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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Chit Chat _ MSL - landing day

Posted by: Seryddwr May 1 2012, 07:27 PM

On a light note, has anyone made any plans for 5 August? It is, after all, less than one hundred days away now, and I'm sure Mars is getting very big in the window for ol' Curiosity.

I hope they'll get a webcast going. I'll be frantically clicking on 'refresh' on here come what may!...

[MOD NOTE: Topic moved to Chit Chat for obvious reasons.]

Posted by: Phil Stooke May 1 2012, 09:17 PM

Could be tricky... I'll be travelling, coming back to Victoria BC from a stay in Tofino that day. Where will I be at the time? Will I have internet? The pain of uncertainty will be offset by the pleasure of being on Vancouver Island. What tho' the spicy breezes...

Phil


Posted by: Decepticon May 1 2012, 10:21 PM

QUOTE
I hope they'll get a webcast going.


I see why not. Its so exciting to watch as it happens.

I did barbecue during phoenix. And I plan to do it during MSL web-cast.

Posted by: stewjack May 1 2012, 10:46 PM

According to Wikipedia planned landing is the evening of August 5 PDT, which is morning of August 6 UT.

<HUMOR>
Assuming this turns out to be correct. Then in my CDT time zone: the way I figure it, if I stay awake till 3AM at the latest I should get all important available information. Then I can sleep about six hours and be back on line no later than 9:00 AM! I will leave my computer on so I won't need to boot up. Will stock up on snacks and microwave meals. cool.gif

Since I am retired nothing should get in the way, although the fact that it will be August in Mississippi, and I am about 1500 feet / (500 m) from the Gulf of Mexico - certainly could change my plans! huh.gif

Seriously, I think I will wait to make detailed plans. I sometimes over-plan laugh.gif
</HUMOR>

I wonder how much time Curiosity will spend near the landing site checking system status, and I guess functional testing of the instruments. No driving off of a landing stage anyway.

Posted by: volcanopele May 2 2012, 03:20 AM

My current plan is to be at work, to see if I can be of any help to the HiRISE folks.

Posted by: mhoward May 2 2012, 03:28 AM

http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/events/planetfest-2012/ sounds good.

Posted by: elakdawalla May 2 2012, 03:30 AM

The Society will be having a Planetfest in Pasadena, for those of you eager to celebrate (or mourn) with 2000 other rabid fans. There is discussion of trying to create satellite Planetfests; I'm not sure how likely that is to come to pass. I am 95% certain that our event will be webcast. How much value will be added to NASA TV I'm not sure (since we will be relying on NASA TV for the feed from mission control), but our event will be webcast.

As for me, I plan to be jumping up and down at JPL.

Posted by: nprev May 2 2012, 05:06 AM

Hopefully the Pasadena Planetfest, provided that my bloody job doesn't get in the way as it is wont to do...

Posted by: jamescanvin May 2 2012, 07:28 AM

The landing is very early on Monday morning in the UK so I'll be going to bed early and then getting up and watching from home from around an hour before entry.

I'm then taking the whole week off work to follow and learn how to handle MSL data smile.gif

James

Posted by: vikingmars May 2 2012, 09:21 AM

On our side in France, we, at Societe Astronomique de France (which represents also TPS in France) and at the Mars Society, are planning to do a live event in Paris like we did before for the landings of MPF (1997), MPL (1999), Spririt and Opportunity (2004) and Phoenix (2008), with a NASA-TV internet feed.
The only problem is that the MSL lands early Monday morning (August 6) for us, around 5:00 am ECT and that our National museums are closed in Paris at this time. It's difficult for us to have them open at night for the Public, especially for safety measures (we need a minimum of security and at least 1 fireman), and we are working hard on this. I'll keep you informed mars.gif

Posted by: Phil Stooke May 2 2012, 11:44 AM

Do we know what the image release policy will be?

Phil


Posted by: elakdawalla May 2 2012, 03:05 PM

As far as I know, all images from all imaging instruments will be released quickly, same policy as with MER and Cassini. However, I don't know whether the metadata available will be more MER-like or more Cassini-like. Let's hope for the former smile.gif

Posted by: RoverDriver May 2 2012, 03:10 PM

I know what i will be doing:

CODE
void Agugust5()
{
  if (landed(MSL) == TRUE)
  {
     work(myA**, off);
  } else {
     write(resume);
  }
}


Paolo

Posted by: elakdawalla May 2 2012, 04:55 PM

Oh, that's dark, Paolo! (Welcome back, stranger!)

