Mars Rover: How a Self-Portrait Captured the Power of Curiosity
500,000 lines of computer code so it could operate on its own and steer itself to the rocky surface of the planet Now the team only needed to send the simple command Do_EDL and wait Because of the delay the spacecraft had already completed its descent when the JPL team got the signal saying the descent had started CURIOSITY’S EYES Spacecraft photographs have told Mars story to Earthlings since 1965 The Mariner spacecraft were originally designed without cameras but mission scientists thought they would be beneficial and they were added Today onboard cameras are prized Seventeen cameras are aboard Curiosity NASA selected Michael Malin to design Curiosity’s main cameras The former professor and JPL scientist has worked on spacecraft cameras since 1986 His cameras had taken literally millions of pictures from spacecraft launched to the Red Planet said geochemist Roger Wiens He seemed to know every square foot of Mars like his own backyard 7 As soon as Curiosity’s heat shield fell away one of Malin’s cameras started clicking The Mars Descent Imager snapped nearly 300 photographs making the first movie of a Mars landing The Mastcam designed by Malin is two cameras mounted 7 feet 2 m above the surface on a rotatable mast They take crisp colorful photographs that can be woven into dramatic 360-degree views Each camera sees differently one can focus narrowly while the other sees a wider perspective Mission engineer Adam Steltzner said that when images from both eyes are combined humans can relate to the distances just like as if they were there 8 With the help of the images scientists can guide the rover toward interesting rocks to investigate Curiosity has a 7-foot 2-m robotic arm that holds another Malin-designed camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager MAHLI It does the same job as the magnifying lens that geologists on Earth wear around their necks MAHLI can photograph objects smaller than a human hair Close-up photographs showing the colors and structure of rocks can help scientists learn how they formed Michael Malin is the subject of a test photo at JPL by a Mastcam of his design
Chen’s updates were beamed around the world Curiosity’s capsule hit Mars atmosphere tearing along at 13,000 mph 20,920 kph In just over a minute friction spiked its temperature to 2,372 degrees Fahrenheit 1,300 degrees Celsius But though it glowed brightly relieved engineers learned that its heat shield had not burned away Chen announced that the capsule’s parachute had deployed to slow the plummeting craft Applause swept through the room around him The parachute weighed only about 100 pounds 45 kilograms but it could withstand 65,000 pounds 29,500 kg of force And there was more good news The capsule’s speed had fallen dramatically to 200 mph 320 kph Having served its purpose the heat shield needed to be discarded Keeping it would have made a safe landing impossible Mission engineer Steve Lee said they had to get that heat shield off It’s like a big lens cap blocking our view of the ground to the radar 9 Chen announced to applause We are in powered flight 10 Team members knew that meant the heat shield had dropped away and rockets had fired to fly Curiosity away from the parachute Radar directed the craft toward its target near the base of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater The landing was going according to plan yet an enormous challenge was just ahead NASA had used parachutes and rockets on Mars landings before but it had never used a sky crane maneuver To land the massive rover Curiosity would first hover just 65 feet 20 meters above the ground Cables would then lower the rover When its wheels rested on Mars soil explosives would fire and cut the cables freeing the rover from the sky crane which would soar off to crash far away If it went well said Steltzner we’d be lauded as brainiac brilliant guys and if it went poorly we would be obvious idiots 11
It took Curiosity 7 minutes 11 seconds to land on Mars from its entry point The times the events occurred are in red The times that Earth received confirmation are in blue At 10 31 p m Pacific Daylight Time on August 5 2012 Chen made the announcement that everyone had been waiting for Touchdown confirmed We’re safe on Mars 12 Team members leapt up cheering hugged one another laughed and cried In an auditorium at JPL members of the many teams who had worked on Curiosity celebrated along with audiences around the world Curiosity was designed and built to live on Mars and she is home now 13 said mission scientist R Aileen Yingst A message from Curiosity soon arrived It was an image All we could see at first was that the light part of the image was up and the dark part was down recalled Wiens It was enough to confirm that Curiosity had landed right-side up 14 A second image followed Rover wheels on Martian soil For Steltzner the images were ample reward for years of work a new image from a new place in our universe is what we do it for and what really fills us 15 Curiosity’s cameras would go on to take many photos including self-portraits of the
rover sitting on Martian soil panoramic images of the Mars landscape and a photo of a patch of gravel in vivid color and detail Curiosity’s first self-portrait came on day three a 360-degree image taken by a navigation camera Many full-length selfies would follow The images along with the data collected by Curiosity’s instruments would help answer questions people have been curious about for centuries Has there ever been life on Mars Could there be life one day But for the moment Earth celebrated the feat of landing its largest robot to date on Mars surface NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden announced that this achievement would lead to even greater ones Today right now he said the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars 16 Curiosity’s self-portraits on Mars have delighted rover fans with its humanlike features This is exactly what you or I would do if we were traveling if we were going someplace new and excitin we would take our phone and shoot pictures said Yingst This is essentially what the rover is doing for us here 17
