So excited… I’ll be at JPL when they land this Curiosity rover on Mars. This baby is about 5x larger than the Spirit or Opportunity rovers and has 10x the scientific instrument payload. to pull this off will require more than the bounce used last time on Mars, and for the first lunar landing. JPL is using a novel soft-landing approach using a SkyCrane. The lander will hover using rockets about 25 feet above the Martian surface, then lower the rover on cables to the surface, cut the cables, then fly away leaving the rover on the surface.
If you have not seen what this looks like, the video animation is just incredible.
Erik and I had dinner with “Mars Czar” Scott Hubbard at the B612 excursion to Meteor Crater. Having led the robotic exploration of Mars, he was full of fascinating stories, like how the last rovers lasted so much longer than ever anticipated (swirling dust devils scrubbed the solar panels clean, over an over again). Or how the Viking lander saw chemical signals that indicated a desiccated planet devoid of life, and possible pre-launch contamination from fluorinated compounds, but this may a byproduct of the sampling technique, and Curiosity may finally discover water and perhaps life in Mars. They want to set expectations low. =)
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