The landing will place the Mars rover closer to its final destination for science operations, but it will also place it precariously close to the foot of a mountain slope, which raises the possibility of a mission failure. A successful landing depends on a newly designed rocket-powered sky crane, which is expected to gently lower the car-sized rover onto the surface of Mars.
“We’ve done everything we can to ensure the greatest probability of success,” NASA manager Dave Lavery told reporters during a conference call. “The reality is, this is a very risky business. Historically, only about 40 percent of the missions to Mars have been successful,” he said." capitolcolumn
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Is this really a good idea? Budgets for planetary exploration are severely constrained. Why take additional risks on the landing in order to avoid driving longer to the objective? pl
Read more: http://www.capitolcolumn.com/news/mars-rover-will-attempt-risky-landing-in-august/#ixzz1xcMxN8ya
Nice little animation...
http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/13/nasa-animation-depicts-curiositys-soft-landing-on-mars-courtes/
Posted by: Paul Deavereaux | 14 June 2012 at 08:45 AM
Having worked with NASA as a contractor, several possibilities come to mind: perhaps prior budgetary reductions resulted in an undesired limited range on the rover; perhaps the science goal requires the mission to have more time in an viable area of interest (this is also a funding justification issue), perhaps other funding limitations require operations to take place in a shorter time span. In some way, I suspect that some budgetary driver is probably inducing a higher risk than you and I would take given mission structures of the past. I agree, this sounds like a recipe for disaster. How many multi-billion projects go in with 40% catistrophic fail potential? Follow the money probably applies here.
Posted by: Brien J Miller | 14 June 2012 at 10:37 AM
Pat,
I know a few people on the Entry, Descent, and Landing team for MSL. I have to admit that in spite of being a Vertical Takeoff and Landing rockets sort of guy myself, the Skycrane concept still has me uneasy. That said, the reason they went with Skycrane was that existing approaches couldn't land a payload that big. The MER rovers were as big as you could go with the parachutes and airbags approach. Personally, I think taking the MERs and adding some capabilities with them (to reuse as much of the design and software as possible) would've been a better approach, but I'm not a Mars scientist.
~Jon
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Posted by: Berta Hargrove | 25 August 2012 at 07:09 AM