NEWEST ROVER TO LAND ON MARS 8/6/2012

Folks in NYC will be able to watch the landing LIVE on the big Toshiba screen in Times Square, NASA will be pumping the landing pix from 10 PM Aug 4 through 5 AM AUg 5. The "Sky crane" will be visible and the nail biting last 7 or so minutes of the touchdown will be sent out for the world.

I better get some sleep, Im such a suucker for this ****

This is what it's all about, this is stuff that gives you a glimmer of hope for the future.

Let's hope we don't stop here, we need to get out there and get boots on the ground.
This should be mankinds no 1 priority, call it an insurance policy.
You never know what's around the corner, we are but one event away from the stone age.

Go Curiosity....

Jul 31, 2012
NASA to athletic Mars rover: 'Stick the landing'
By ALICIA CHANG AP Science Writer

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- It's NASA's most ambitious and expensive Mars mission yet - and it begins with the red planet arrival late Sunday of the smartest interplanetary rover ever built. Also the most athletic.

Like an Olympic gymnast, it needs to "stick the landing."

It won't be easy. The complicated touchdown NASA designed for the Curiosity rover is so risky it's been described as "seven minutes of terror" - the time it takes to go from 13,000 mph to a complete stop.

Scientists and engineers will be waiting anxiously 154 million miles away as the spacecraft plunges through Mars' thin atmosphere, and in a new twist, attempts to slowly lower the rover to the bottom of a crater with cables.

By the time Earthlings receive first word of its fate, it will have planted six wheels on the ground - or tumbled itself into a metal graveyard.

If it succeeds, a video camera aboard the rover will have captured the most dramatic minutes for the first filming of a landing on another planet.

"It would be a major technological step forward if it works. It's a big gamble," said American University space policy analyst Howard McCurdy.

The future direction of Mars exploration is hanging on the outcome of this $2.5 billion science project to determine whether the environment was once suitable for microbes to live. Previous missions have found ice and signs that water once flowed. Curiosity will drill into rocks and soil in search of carbon and other elements.

Named for the Roman god of war, Mars is unforgiving with a hostile history of swallowing man-made spacecraft. It's tough to fly there and even tougher to touch down. More than half of humanity's attempts to land on Mars have ended in disaster. Only the U.S. has tasted success, but there's no guarantee this time.

"You've done everything that you can think of to ensure mission success, but Mars can still throw you a curve," said former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard who now teaches at Stanford University.

The Mini Cooper-sized spacecraft traveled 8 1/2 months to reach Mars. In a sort of celestial acrobatics, Curiosity will twist, turn and perform other maneuvers throughout the seven-minute thrill ride to the surface.

Why is NASA attempting such a daredevil move? It had little choice. Earlier spacecraft dropped to the Martian surface like a rock, swaddled in airbags, and bounced to a stop. Such was the case with the much smaller and lighter rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004.

At nearly 2,000 pounds, Curiosity is too heavy, so engineers had to come up with a new way to land. Friction from the thin atmosphere isn't enough to slow down the spacecraft without some help.

During its fiery plunge, Curiosity will brake by executing a series of S-curves - similar to how the space shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere. At 900 mph, it will unfurl its huge parachute. It then will shed the heat shield that took the brunt of the atmospheric friction and switch on its ground-sensing radar.

A mile from the surface, Curiosity will jettison the parachute and fire up its rocket-powered backpack to slow it down until it hovers. Cables will unspool from the backpack and slowly lower the rover - at less than 2 mph. The cables keep the rocket engines from getting too close and kicking up dust.

Once the rover senses touchdown, the cords will be cut.

Even if the intricate choreography goes according to script, a freak dust storm, sudden gust of wind or other problem can mar the landing.

"The degree of difficulty is above a 10," said Adam Steltzner, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission.

It takes 14 minutes for radio signals on Mars to travel to Earth. The lag means Curiosity will already be alive or dead by the time mission control finds out.

The rover's landing target is Gale Crater near the Martian equator. It's an ancient depression about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined with a 3-mile-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor.

Scientists know Gale was once waterlogged. Images from space reveal mineral signatures of clays and sulfate salts, which form in the presence of water, in older layers near the bottom of the mountain.

During its two-year exploration, the plutonium-powered Curiosity will climb the lower mountain flanks to probe the deposits. As sophisticated as the rover is, it cannot search for life. Instead, it carries a toolbox including a power drill, rock-zapping laser and mobile chemistry lab to sniff for organic compounds, considered the chemical building blocks of life. It also has cameras to take panoramic photos.

