Comments on: Video of Curiosity saying bye bye to its heat shield

By: Rover and Commander « Fun Zone Radio

Rover and Commander « Fun Zone Radio — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 04:15:06 +0000

[...] Bad Astronomy Blog [...]

By: Ken (a different Ken)

Ken (a different Ken) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 03:52:16 +0000

#17 Brian: Thanks, that sounds reasonable!

By: Linksammelsurium 09.08.2012 | ryuus Hort

Linksammelsurium 09.08.2012 | ryuus Hort — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:10:20 +0000

[...] zu sehen, war das dann doch wert. Eine Aufzeichnung des Ganzen gibt es bei spacelivecast.de und BadAstronomy hat mich auf ein schönes Zeitraffer-Video von der Landung [...]

By: Nangleator

Nangleator — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:55:14 +0000

Is it too soon for the conspiracy theories?

A) Faked! It really just landed on the Moon. James Cameron personally added the atmosphere, in MS Paint.

B) Clear evidence of a UFO encounter over Arizona was modified to look like Mars, and the back story of a NASA probe was created.

C) Ancient aliens on Mars… the featureless plains were obviously smoothed out to cover evidence of their works.

D) The face… there’s a face there somewhere… let me add several generations of JPG compression damage and it’ll pop right out…

By: DanO

DanO — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:46:41 +0000

I like how it falls almost directly into the shadow of the parachute. The arc of shadow persists for about 15 frames.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:21:54 +0000

#14 SkyGazer and #13 different Ken,
The rocket-powered descent and landing were necessary because of the weight, but the need to separate the rockets from the lander with 25 feet of cable was attributed to dust. Since the rover must be tolerant of dust storms, and we saw plenty of dust being kicked up under the rover in the landing video, the simplistic “We need to drop it on a crane so it doesn’t get dusty” explanation seems lacking.

I’m guessing that putting the descent engines closer to the rover would have exposed it to extremely high-velocity dust, which would have caused much more abrasion than the normal dust storms and might cause dust infiltration into otherwise protected areas.

By: Freshly Picked Blackberry Scones « * NerdyBaker *

Freshly Picked Blackberry Scones « * NerdyBaker * — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:10:18 +0000

[...] obsessed with this man. And this tumbler page is almost as awesome as the pictures coming from Mars. I just love that this next generation of kids will have a new cool science guy to look up to, [...]

By: TimO

TimO — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 12:42:28 +0000

In 5,000 years some future archeologist is going to have a heart attack when he digs that up!!

By: SkyGazer

SkyGazer — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 11:26:23 +0000

@13 Ken
The SkyCrane was needed because of the weight of the rover, which is about a ton.
And dust is not such a problem for Curiosity since it runs on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Hence no solar panels that can be covered with dust.
See Wiki for more on that:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

By: Ken (a different Ken)

Ken (a different Ken) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:49:25 +0000

Not quite OT question:

I understand the primary reason for the skycrane is to avoid dust kicked up by the thrusters contaminating instruments.

But Mars has big dust storms from time to time – Spirit and Oppie are just covered with the stuff.

Aren’t the instruments protected from the dust they would encounter from Martian weather? Why wouldn’t that suffice to protect them from dust kicked up at landing?

Or is dust the reason that the expected lifespan is only a (Martian) year?