Back in August of 2012 after a 253 day journey NASA's current rover, Curiosity, finally reached Mars's atmosphere. This was a very exciting and very stressful moment for the scientists at JPL. They had to come up with a different way of landing Curiosity on Mars than what they had done with the previous rovers due to difference in size and build. This means that they had no idea if their new method for landing would even work. This was not the only thing stressing out the JPL scientists.
It takes 14 minutes for the signal from Curiosity to reach Earth. The time it takes for Curiosity to reach the surface of Mars after it enters the atmosphere is 7 minutes. This means that by the time mission control found out that Curiosity had reached Mars's atmosphere, it had already been on the planet's surface for 7 minutes.
The people who had put so much time and effort into this project had to wait 7 minutes to find out if the landing was a success or a failure. Luckily the landing was completely successful. As the scientists at JPL celebrated their success, people around the world were watching and celebrating with them.
Here is an explanation of how the landing of Curiosity worked.
http://www.space.com/16503-photos-mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-landing-guide.html
No comments:
Post a Comment