Posted by: mhoward May 2 2012, 05:07 PM

Dark but very funny.

Posted by: MahFL May 2 2012, 08:58 PM

I took the Monday off so I can stop up very late, until we get the pictures back from post landing.

Posted by: Astro0 May 2 2012, 10:31 PM

I've got the best gig of all!
It's going to be the afternoon of Monday August 6 here and landing is set for 3:18 SCT and 3:32 ERT.

I'll be hosting an event at Canberra DSN with a few hundred people watching events on NASA TV and looking out the window at the antennas providing the communication link to MSL/MRO/ODY smile.gif

Any locals interested in coming along are welcome. wink.gif

Posted by: Astro0 May 3 2012, 05:21 AM

This is a real treat from Matt Heverly, Mobility Systems Engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory rover.
He https://twitter.com/#!/Matt_Heverly/status/197542472342188032/photo/1 this very cool image...



A great shot from the JPL Mars Yard and something I hope we see a lot more of when Curiosity arrives at Gale Crater smile.gif

Posted by: stevesliva May 3 2012, 05:42 AM

Might be unnerving if we saw bootprints.

Posted by: djellison May 3 2012, 05:51 AM

Note how soft the edge of the shadows are... a symptom of being closer to the sun, thus it's angular size being much larger.

Posted by: JohnVV May 3 2012, 06:03 AM

---edit---

Posted by: jamescanvin May 3 2012, 07:22 AM

QUOTE (JohnVV @ May 3 2012, 07:03 AM) *
and our much thicker atmosphere


No, the softness of the shadow edge is purely due to geometry; the angular size of the sun and the distance of the shadow from the object.

As MSL is so much bigger than MER this image is on a different scale to what we are used to, so that will also contribute to the odd look of the shadows.

Posted by: djellison May 3 2012, 07:26 AM

QUOTE (JohnVV @ May 2 2012, 11:03 PM) *
and our much thicker atmosphere
the air will play a much bigger role


As James points out - the softness is down to geometry alone.


Posted by: brellis May 3 2012, 11:14 PM

I remain - uh, Curious - about the factor of atmosphere in calculating the trajectory of the landing of MSL. When was the likely atmospheric effect established, and from what data? Because, parachute? On Mars?? Just ask weathermen on earth, that atmosphere can change a lot!

Posted by: Drkskywxlt May 3 2012, 11:35 PM

QUOTE (brellis @ May 3 2012, 06:14 PM) *
I remain - uh, Curious - about the factor of atmosphere in calculating the trajectory of the landing of MSL. When was the likely atmospheric effect established, and from what data? Because, parachute? On Mars?? Just ask weathermen on earth, that atmosphere can change a lot!


MSL will actively control its descent, watch the EDL video on Youtube to see that. That's what allows it to have such a small landing ellipse relative to past missions. But, there still is atmospheric data that is incorporated into the plan. That data comes primarily from general circulation modeling, augmented with mesoscale modeling. These models have been "tuned" based on available atmospheric data (e.g., Viking landers, TES, MCS, etc...). The models provide a range of expected density, pressure and wind profiles during descent and that constrains the engineering problem. The atmospheric density on Mars is far more variable than on Earth, but it is of course much much less in absolute terms.

Posted by: MahFL May 4 2012, 12:38 PM

I was under the impression the only actively guided part was the initial ballistic entry using the Nitrogen jets on the back shell. After that it's not guided, as one of the team said later they hope to add more active guidance and keep shrinking the landing circle to 7 km or so on future missions. The initial guidance though of course helps make the landing circle a bit smaller this time.







Posted by: Drkskywxlt May 4 2012, 03:02 PM

QUOTE (MahFL @ May 4 2012, 08:38 AM) *
I was under the impression the only actively guided part was the initial ballistic entry using the Nitrogen jets on the back shell. After that it's not guided, as one of the team said later they hope to add more active guidance and keep shrinking the landing circle to 7 km or so on future missions. The initial guidance though of course helps make the landing circle a bit smaller this time.


Yeah, that's what I was referring to.

Posted by: djellison May 4 2012, 04:26 PM

QUOTE (MahFL @ May 4 2012, 05:38 AM) *
I was under the impression the only actively guided part was the initial ballistic entry using the Nitrogen jets on the back shell.