Humans have been mesmerized by the fourth rock from the sun since the 19th century when American astronomer Percival Lowell, peering through a telescope, theorized that intelligent beings carved what looked like irrigation canals. Scientists now think that if life existed on Mars - a big if - it would be in the form of microbes.

Curiosity will explore whether the crater ever had the right environment for microorganisms to take hold.

Even before landing, it got busy taking radiation readings in space during its 352-million-mile cruise - information that should help its handlers back home determine the radiation risk to astronauts who eventually travel to the red planet.

Curiosity's journey has been fraught with bumps. Since NASA had never built such a complicated machine before, work took longer than expected and costs soared. Curiosity was supposed to launch in 2009 and land in 2010, but the mission - already $1 billion over budget - was pushed back two years.

The delay created a cascade. Burdened with budget woes, NASA reneged on a partnership with the European Space Agency to land a drill-toting spacecraft in 2018. The space agency is in the midst of revamping its Mars exploration program that will hinge heavily on whether Curiosity succeeds.

The extra time allowed engineers to test and re-test the rover and all its parts, taking a spacecraft stunt double to the Mojave Desert as if it were Mars. For the past several months, engineers held dress rehearsals at the sprawling JPL campus 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in anticipation of landing day when they will carry on a decades-old tradition of passing out "good luck" peanuts.

Practice is over. It's show time. To Mars or bust.

----------------------------

Follow Alicia Chang's Mars coverage at: http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

Any idea when the next Trekkie convention is?, cant wait.

I always wanted to go to one just to gawk and take pictures at all these people who have no lives.

I tell you what, as soon as my transporter is fixed I'll beam you to the next one.

Trouble is you can never get a transporter repairman when you need one....

I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for starting the thread.

If you did, you might have got a picture of me

NASA to athletic Mars rover: 'Stick the landing'
NASA's rover bound for Mars_20120614135008_JPG
By: Alicia Chang 08/01/2012
By: Associated Press By: Associated Press

Curiosity, NASA's rover bound for Mars, is set to touch down in August, 2012. Scientists say they know with accuracy where it will land. The 2012 summer landing will be the start of a Martian road trip that will take months or possibly a …Regular Photo Size

PASADENA, Calif. - It's NASA's most ambitious and expensive Mars mission yet, and it begins with the red planet arrival late Sunday of the smartest interplanetary rover ever built. Also the most athletic.

Like an Olympic gymnast, it needs to "stick the landing."

It won't be easy. The complicated touchdown NASA designed for the Curiosity rover is so risky it's been described as "seven minutes of terror" — the time it takes to go from 13,000 mph to a complete stop.

Scientists and engineers will be waiting anxiously 154 million miles away as the spacecraft plunges through Mars' thin atmosphere, and in a new twist, attempts to slowly lower the rover to the bottom of a crater with cables.

By the time Earthlings receive first word of its fate, it will have planted six wheels on the ground — or tumbled itself into a metal graveyard.

If it succeeds, a video camera aboard the rover will have captured the most dramatic minutes for the first filming of a landing on another planet.

"It would be a major technological step forward if it works. It's a big gamble," said American University space policy analyst Howard McCurdy.

The future direction of Mars exploration is hanging on the outcome of this $2.5 billion science project to determine whether the environment was once suitable for microbes to live. Previous missions have found ice and signs that water once flowed. Curiosity will drill into rocks and soil in search of carbon and other elements.

Named for the Roman god of war, Mars is unforgiving with a hostile history of swallowing man-made spacecraft. It's tough to fly there and even tougher to touch down. More than half of humanity's attempts to land on Mars have ended in disaster. Only the U.S. has tasted success, but there's no guarantee this time.

"You've done everything that you can think of to ensure mission success, but Mars can still throw you a curve," said former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard who now teaches at Stanford University.

The Mini Cooper-sized spacecraft traveled 8 1/2 months to reach Mars. In a sort of celestial acrobatics, Curiosity will twist, turn and perform other maneuvers throughout the seven-minute thrill ride to the surface.

Why is NASA attempting such a daredevil move? It had little choice. Earlier spacecraft dropped to the Martian surface like a rock, swaddled in airbags, and bounced to a stop. Such was the case with the much smaller and lighter rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004.

