MSL EDL Hardware, Its state & fate Options

[bigdipper]

Looking at the HiRISE imagery of the descent stage, does the distribution of the debris field represent the disintegration of the stage from impact only, or is it possible that some or all of the 140+/- kilos of Hydrozine exploded and expanded the debris field? [I understand the darker albedo material is from below the surface]

Does the thin martian atmosphere contain enough oxygen to support combustion/explosion? [guessing No, but my chem is insufficient]

Were the hydrazine cells sufficiently designed to survive impact intact?

I couldn't find anything on the net or in the specs, any ideas?

[john_s]

I seem to remember there was some concern that Opportunity's camera optics got contaminated during its visit to the heatshield, so they might be more careful with Curiosity.

John

[MahFL]

I seem to remember there was some concern that Opportunity's camera optics got contaminated during its visit to the heatshield, so they might be more careful with Curiosity.

John

Remember MSL's heat shield had a suit of senors built in to measure temperatures, g forces and how much material ablated away, so they will know how well it performed anyway.

[gallen_53]

Remember MSL's heat shield had a suit of senors built in to measure temperatures, g forces and how much material ablated away, so they will know how well it performed anyway.

The instrument package embedded in MSL's heat shield is called "MEDLI". Refer to the following if you want to learn more about it:

http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/Instruments/MEDLI/

For the Thermal Protection System (TPS) community, this is a Big Deal. Mars Pathfinder had an instrumented heat shield and the results were extremely useful in designing future heat shields. The folks behind MEDLI had to fight hard to get MSL's heat shield instrumented. MSL's Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) was the first in the history of Mars exploration where a heat shield's boundary layer went turbulent. This made designing the heat shield very tricky. The originally selected heat shield material SLA-561V was found to be inadequate due to the turbulent heating and had to be replaced with Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA). PICA was first used for the Stardust reentry vehicle (fastest reentry in the history of Space Exploration). The Stardust aeroshell was NOT instrumented. This lack of instrumentation caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the TPS community and was a prime argument for instrumenting MSL.

[kwan3217]

...PICA was first used for the Stardust reentry vehicle (fastest reentry in the history of Space Exploration).

Stardust was the fastest reentry at Earth, and I guess only entries at Earth can be called 're'entries, but the Galileo probe was far faster (~60km/s entry speed).

/pedantic