By Rebecca Boyle Posted 04.08.2011 at 10:54 am 20 Comments

Lowered by Crane NASA/JPL

When parachutes and airbags won’t do the trick, you’ve got to land like a hovercraft, lowering precious cargo from a flying crane.

Check out this amazing new animation of NASA’s new Mars rover, the car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, on its harrowing journey to the red planet.

The rover, also called Curiosity, is too big to land bouncing along airbags a la its predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity. And Mars doesn’t have enough atmosphere for a parachute to slow it sufficiently. So engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with this hybrid approach, involving a rocket-slowed descent and a “sky crane.”

Curiosity will launch this fall and spend the next eight months traveling to Mars. It will enter the Martian atmosphere careening at 13,000 miles per hour, where its Apollo-esque heat shield will protect it from burning up. A parachute slows it down a bit before the rocket-powered descent stage. Then the sky crane lowers the rover, something that has never been done before .... just watch the super-realistic animation below.

Spirit and Opportunity were bouncing around like glorified beach balls when they landed, which was somewhat terrifying for any Mars enthusiast, let alone the rover teams at NASA and affiliated institutions. But a sky crane? It's hard to imagine the tension. Here's hoping it all goes as smoothly as the video.

[via IEEE]

20 Comments

Link to this comment
pioneer10
04/08/11 at 1:01 pm

i understand it will also be the 1st Martian Landing to be filmed as it is happening. If true, it will make an awesome movie (if successfully done, of course).

Link to this comment
mrusson
04/08/11 at 1:14 pm

Ya know....it amazes me what modern technology can do. I did however find myself waiting for the familiar shadow of a large and hostile robot smashing the thing to pieces.

Sorry......Transformers stuck that image in my head.

Link to this comment
DemonDuck
04/08/11 at 1:41 pm

I wish them all the best luck -- they are going to need it.

Link to this comment
zogspot
04/08/11 at 1:56 pm

I'm looking forward to the sequel where they set a dirigible down into Jupiter's clouds.

Link to this comment
Aldrons Last Hope
04/08/11 at 2:26 pm

When will they explore the pyramids of mars?

Link to this comment
rlb2
04/08/11 at 2:48 pm

Hope it works we have 2.5 billion dollars and 7 years of time on the line. There is another way to land the MSL, it is more cheaper and simpler it was first proposed in 2007, it's called the SkyClimber here.

www.shineinnovations.com/5512.html

Ron Bennett

Link to this comment
B.V.
04/08/11 at 2:55 pm

So, in the "super realistic" video.. the first thing that happens is you hear the rocket booster.

Yes. You HEAR sound, in "space".

Link to this comment
lnwolf41
04/08/11 at 2:58 pm

lnwolf41
Looks neat, just hope they are all using the same measuring system. Also what happens to the sky crane? I think they would want to use it as a stationary test bed for weather and communication system

Link to this comment
Siromar
04/08/11 at 4:03 pm

@Aldron, is there a single conspiracy theory that you don't blindly believe?

Link to this comment
atomicant
04/08/11 at 5:04 pm

Very nice video, except for sound in void.
When is this schedule to land on mars?

Link to this comment
calebscape808
04/08/11 at 5:14 pm

half of that money went into making this movie, lol, My question is where does the sky jet go? does it just crash after it runs out of fuel?

Link to this comment
eregorn8
04/08/11 at 8:03 pm

2 Things:

First... Murphy's law.

Second... did anyone else think that the entry vehicle looked a darn lot like a saucer UFO?

Link to this comment
spacethefinalbuffet
04/09/11 at 7:46 pm

I can't even imagine the amount of precision and and attention its going to take to make sure every sequence of the landing go off smoothly. I wonder it all of that is automated or if some of it I.E the crane landing is manual controlled from earth.

Link to this comment
Ivan Malagurski
04/10/11 at 1:59 pm

Cool video :)

Link to this comment
cholin3947
04/11/11 at 12:12 am

When that got the sky crane part "Ride of the Valkyries" popped into my head.

Link to this comment
lousephyr
04/11/11 at 1:43 am

awesome can't wait to see live coverage of mars landing.
hope they fitting sky-crane with xtra cameras & use to hover over places of interest or just do low orbit fly over;
actually maybe could fit sky-crane with xtra hook & winch & send to hoist stuck rover out of dirt trap;then with a bit of luck & some sunlite, could get the little fella roving again

Link to this comment
Aldrons Last Hope
04/11/11 at 1:08 pm

@siromar....it's not a conspiracy...there are pyramids on mars..especialy in the Cydonia region..where structures are 1:3:5:7 ratio apart...that usually does not happen naturally in nature.

Link to this comment
seanreynoldscs
04/18/11 at 1:19 pm

Where are the solar panels?

Link to this comment
pioneer10
04/21/11 at 1:13 am

@ seanreynoldscs-

Good question.This rover is nuclear-powered.

Link to this comment
allstardan
12/01/11 at 8:19 am

@Doc- Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?



June 2013: American Energy Independence

Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.


Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email

Contributing Writers:

Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email

circ-top-header.gif
circ-cover.gif