At nearly 2,000 pounds, Curiosity is too heavy, so engineers had to come up with a new way to land. Friction from the thin atmosphere isn't enough to slow down the spacecraft without some help.

During its fiery plunge, Curiosity will brake by executing a series of S-curves — similar to how the space shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere. At 900 mph, it will unfurl its huge parachute. It then will shed the heat shield that took the brunt of the atmospheric friction and switch on its ground-sensing radar.

A mile from the surface, Curiosity will jettison the parachute and fire up its rocket-powered backpack to slow it down until it hovers. Cables will unspool from the backpack and slowly lower the rover — at less than 2 mph. The cables keep the rocket engines from getting too close and kicking up dust.

Once the rover senses touchdown, the cords will be cut.

Even if the intricate choreography goes according to script, a freak dust storm, sudden gust of wind or other problem can mar the landing.

"The degree of difficulty is above a 10," said Adam Steltzner, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission.

It takes 14 minutes for radio signals on Mars to travel to Earth. The lag means Curiosity will already be alive or dead by the time mission control finds out.

The rover's landing target is Gale Crater near the Martian equator. It's an ancient depression about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined with a 3-mile-high mountain rising from the center of the crater floor.

Scientists know Gale was once waterlogged. Images from space reveal mineral signatures of clays and sulfate salts, which form in the presence of water, in older layers near the bottom of the mountain.

During its two-year exploration, the plutonium-powered Curiosity will climb the lower mountain flanks to probe the deposits. As sophisticated as the rover is, it cannot search for life. Instead, it carries a toolbox including a power drill, rock-zapping laser and mobile chemistry lab to sniff for organic compounds, considered the chemical building blocks of life. It also has cameras to take panoramic photos.

Humans have been mesmerized by the fourth rock from the sun since the 19th century when American astronomer Percival Lowell, peering through a telescope, theorized that intelligent beings carved what looked like irrigation canals. Scientists now think that if life existed on Mars — a big if — it would be in the form of microbes.

Curiosity will explore whether the crater ever had the right environment for microorganisms

to take hold.

Even before landing, it got busy taking radiation readings in space during its 352-million-mile cruise — information that should help its handlers back home determine the radiation risk to astronauts who eventually travel to the red planet.

Curiosity's journey has been fraught with bumps. Since NASA had never built such a complicated machine before, work took longer than expected and costs soared. Curiosity was supposed to launch in 2009 and land in 2010, but the mission — already $1 billion over budget — was pushed back two years.

The delay created a cascade. Burdened with budget woes, NASA reneged on a partnership with the European Space Agency to land a drill-toting spacecraft in 2018. The space agency is in the midst of revamping its Mars exploration program that will hinge heavily on whether Curiosity succeeds.

The extra time allowed engineers to test and re-test the rover and all its parts, taking a spacecraft stunt double to the Mojave Desert as if it were Mars. For the past several months, engineers held dress rehearsals at the sprawling JPL campus 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in anticipation of landing day when they will carry on a decades-old tradition of passing out "good luck" peanuts.

Practice is over. It's show time. To Mars or bust.

Read more: http://www.kypost.com/dpps/news/science_tech/nasa-to-athletic-mars-rover-stick-the-landing_7730325#ixzz22PP04a5K

Video landing to expect:

http://www.wwlp.com/dpps/entertainment/must_see_video/nasa-to-athletic-mars-rover-stick-the-landing-nt12-jgr_4254386

Ah I remember the mass spec.
Still use it, I got like a 3 inch text book for mass spec analysis, and another similar size txt book with NMR charts and data values.
I loved that part of chemistry, it was like putting a puzzle together.

Mass spec in mars, now that is a cool application.

Crazy Smart: When A Rocker Designs A Mars Lander
by Joe Palca - NPR Morning Edition
August 3, 2012

It's called the seven minutes of terror. In just seven minutes, NASA's latest mission to Mars, a new six-wheeled rover called Curiosity, must go from 13,000 mph as it enters the Martian atmosphere to a dead stop on the surface.

During those seven minutes, the rover is on its own. Earth is too far away for radio signals to make it to Mars in time for ground controllers to do anything. Everything in the system known as EDL — for Entry, Descent and Landing — must work perfectly, or Curiosity will not so much land as go splat.