Here's the best single document describing EDL
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/41629

Best section is this

QUOTE
The MSL entry guidance algorithm is divided into four phases. Entry interface marks the start of guided entry:
guidance is initialized in the pre-bank phase and the controller commands bank attitude hold until the sensed acceleration exceeds 0.5 Earth g’s.
Once the sensed acceleration exceeds the specified trigger limit, the range control phase begins. During the range control phase, the bank angle is commanded to minimize predicted downrange error at parachute deployment.
Throughout this phase, cross-range error is maintained with a manageable deadband limit by executing bank reversals as necessary.
Peak heating and peak deceleration occur during this guidance phase.
Once the navigated relative velocity drops below about 900 m/s, guidance transitions to a heading alignment phase to minimize residual cross-range error before parachute deployment.
Just prior to parachute deployment, the vehicle angle of attack is adjusted to 0° by ejecting balance masses while the azimuth is aligned for better radar performance later during parachute descent. Parachute deployment is triggered at a navigated velocity of over 450 m/s.


A small point - it's not nitrogen - it's hydrazine thrusters. Infact the 8 thrusters on the back of the backshell to control attitude / roll during guided entry are the same model of thruster used in clusters for Phoenix terminal descent ( Aerojet MR-107U )

This document is more specifically about the guided entry phase - including some nice charts of sim-runs
http://www.planetaryprobe.eu/IPPW7/proceedings/IPPW7%20Proceedings/Papers/Session5/p453.pdf

Posted by: cbcnasa May 4 2012, 06:09 PM

QUOTE (elakdawalla @ May 1 2012, 11:30 PM) *
The Society will be having a Planetfest in Pasadena, for those of you eager to celebrate (or mourn) with 2000 other rabid fans. There is discussion of trying to create satellite Planetfests; I'm not sure how likely that is to come to pass. I am 95% certain that our event will be webcast. How much value will be added to NASA TV I'm not sure (since we will be relying on NASA TV for the feed from mission control), but our event will be webcast.

As for me, I plan to be jumping up and down at JPL.


A Planetfest on the east coast sounds like a good idea any talk with locations for it?

Posted by: elakdawalla May 5 2012, 12:05 AM

I am doing my level best to remain entirely ignorant of Planetfest planning, so that I can avoid any responsibility for it! So if the amount of information on our website doesn't satisfy you (it shouldn't, it's pretty thin right now) then send email to tps@planetary.org with your questions. The more you hassle them about certain things now, the more likely those things are to come to pass smile.gif

Posted by: vikingmars May 5 2012, 01:55 PM

QUOTE (elakdawalla @ May 5 2012, 02:05 AM) *
I am doing my level best to remain entirely ignorant of Planetfest planning, so that I can avoid any responsibility for it! So if the amount of information on our website doesn't satisfy you (it shouldn't, it's pretty thin right now) then send email to tps@planetary.org with your questions. The more you hassle them about certain things now, the more likely those things are to come to pass smile.gif

Emily, you are doing great and you have the full support (if needed) from your French members ! Warmest regards, VM wheel.gif wheel.gif wheel.gif

Posted by: Lightning Jun 3 2012, 09:43 PM

QUOTE (vikingmars @ May 2 2012, 11:21 AM) *
The only problem is that the MSL lands early Monday morning (August 6) for us, around 5:00 am ECT and that our National museums are closed in Paris at this time. It's difficult for us to have them open at night for the Public, especially for safety measures (we need a minimum of security and at least 1 fireman), and we are working hard on this. I'll keep you informed mars.gif
According to that page, the landing time is just after 10pm Pacific Time. This corresponds to 6 am GMT, or 8h in the morning of the 6th august for french people. This is not that early, and some museums open at this time. smile.gif

http://msl-scicorner.jpl.nasa.gov/landingsiteselection/

Posted by: djellison Jun 4 2012, 12:39 AM

It'll be about 10:35pm Pacific.

Posted by: vikingmars Jun 5 2012, 10:13 AM

Finally we found our auditorium for our MSL/Curiosity landing event on Monday August 6 early morning (06:30 am Paris time).
It will be located at Verneuil, the city which shares with Les Mureaux the Ariane V launcher plant, just 30 km west from the center of Paris.
It's fully equipped with all you can dream about to make big events (like the Von Karman Auditorium at JPL...).
This will be a free event and open to the public.
It will be organized in cooperation with the French section of the Mars Society + Societe Astronomique de France (the corresponding member of TPS in France)
wheel.gif wheel.gif wheel.gif


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