MSL Curiosity Lands Safely in Gale Crater, Landing and Commissioning Activity Period 1A, sols 0-8 Options

[djellison]

Yeah - at full length it's 7.5 meters from the top of the deck to the skycrane....which puts it about 8.5m above the surface.

BUT - there's probably 3 seconds of 0.75m/sec constant velocity descent of the descent stage after touchdown - so that 7.5 bridle will have wound back in by about 2.25m - so surface would have been 6.25m.

D

[MichaelJWP]

Doug, does the MSL EDL playback in Eyes on the Solar System now match up with the actual data returned?

BTW amazing job on all the visualisations - my 8 year old son was fascinated by the EDL animation but somewhat disturbed by the waste of money represented by the landing stage crashing! Had to explain the whole endeavour costs quite a lot of money and that was just part of it:)

[djellison]

Doug, does the MSL EDL playback in Eyes on the Solar System now match up with the actual data returned?

Nope - not yet - still waiting on the reconstructed trajectory. Another couple of weeks I'm afraid.

[atomoid]

Apologies if i missed a discussion on this, but I hadnt heard much speculation on why there is so much debris on deck, its surprising considering the skycrane plumes extended outward from the rover somehow all this sand and pebbles got kicked up somehow apparently in opposition to prevailing forces. I dont think there were any other potential forces except the wheels hitting the ground, so im puzzled by what exactly hoisted this much stuff up on deck... any facts or thoughts?

..unless its not martian, but terran debris? perhaps pyro device remnants (i woudlnt expect heatshield debris to make it inside the shell as that would probably be serious!)

[john_s]

If you aim a garden hose at the ground at a steep but oblique angle, you'll get some water splashing back in the direction the jet comes from, even if most of it goes in the opposite direction- I expect something similar happened in this case.

John

[imipak]

Apologies if i missed a discussion on this, but I hadnt heard much speculation on why there is so much debris on deck...

Take a look at the touchdown sequences in the movies posted on the MARDI thread...

[climber]

I've got a LOT to learn on Photoshop (and I know it;-)) but anyway, I took a context picture from Astro0 from the Gale crater thread and I tried to put Eduardo's Oppy route on it to show, a mere few hours before Curiosity's first drive, the looooong route she'll have to rove to catch up with his/her fellow rover.

[vikingmars]

So, it tooks me a little time, but finally get the result I want.

Lots of congrats Ant 103 for this SUPERB work of yours !
And it was so nice and good to have you "on board" during the live MSL landing event close to Paris...
And thanks to the weblinks to your Normandy pictures with their impressive chalk cliffs. Indeed one of the most interesting geological places : as you may know, the bottom of the English Channel with its tear-shaped islands is considered by some English and French geologists as a close replica to typical outflow channels on Mars thanks to the two so-called "North Sea Megafloods" that occured 425,000 and 225,000 years ago respectively... Look at those cliffs, imagine a salmon-pink sky ...and you're on Mars !
Cheers !

[pac56]

I've got a LOT to learn on Photoshop (and I know it;-)) but anyway, I took a context picture from Astro0 from the Gale crater thread and I tried to put Eduardo's Oppy route on it to show, a mere few hours before Curiosity's first drive, the looooong route she'll have to rove to catch up with his/her fellow rover.

It looks like they want to rove in 2 years what Oppy did in approx. 8 years.

[moozoo]

If you aim a garden hose at the ground at a steep but oblique angle, you'll get some water splashing back in the direction the jet comes from, even if most of it goes in the opposite direction- I expect something similar happened in this case.
John

Does this also mean that the rover had hydrazine exhaust blown all over it?
Does that contaminate any of the instruments?
Maybe with dust that has reacted with the hydrazine exhaust , or is that not possible.

[MahFL]

The project scientist has said that the jets would be no problem as the decay of hydrazine was well understood. The jets also were angled outwards, but some blow back did occur, more than they expected. The two main labs are sealed inside the rover.

[jmknapp]

The jets also were angled outwards, but some blow back did occur, more than they expected.

How about as the descent stage angled away--would that tend to blow stuff back toward the rover?

Phil Stooke did an amazing projection showing an aerial view of the landing site--here's a crop:



Seem like you can see the imprint of each of the four plumes, and the pair closest to the rover are further apart, as if the descent stage is tilted? I think that's the direction that it flew off in (left).

[ugordan]

Seem like you can see the imprint of each of the four plumes, and the pair closest to the rover are further apart, as if the descent stage is tilted? I think that's the direction that it flew off in (left).

My guess is that's a reprojection artifact.

[djellison]

Given how well behaved everything was during edl - I'd agree. Reprojection.

[jmknapp]

Given how well behaved everything was during edl - I'd agree. Reprojection.

Isn't the descent stage supposed to angle away from the landing site after the bridle cut?

The projection is striking in that the rover tracks are correctly shown as parallel, and the "pirouette" wheel marks circular.