MSL EDL Hardware, Its state & fate Options

[mcaplinger]

...this would please NASA which tries always its best to show that it integrated well the Metric System for its Mars program since the loss of the the "Mars Climate Orbiter" ("MCO") mission in 1999.

I grow tired of MCO being used as the poster child for the evils of imperial units. The unit conversion problem was merely the root cause in a long chain of mistakes and missteps, technical and organizational, which could and should have been caught and fixed.

[djellison]

I think the point Stu was making in post 133 is that this isn't the time or place for such a discussion. Period.

And with that the Imperial\Metric discussion is closed here. Any further comments around Imperial vs Metric measures in this thread will be deleted. Admin.

[elakdawalla]

(added an anim gif showing the various parts of the impingement)

Looks like a butterfly Thanks for the gif!

[RoverDriver]

In the new MRO image, that has color over Curiosity itself - you can not only see the plume impingement dust removal - but also a bias to the ESE as a result of the descent stage turning to flyaway WNW

(added an anim gif showing the various parts of the impingement)

You can also see that the mast is up, just in case the NAVCAMs and MASTCAMs we received were not a good indication of that event ;-)

Paolo

[EdTruthan]

Hmmm... wow... could MARDI have inadvertantly "filmed" the timing and behavior of the descent stage impact?!

I confess I probably watch too much "Forensic Files" and it's certainly a trivial matter at this point compared to to the vast scientific ocean about to be embarked upon but...

Has ayone else noticed this? In the post-landing MARDI footage of the ground under Curiosity there's some interesting phenomena to be observed in the 2 minutes after landing. After skycrane flys away, and the dust settles enough for the narrow sun beam to be clearly evidenced on the ground, the sun beam suddenly goes distincly dark again and then slowly increases back to normal. The event happens around 43 seconds after touchdown and extends from about frames 785 to 900, or just over 30 seconds of time. As it turns out the rear hazcam photo of the impact plume, taken at 15:18:38, corresponds with the MARDI time stamp of frame 771, just 3.5 seconds before the "darkening" event. Could this indicate that the plume imaged by the hazcam at frame 771 continued to grow high enough in the next few seconds to visibly darken the area around Curiosity? If this is indeed the case, perhaps the MARDI images offer some evidence of the plume's relative longevity and even perhaps it's height based on the sun position at the time.

That said, an EARLIER "darkening" event similar to this one ALSO occurs between frames 714 to 747 (8.25 second duration) and slowly lightens until the frame 785 darkening. In addition, this event is PRECEEDED by a noticible "spike" in brightness centered around frame 699 (which is 22 seconds after touchdown). Which brings up the question of when the Descent Stage actually impacted vs. whether the event captured by the rear hazcam could have been a SECOND event, i.e. one of the "bouncing debris imacts" evidenced in the HiRISE close-ups that occurred up to 88 meters away. The sky in the rear hazcam photo is quite hazed over at the time and the crater rim for some distance around the plume is barely discernable. Certainly some airborne dust is still lingering from the landing at Curiosity's location but to my eye the forground still looks relatively clear compared to the air around the more distant vicinity of the plume. Could that be the airborne residue of the FIRST impact (i.e. at 22 seconds)?

Also, does anyone know if telemetry data from the descent stage was actually recorded after separation from Curiosity? Because I remember the time of descent stage impact being estimated at a bit over 20 seconds in press releases before landing and then at one of the post-landing press conferences hearing they'd updated it to over 40 some seconds after touchdown and thinking "that's seems way to long to fly a mere 630 meters..." I assumed the 40+ second assumption was based on the hazcam plume photo timestamp, naturally an irrefutable piece of evidence right? But could the MARDI frames indicate evidence for two imact "events", and the hazcam imaged the second one? The two "darkening" events are separated by roughly 15 seconds or so. Might that be about right perhaps for one or several of the hydrazine fuel tanks to bounce high and down range, and ultimately rupture just before the hazcam photo corresponding to MARDI's frame 771?

Two alternate theories of the phenomena of course are that differingly dense clouds of dust were still settling at or blowing about the landing site, OR that MARDI was automatically seeking to adjust aperature settings, the likelyhood of which could be answered by the imaging team of course.

In any case, here's a (thumbnail sized) video that starts at frame 612 (touchdown) and extends till all the "events" are well done (at frame 1100). Best viewed in a dark room of course. It's rendered in real time at 4fps. White levels have been batch-bumped very slightly in ALL the frames to bring out some sun beam detail, otherwise there's been no alteration of the images. Individual frame numbers have been added at the lower left for reference.

It'll be interesting to look at this segment when a FULL RESOLUTION version is available.

http://www.edtruthan.com/mars/MARDI-Frames-612-1100.mp4

[climber]

A following remark to your post Ed, I guess that we'll be able to see the shadow of Curiosity as well as the Skycrane on final approach a bit like what we used to see on Moon landings like Apollo 11 but much shorter. Would be nice though

[djellison]

Also, does anyone know if telemetry data from the descent stage was actually recorded after separation from Curiosity?

No - none.

[markril]

Hi, I'm a first time poster here, but sometimes lurker. I had prepared a few slides of how the dust cloud recorded in the initial rear hazcam images might be interpreted as the sky crane crash - this was around the same time the MSL team announced they had come to the same conclusion. My posting priviledges weren't enabled until today and I debated posting these but thought they might still be of some use.

In the image taken right after touchdown you can see the sky crane dust cloud but either the kicked up dust or the low (downsampled) resolution makes it difficult to see the background peaks. Lining up one of the subsequent images where conditions were clearer and at full resolution you can make out a couple of recognizable peaks:



Correlating the peaks with the dust cloud in Google Mars, the center of the dust cloud has an azimuth of 283 degrees while the sky crane is located at about azimuth 289 as indicated by the "crime scene" images taken by HiRISE:



Given the way the parachute landed to one side of the back shell, it seemed plausible a slight breeze was responsible and this is consistent with the dust cloud appearing to the south of where the sky crane impacted:



On the above map, the center of the dust cloud measures 75 meters from the sky crane impact site and at the time this seemed quite plausible to me.

Anyway, great site and I hope to be able to contribute in a more timely manner in the future.

Mark

[meraero]

A bunch more full-frame MARDI images are down. I was following the HS and you can see the "splat" in this image (small dark smudge bottom center):

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/ms...0358E1_DXXX.jpg

The nearby thumbnails all appear to show this area. Once all the fulls are down, we should be able to nail the impact time. We will have great data to measure the HS drag from these images.

[Explorer1]

Oh wow, that will just whet our appetite for the complete full-res that much more.

[ChrisC]

Being discussed in the landing thread. Astro0 made an animated GIF.

[climber]

I think I red all the discussions since landing, so, forgive me if this has been posted and didn't see it.
On the same HiRise picture of MSL under parachutte, the heatshield is also visible: http://a35.idata.over-blog.com/3/69/76/43/...re---Hirise.jpg

[Paolo]

it's the heatshield, not the backshell. the backshell is still attached to Curiosity

[climber]

Thanks Paolo, now corrected.

[RoverDriver]

... the backshell is still attached to Curiosity

I hope not!

(the other) Paolo