We take a look at the Curiosity Rover and it’s landing on Mars on Sunday August 5th, even an interview with Mars Society President Robert Zubrin and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Curiosity Rover

_{Credit: NASAtelevision | Credit: JPLnews}

• Last time on SciByte
• Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 – Launching This Week : NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover [November 22, 2011]
• Spacecraft Updates | SciByte 23 – NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover : Updates and more [November 30, 2011]
• Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates | SciByte 33 – The future of space [February 14, 2012]
• Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 – Curiosity Rover [May 15, 2012]
• Mars Descent Imager / MARDI
• Over 1500 hundred more low and high resolution Mars Descent Imager, MARDI, images (1600 x 1200 pixels) will be sent back over the next few weeks to make a fullframe animation
• The team was able to determine Curiosity’s location to “within” about 1 meter says Malin, by matching the MARDI and MRO HiRISE images as well as the Hazcam images
• The MARDI landing animation will provide the most complete and dramatic imagery of a planetary landing in history
• Landing Prep
• About 34 hours before the Mars rover Curiosity’s landing NASA was looking at the the latest weather forecast from the surface of mars, dry and cold, with a slight chance of dust
• The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a dust storm south of Gale Crater, the rover’s targeted landing site, in the week before the landing
• The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and Curiosity rover are designed to handle dust and winds, so a light storm wouldn’t have been a huge problem.
• A light dust storm could have caused added turbulence, interfering with the spacecraft’s guided entry and landing, but it could still land safely although with a little less accuracy
• Curiosity was aiming for a target landing ellipse that is 20 x 7 km. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden likened the landing to "launching out of Kennedy Space Center, sending something here to the Rose Bowl, and having it land on the 50-yard line on a Frisbee”
• Landing
• The landing process included 500,000 lines of computer code that had to go off without a glitch; 76 onboard explosive devices popped off in sequence to the microsecond; deploying a massive parachute and being lowered to the planet’s surface from a rocket-powered skycrane
• At 1:37 a.m. EDT, word came down: “Touchdown Confirmed! We’re safe on Mars.”
• Shortly thereafter the first images starting coming down
• As the first image processed they saw a wheel on the surface allowing the team to officially anounce they were “wheels down on Mars"
• NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter snapshot
• HiRISE or High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
• It consists of a 0.5 m (19.7 in) aperture reflecting telescope, the largest so far of any deep space mission, which allows it to take pictures of Mars with resolutions of 0.3 m/pixel (about 1 foot)
• HiRISE took over 120 pictures of Gale Crater in preparation for MSL’s mission
• The Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen said before the landing that they expected only a 60% chance of success of imaging Curiosity’s landing
• MRO was 340 km, line of sight distance, away from Curiosity when the image of the Mars Curiosity lander decending was taken with an image scale of 15in [39 cm] per pixel
• The parachute appears fully inflated and performing perfectly. Details in the parachute, such as the band gap at the edges and the central hole, are clearly seen.
• The cords connecting the parachute to the back shell cannot be seen, although they were seen in the image of NASA’s Phoenix lander descending, perhaps due to the difference in lighting angles.
• The bright spot on the back shell containing Curiosity might be a specular reflection off of a shiny area. Curiosity was released from the back shell sometime after this image was acquired.
• It was also able to image Curiosity, parachute, sky-crane, and the heatshield, ~24 hours after the landing with image quality of roughly 15in / 39cm per pixel
• Specs
• Length : 9 feet / 2.8 meters
• Total Weight : 1,984 pounds / 900kg
• Weight of Scientific Instruments = 176 pounds / 80kg
• Launch vehicle Atlas V 541
• Mission duration 668 Martian sols (686 Earth days)
• Landing August 5, 2012 (planned)
• Power Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG), which were also used by the successful Mars landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976 [Plutonium–238]
• Designed to produce 125 watts of electrical power at the start of the mission, after 14 years, the electrical power output is down to 100 watts
• “Rover Compute Element” (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles
• The onboard computer has 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory
• Not going to use the ‘airbag’ landing that the other rovers have used
• Parachute slows the rover’s descent toward Mars [Diameter of 51 feet /16 meters]
• Rocket-powered backpack will lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing
• Instruments
• MSL Entry, Descent and Landing Instrumentation (MEDLI)
• MEDLI isn’t one of Curiosity’s 10 instruments
• It will measure the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky
• Telling engineers how well the heat shield, and their models of the spacecraft’s trajectory, performed
• Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
• Small camera located on Curiosity’s main body, ther recorded video of the rover’s descent to the Martian surface
• It clicked on a mile or two above the ground (when Curiosity jettisons its heat shield)
• The instrument then took video at five frames per second until the rover touched down
• Mast Camera (MastCam)
• Captures high-resolution color pictures and video of the Martian landscape
• Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
• Will function much like a high-powered magnifying glass
• It will take color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns — smaller than the width of a human hair
• sits on the end of Curiosity’s five-jointed, 7-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm
• Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
• Mkes up about half of the rover’s science payload
• The rover’s robotic arm will drop samples into via an inlet on the rover’s exterior
• It has three separate instruments — a mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer
• It can search for carbon-containing compounds, the building blocks of life as we know it
