This evening promises to be an exciting and nerve-wracking one for space buffs. If you haven’t heard — and if not, then just where in the hell have you been?! — the rover Curiosity is due to land on Mars tonight at 1:31 AM Eastern time, or 11:31 PM here in Utah. Officially called the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity is in for a wild ride as it descends through the Martian atmosphere during one of the most complex landing procedures ever attempted. Curiosity is much larger and heavier than its predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, so the airbag system that cushioned those earlier rovers won’t work this time. Instead, this machine — which is about the size of a Mini Cooper automobile — will rely on the largest, toughest parachute ever deployed on another planet as well as a rocket-powered platform called the Skycrane, which is supposed to slow the whole package to a hover and then lower the rover to the surface on cables before zooming off to safely crash some distance away. And if all that isn’t anxiety-inducing enough, the landing will be entirely automated; radio signals take 14 minutes to travel between Earth and Mars, so there’s no way to interact with the probe in real time. Once the atmospheric entry begins, it will be entirely up to Curiosity’s onboard computers and the various mechanical components of the landing system to get her down in one piece. Those components have been tested back here on Earth, but they’ve never all functioned together as a unified whole. And tonight, there won’t be any second chances — everything has to work properly and at exactly the right time, or Curiosity goes splat. And remember that Mars has a nasty habit of eating space probes. We won’t even know if the landing was successful or not until long after it’s all over.
To help you picture how all this is supposed to work, here’s a helpful video narrated by actor, writer, blogger, and big-time geek — do I even have to mention he’s a Star Trek alum? — Wil Wheaton:
A journey of eight months and 350 million miles all coming down to a seven-minute window and something that’s never been done before… that’s drama. And drama like that is one the biggest reasons why I groove so much on space exploration. It’d be more exciting, of course, if there was a human being inside that aeroshell that even now is nearing the edge of the Martian atmosphere… but for now, I’ll live with our robotic proxies.
Godspeed, Curiosity!
