MSL EDL Hardware, Its state & fate Options

[Explorer1]

There's a tiny spot just to the right of the shield (in the full resolution linked above); is that just an artifact or real?

[fredk]

looks to me though like a lens flare from the sun shining through the optics

Hmmm, that may be it. If you register the L and R frames carefully, you can see that the two glints are at very slightly different positions on the two frames. That wouldn't happen if they were from real debris. The other thing is that because of foreshortening, if the glints were debris, the higher one would be much farther away than the nearer one.

I don't recall seeing glints like that on MER hazcams. Perhaps they're due to the lens covers.

[mcaplinger]

There's a tiny spot just to the right of the shield (in the full resolution linked above); is that just an artifact or real?

I'm pretty sure that's a piece of crud on the sensor; I see one in the ground flats at about col 614 row 428.

[MarsInMyLifetime]

I have a hard time getting my head around the interpretation of the fallen parachute as indicating wind direction. We know that this hardware hit at 200mph or so, and the inertia of the 100 lb chute would have had been barely influenced by sideways winds in the milliseconds it took to stream in after the lines went slack. We are used to seeing billowing material at 1 atmosphere on Earth, but on Mars parachute material would behave much more like the Apollo 15 feather drop. What seems more reasonable to me is that descent stage release induced random swinging of the backshell, and that the chute's direction is more due to its orientation at landfall than to winds. Every good party needs a loyal objector--I offer this thought to encourage not running too quickly with wind as a sole cause agent for all supposed observations.
--
Don

[Kaputnik]

200mph was the speed of the whole spacecraft under parachute. The backshell alone being much lighter, it would have slowed considerably from this.
Your point may well stand, though.

[djellison]

I have a hard time getting my head around the interpretation of the fallen parachute as indicating wind direction. We know that this hardware hit at 200mph or so,

No - you're not accounting for the stack reducing in weight from 2200kg or so, down to 300 or so after the powered descent vehicle dropped out of the back shell.

It would have landed much much slower than 200mph.

[MarsInMyLifetime]

I could not find a predicted impact velocity, but let's bring it down to 120-180fps--traveling roughly the length of the parachute per second. At backshell impact, the material is still going at that terminal velocity, so how fast can it decelerate in rarefied air, and can the windsock effect happen in that duration? I just suspect that the angle at touchdown matters more than wind in which direction a parachute lays out.

[Hungry4info]

Marginally related, but now that we've firmly identified a spacecraft crash site on Mars, it's worth watching it for a while and seeing how long it takes to blend in with the terrain. It might inform searches for MPL.

[eoincampbell]

We'll also see any shifting of the chute material in the upcoming HiRISE passes...

[fredk]

Interesting thoughts, MarsInMyLifetime. If the backshell wasn't doing any significant swinging, then (assuming a constant wind direction all the way down) the 'chute should already be downwind of the backshell at backshell impact. So the 'chute should end up downwind. But if there was substantial swinging then I don't know...

[gpurcell]

Given the extremely thin atmosphere on Mars I doubt that wind pressure could overcome (or even seriously diminish) whatever force vector the parachute centroid had following the impact of the backshell.

[ugordan]

It might inform searches for MPL.

I think Phoenix already demonstrated after one Martian polar winter that trying to spot MPL is a lost cause.

[Explorer1]

They found the ballasts! See the press conf...

[JTN]

They found the ballasts! See the press conf...

I didn't actually watch the conference, but here I think are the relevant images (so far uncaptioned): flicker GIFs close-up annotated and clean, and a wide view showing all hardware traces (I assume).

[Guest_Oersted_*]

...And well... The biggest visible opening in the dune field, going to the mountain, DOES take Curiosity exactly in the direction of the mass ballasts... Even though they are twelve kms away that might improve the chance of Curiosity paying them a visit.