• It can also look for other elements associated with life on Earth (hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, ect)
• Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
• Will identify different types of minerals on Mars and quantify their abundance
• Help scientists better understand past environmental conditions on the Red Planet
• Inlet on Curiosity’s exterior to accept samples delivered by the rover’s robotic arm
• Shines a fine X-ray beam through the sample, identifying minerals’ crystalline structures based on how the X-rays diffract
• Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam)
• Will fire a laser at Martian rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits
• Help the mission team determine from afar whether or not they want to send the rover over to investigate a particular landform
• sits on Curiosity’s mast, along with a camera and a small telescope
• Three spectrographs sit in the rover’s body, connected to the mast components by fiber optics
• spectrographs will analyze the light emitted by excited electrons in the vaporized rock samples
• Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS)
• sits at the end of Curiosity’s arm, will measure the abundances of various chemical elements in Martian rocks and dirt
• will shoot out X-rays and helium nuclei
• the barrage will knock electrons in the sample out of their orbits, causing a release of X-rays
• Scientists will then be able to identify elements based on the characteristic energies of these emitted X-rays
• Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
• near the back of Curiosity’s main body, it will help the rover search for ice and water-logged minerals beneath the Martian surface
• The instrument will fire beams of neutrons at the ground, then note the speed at which these particles travel when they bounce back.
• Hydrogen atoms tend to slow neutrons down, so an abundance of sluggish neutrons would signal underground water or ice
• Should be able to map out water concentrations as low as 0.1 percent at depths up to 6 feet (2 m)
• Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD)
• Will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays
• Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
• Located partway up Curiosity’s mast, it is a Martian weather station
• It will measure atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation
• It will integrate all the weather data it collects into daily and seasonal reports
• YouTube
• YouTube NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain | NASAtelevision
• YouTube “Touchdown Confirmed!”
• YouTube “It’s the wheel!” … “We are wheels down on Mars”
• YouTbue First Thumnail Images coming in
• YouTube Curiosity’s Descent from MARDI| JPLNews
• YouTube Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Flying Over Mars | NASASolarSystem
• YouTube Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation | JPLnews
• YouTube The Grand Entrance (William Shatner) | NASASolarSystem
• YouTube The Science of Curiosity: Seeking Signs of Past Mars Habitability | JPLnews
• YouTube Building Curiosity: Landing System Drop Test | JPLnews
• YouTube Curiosity Update: Curiosity’s Stunt Double Takes a Spin | JPLnews
• YouTube Mars Curiosity Rover – First Test Drive | JPLnews
• YouTube Mars in a Minute: Is Mars Really Red? | JPLnews
• Images
• 1st Photos on surface of Mars by Curiosity Rover | NASA.gov
• Curiosity Spotted on Parachute by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter| NASA.gov
• Large Parachute for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory |marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov
• Curiosity, parachute, sky-crane, and the heatshield, ~24 hours after the landing {~ 15in / 39cm per pixel}
• As Curiosity drives over the martian terrain, the groves in each wheel will that will spell out “J-P-L.” in morse code
• Mock up’s size comparison | NASA.gov
• Image Gallery
• Mars Science Laboratory | nasa.com
• Mars Rover Curiosity’s Landing Day at JPL (Photos) | Space.com
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• GetCurious.com
• Mars Forecast: Dry Skies and Calm Winds for Mars Rover Curiosity’s Landing | PopSci.com
• Mars Rover Curiosity: Mars Science Lab Coverage | Space.com
• The Ten Instruments That Mars Rover Curiosity Will Use to Investigate the Red Planet | popsci.com
• Quick and Curious Facts About the Mars Science Laboratory Mission | UniverseToday.com
• Why NASA’s Big Mars Rover Has a Laser to Zap Rocks | Space.com
• What If the Curiosity Rover Finds Life on Mars? | Space.com
• Incredible View of Curiosity Rover’s Landing Site | UniverseToday.com
• Curiosity Has Landed | ScienceMag.org
• Curiosity lands safely on Mars | ScienceNews.com
• Mars Rover Landing a Success—What Happens Now? | NationalGeographic
• NASA Has Plenty to Celebrate After Mars Rover Curiosity’s Perfect Landing | PopSci.com
• “Nailed It!” HiRISE Captures Incredible Image of Curiosity’s Descent to Mars | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• August 8, 1846 : 166 years ago : The Smithsonian Institution : An Act of Congress signed by President James K. Polk established the Smithsonian Institution as a trust to administer the generous bequest of James Smithson, an amount over $500,000. In 1826, James Smithson, a British scientist, drew up his last will and testament, naming his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson stipulated that, should the nephew die without heirs (as he would in 1835), the estate should go “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The motives behind Smithson’s bequest remain mysterious; he had never traveled to the U.S. and seems to have had no correspondence with anyone there.

Looking up this week

• The southern hemisphere should, Keep an eye out for …

• Midweek | ~ 1h after sunset | Look for a bright triangle, top point is Saturn, the star Spica to its lower left and Mars to its lower right

• Fri, Aug 10 | Morning | Jupiter is to the lower left of the moon

• Sat, Aug 11 | Just after midnight | peak of the Perseid meteor shower [1/min is average] catch it before the moon rises for better viewing although the moon won’t drown it all out

• Sat, Aug 11 | 1–2am | Moon rises with Jupiter just above it. Indonesia will be able to see the moon occult Jupiter

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

• Sky&Telescope

• SpaceWeather.com

• StarDate.org

• Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast | UniverseToday.com

• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au

• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org

• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz

• AstronomyNow

• HeavensAbove