The team that invented the EDL system has spent nearly 10 years together, designing, building, testing, tweaking, retesting and retweaking. Now all they can do is sit and wait to see if their design works.
GALLERY: A 'Crazy' Landing Scheme

Because the new Mars rover is five times heavier than its predecessors, NASA had to come up with a totally new landing system. Here's a step-by-step look at how it is supposed to work.

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft will approach Mars at 13,000 mph. The entry, descent and landing process has to guide it to a soft landing.

So you won't be surprised to learn that this is a rather nerve-wracking time for Adam Steltzner, the EDL team leader.

"The product of nine years of my life will be put to the test Sunday evening," Steltzner told me when I visited him at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in late July. "And so that is personally anxiety provoking."

I don't know about you, but I tend to think of engineers as serious buttoned-down types. Steltzner is anything but.

He has pierced ears, wears snakeskin boots and sports an Elvis haircut. He's quick to laugh and curious about everything. Steltzner's laid-back style makes team meetings a jolly affair. I stopped by one of those meetings during my visit. The jollity was still there, but it was clear that the prelanding tension was rising.

"We are 19 days from landing," he told his team. "Is that freaky or what? Freaks me out to no end. Every time I say that, my back gets tight."

Steltzner had some advice for his colleagues.

"If any of you are sharing any of the emotional experience I am, keeping ourselves, like, chill, and focused and not freaking, is a good thing to do," he said.

Steltzner's path to becoming team leader for this new Mars lander was hardly direct. Unlike many successful engineers, he struggled at school. An elementary school principal told him he wasn't very bright. His high school experience seemed to confirm that.

"I passed my geometry class the second time with an F plus, because the teacher just didn't want to see me again," he says.

His father told him he'd never amount to anything but a ditch digger, a remark he still carries with him years later.

Maybe that's because school wasn't a priority, particularly with the distractions of the flower-power era in the Bay Area.

"I was sort of studying sex, drugs and rock and roll in high school," says Steltzner. It wasn't just the long hair. "I liked to wear this strange Air Force jump suit. And my first car was a '69 Cadillac hearse. I put a bed in the back."

Talk about a night to remember. "Well, I was younger. It was a different time," says Steltzner.

After high school, the plan was to be a rock star. While he waited for stardom, Steltzner played bass guitar in Bay Area bands, watching his friends graduate and go off to college.

Finding Purpose In The Stars

But then something happened. As Steltzner tells it, he was on his way home from playing music at a club one night when he became fascinated with the stars, especially the constellation of Orion.

"The fact that it was in a different place in the sky at night when I returned home from playing a gig, than it had been when I'd driven out to the gig," he said. "And I had only some vague recollection from my high school time that something was moving with respect to something else, but that was it."

As crazy as it sounds, that experience was enough to motivate him to take a physics course at the local community college. That did it. He was hooked.

The fog of sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifted. He had to know all about the laws that govern the universe. The rocker wound up with a doctoral degree in engineering physics.

"I was totally turned on by this idea of understanding my world," Steltzner said. "Engineering gave me an opportunity to be gainfully employed [and] really understanding my world with these laws and equations that governed it."

After years of being somewhat aimless, he was glad to be involved in something more practical, a career that produced something tangible at the end of the day.

"With music, how your band is thought of has to do with how you dress, and who you open for, or who opens for you," he said. "That ephemeral, not really able to get a solid understanding of good and bad was tough for me, and the thing that engineering and physics gave me was this idea that there was a right answer, and I could get to it."

I asked Steltzner whether he would have been just as happy getting to the right answer while designing waste-treatment facilities. Did it have to be something as glamorous as designing a landing system for a Mars probe? He thought for a minute before he answered.

"I grew up in an era where space was revered," he said. "So I think there's a kind of natural ego drive to be involved in something so sexy. And I came from rock 'n' roll, and there's a lot of sexy in rock 'n' roll. So in terms of, really, just what I would need to measure myself, it could have been waste treatment, but I also needed a little bit of sexy."

to take hold.

Even before landing, it got busy taking radiation readings in space during its 352-million-mile cruise — information that should help its handlers back home determine the radiation risk to astronauts who eventually travel to the red planet.

Curiosity's journey has been fraught with bumps. Since NASA had never built such a complicated machine before, work took longer than expected and costs soared. Curiosity was supposed to launch in 2009 and land in 2010, but the mission — already $1 billion over budget — was pushed back two years.

The delay created a cascade. Burdened with budget woes, NASA reneged on a partnership with the European Space Agency to land a drill-toting spacecraft in 2018. The space agency is in the midst of revamping its Mars exploration program that will hinge heavily on whether Curiosity succeeds.

