faded and it’s time to move on.

[outofsalt]

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
Try this site to see some of the many ways the space programs hve benefited our lives!

[Huck]

Nonsense. NASA is .6% of our budget. That's POINT 6%. Meanwhile, Medicare/Medicaid is 23%, Social Security is 20%, and defense spending is 20%.

NASA has nothing to do with our deficit.

[Future Snake Eater]

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Hmmm. The example I looked at wasn’t much of a benefit (a water filter).

They are going to have to do better on the site than that.

[djf]

I’m gettin sick of this BS.

Either send men up there or return a couple samples.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have no connections to the space program, but I have no doubt that there is life on Mars.
And I have no doubt that some powerful people know that already.

[ontap]

Most of those things are products of a NASA from years past. The NASA of today has been commandeered by left wing shills shamelessly pushing global warming and other such nonsense from the democrat loony farm.I will support NASA when the management is fired and replaced with the people of excellence from it's glory days as a scientific giant...not a propagandist midget.

[oh8eleven]

Time to pull the plug.
It was time to pull the plug on NASA in 1990 after ten years of the space shuttle program produced nothing.
Twenty years after that and the American taxpayer still had zilch and it cost fourteen men and women their lives.
Billions and billions of dollars wasted so some nerds can play rocket scientist.
You want to go to Mars ... pay for it yourself. I want a feckin' refund.

P.S. How's that Mooselimb Outreach plan working out?

[cripplecreek]

The real problem with NASA is political. If we could get them back to their original mission (like this one) people would begin to see the benefit again.

The clowns who want to give up space are like military commanders who want to cede the high ground and camp in the valley.

[ronnie raygun]

Wonder what accomplishments from this point on NASA will have in trying to sell the islam to the world?

[BigCinBigD]

Ad Astra Per Aspera...

[Huck]

I agree. I think this Mars mission is outstanding. I hope they are successful. It’s amazing what they do.

[cripplecreek]

NASA needs to be a pathfinding, prospecting, and exploration agency and nothing more.

Basically a modern day Lewis and Clark org.