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Imagine trying to land an SUV-sized rover on another world. That’s certainly enough of a challenge in itself, but picturing that while the rover is hanging precariously below a floating sky crane, attached to a bunch of nylon cables like clotheslines.
Within minutes and without any external assistance, the spacecraft must slow down from 13,000 mph (21,000 kph) to zero, ensuring that the sky crane gently lowers the rover onto the wheeled surface – first, ready for the science mission was designed for him to do. You only have one shot at landing, during which the rotation of the Red Planet will cause the rover to spin out of sight Worldwhich prevents you from communicating directly with him — and learning about his success or failure — for a short but exciting stretch.
Sounds like one for the science fiction books, doesn’t it? But NASA scientists and engineers achieved such a bold feat 12 years ago this month, when nothing like it had ever been seen before, death-defying diving brought a new robotic resident to Mars – Curiosity — and will set the stage for future missions to the Red Planet.
‘Seven minutes of terror’
NASA’s first three Mars rovers – Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity — lander covered in giant inflated airbags that bounced more than 15 times on the surface of the Red Planet before slowing to a stop. However, for the car-sized Curiosity, the math showed that existing airbags would not work. And even if they did, there was no known material that could handle the rover’s 1 ton weight.
Related: Curiosity rover: The ultimate guide
So the only way to lower Curiosity to the surface was to use a rocket-powered sky crane, which had to be deployed by myself halfway through the mission’s descent through the Martian atmosphere. But the mission team wasn’t sure how to suspend a rover as large as Curiosity without causing it to swing dangerously. Drawing inspiration from similar sky cranes that launch cargo helicopters on Earth, the team eventually added similar technology to Curiosity’s jetpack, so it could sense and control its swing.
“All that new technology gives you a fighting chance to get to the right place on the surface,” Al Chen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, who played a critical role in entry, descent and landing (EDL) . ) stage for the Curiosity mission, said in a a recent NASA statement.
Curiosity’s complicated, nail-biting landing attempt left some of the mission’s personnel stranded emotional horrorwas named “seven minutes of terror.”
Although Curiosity guided and checked on its team of 400 scientists and engineers during its eight-month space journey, the $2.5 billion mission was enough on its own during the seven-minute EDL. The last order from Earth was sent two hours earlier. Additionally, due to the time lag between the two planets, scientists would not know whether Curiosity had landed safely or crashed until about 15 minutes after the event occurred.
“As far as the amount of control the crew has during entry, descent and landing, it’s equivalent to the control that anyone watching at home has,” JPL’s Adam Steltzner, who led the EDL phase for Curiosity, said reporters shortly before Curiosity’s landing attempt. “We’re all along for the ride.”
That trip was deemed flawless soon after the six-wheeled Curiosity touched down as planned in the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater, and its 10 science instruments worked perfectly. . Scientists and engineers sat in mission control at JPL jump up and down in jubilation when they received confirmation that Curiosity had landed safely.
‘The right kind of crazy’
When the new sky-crane EDL approach began to emerge in the early 2000s as the only way to land a heavy rover on Mars, it was so terrifying that few scientists or engineers were sold on the idea, especially because NASA was recently. experienced some high-profile failures of Red Planet.
The idea that the proposed mission would put the jetpack above the rover instead of below it, as was usually done, was a particular concern to many, recalled JPL Fellow Rob Manning, who worked on the initial concept. in 2000.
“People were confused about that,” he said in a NASA statement. “They assumed that drive would always be about you, like you see in old science fiction with a rocket touching a planet.”
But only landing debris would stir up debris during descent, which would make it difficult for Curiosity to come down; they could even dig a hole in the ground that the rover wouldn’t be able to drive out of. By placing thrusters above the rover, the mission team ensured that the wheels made direct contact with the surface, saving the extra weight of carrying a landing platform on an already heavy spacecraft.
“We talked about it endlessly,” Steltzner said Astrology Eric Betz. “If this didn’t work, there would be nowhere to hide, because every six-pack of joe would be on the street saying they knew it wouldn’t work.”
Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator at the time, told the mission team that the idea was crazy, “but it might be crazy enough to work. It might be the right kind of crazy.”
Related: NASA: Landing a giant Mars rover sky tree was a ‘crazy’ idea at least
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The new technology was so successful that NASA used the same sky crane method in 2021 to successfully land another rover, Persistencesomething that the scientific community — and the world at large — was talking about last month Martian rock discovery which may host signs of ancient life.
Scientists say the same technology could be replicated for larger spacecraft, not only on Mars but elsewhere the solar systemtoo. “In the future, if you wanted a payload delivery service, you could easily use that architecture to descend to the surface the moon or elsewhere, without ever touching the ground,” Manning said in a NASA statement.
Regarding Curiositythe rover continues to wander through the Martian landscape in search of it signs of ancient habitable conditionsmore than 12 years after his groundbreaking touchdown.
