Imagine a quarterback making a pass, accurately, from California to London! That’s Brian Portock’s job on the Mars Mission Curiosity rover landing.
Joel Krajewski “To get the distance scales approximately similar, the quarterback here is throwing a pass 30 metres, 40 metres away. But Brian’s target of Mars is hundreds of millions of kilometres away. It’s similar to as if this quarterback here were throwing a football to a receiver in, say, London, and needing to hit his mark.”
The time for the real touchdown looms. Testing Continues and, unavoidably,the tension rises. The Mars landing o Curiosity is a nervous time for all.
Joel Krajewski takes the team through many rehearsals in true-to-life simulatorrs, throwing in a few gremlins to keep the team sharp.
Landing a billion dollar rover, on the surface of Mars is an incredibly complex challenge for NASA. Joel Krajewski, chief engineer, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains.
NASA’s engineers have never shied away from tricky landings. During the Apollo missions of the 1970s, they weren’t satisfied just to put a man on the moon. But landing a car on Mars is an entirely different proposition.
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