The extra time allowed engineers to test and re-test the rover and all its parts, taking a spacecraft stunt double to the Mojave Desert as if it were Mars. For the past several months, engineers held dress rehearsals at the sprawling JPL campus 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in anticipation of landing day when they will carry on a decades-old tradition of passing out "good luck" peanuts.

Practice is over. It's show time. To Mars or bust.

Read more: http://www.kypost.com/dpps/news/science_tech/nasa-to-athletic-mars-rover-stick-the-landing_7730325#ixzz22VN1hgwd


GALLERY: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/03/157597270/crazy-smart-when-a-rocker-designs-a-mars-lander

VIDEO: 7 Minutes OF Terror

Watch Steltzner and others at NASA explain the hair-raising sequence of events that must go perfectly right in order for Curiosity to land safely on Mars on Sunday night.

GALLERY: Landing Ideas That Didn't Fly

Steltzner and his colleagues considered several options before hitting upon the 'sky crane' concept.

Airbags: They don't work because Curiosity is much heavier than past rovers.
NASA
Legs. Too unstable; rover will tip over.
NASA
Pallet: A wider base and more legs still isn't enough to overcome stability issue. Too wimpy.
NASA
This is it! Lowering the rover on a cable makes it easier for the landing system to know when the rover's actually on solid ground.
NASA

1 of 4
View slideshow i

'Rover On A Rope': Crazy. Sexy. Cool.

He's got the sexy, but Steltzner has added a dash of crazy to the mix, especially when it comes to the design he and his team invented for the landing system.

A totally new Mars landing system was needed because other systems, including the airbags used on earlier rovers, were considered too wimpy to land Curiosity safely. The craft is the biggest rover yet, weighing in at more than 2,000 pounds — about five times as heavy as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers sent to Mars in 2003. Then there's the pesky Martian atmosphere. It's too thin to make parachutes alone effective, and too thick to make rocket brakes enough.

So Steltzner's team came up with a kind of rocket-powered platform that hovers over the Martian surface and lowers Curiosity down on a cable — a system that was once derisively referred to as "rover on a rope."

Crazy, but to an engineer, crazy smart.

"It ends up being we've come to really love this system," he said.

And as Steltzner will be the first to tell you, he didn't invent it all by himself.

"This is way bigger than any one person, way bigger than any five, 10, 20, 100. At one point, there were almost 2,000 people working on this project," he said. "So to bring all those people together takes some teaming. And also, I like people. So bringing that sense of togetherness together is important for me."

We'll know on Sunday night California time whether all that teamwork invented a landing system able to withstand the hazards Mars can throw at it.

NASA
This artist's concept shows thrusters firing to steer the spacecraft as it enters Martian atmosphere. The Curiosity rover has traveled for more than seven months inside the spacecraft.
NASA
Friction with the Martian atmosphere helps slow the spacecraft as it descends. It also heats the heat shield. Friction alone accounts for almost all of the deceleration needed for landing.
NASA
A parachute more than 50 feet across pops out, adding a bit more braking as the craft sinks into Mars's lower atmosphere.
NASA
With the heat shield jettisoned, the rover can be seen tucked into the backshell of the spacecraft.
NASA
Rocket thrusters provide the last little bit of deceleration. At the same time, radar clicks on, giving the craft information about its speed and distance from the surface.
NASA
Here's where things get crazy. A new "sky crane" lowers the rover on three cables while hovering above the surface.
NASA
Once the sky crane senses that it's no longer supporting the rover, it releases the cables and flies off to crash-land a safe distance away. Curiosity is now free to explore its new home.
NASA

Was listening to Science Friday on NPR this PM . It fetured the "Scariest 7 minutes" wrt the Rovers lnding , the sky hook, and the use of the stable retro rocket package.

I hope she can go off without any hitches.

I think I just decided to go watch in Times Square.

Joe(it will be fun.)Nation

wear your Spock Ears.

When you think we can expect the first actual images Farmerman ?

How far i Mars from us now? 93000000 miles takes (c) 8 min for the signal (Approx). Im gonna be watchin the tube Sun (It supposed to start at about 22:15 PDT so thatd be like 1:15 EDT (Mon Morning).

JOHNY FIVE is on da red planet tomorrow. BE DERE!!

Some news sites are saying it will land on Monday.