Curiosity EDL - Seven Minutes of Terror

[ToSeek]

Think it's appropriate to have a separate thread for this. Relevant links:

NASA TV - http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/nasatv/

Google hangout with Fraser, Phil, Pamela, and others - https://plus.google.com/110701307803...ts/PimzHSSheg5
Same thing but more direct - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrJT...layer_embedded

Real-time simulation: http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml

Feel free to add appropriate links.

[ToSeek]

90 minutes to touchdown.

[potoole]

Where can we find up to date, perhaps minute by minute, details of the Mars landing? Apparently we are just minutes away from that excursion. (11:20, CDL )

[R.A.F.]

Has everyone got their peanuts? (old JPL tradition)

I'm munchin' mine.

[Solfe]

I have Reese's Pieces. Nobody told me about the tradition before I made my shopping list.

[Nowhere Man]

From Steve Collins, spaceship pilot, at 11:54 ET (my e-mail feed was delayed by a server outage):

We're about 13.5 hr from landing. I'm sitting in the "play call" meeting to
decide if we need to do a last-minute rush-rush Trajectory Correction (aka
TCM-6). This is a pre-planned meeting in case we had some kind of bad Navigation
surprise at the last minute, but the trajectory estimates look very very good.
The estimated errors are coming down as expected and we are only a few hundred
meters (in the targeting "B-plane") from the trajectory state we put on the
spacecraft a few days ago. We are sure at this point that we don't need to do
TCM-6, but we might still make an update to the onboard trajectory knowledge.

Attitude control has been looking fine. I just compared the spin axis from the
onboard sensors to one estimated by the NAV team from the doppler and they agree
to within about 0.02 deg. It's important we get this right because along with
the trajectory uplinked from the ground, we use the onboard attitude estimate to
initialize the IMU which controls our guided entry.

Getting close now. Cross your fingers.

Steve Collins

Fred

[ToSeek]

Where can we find up to date, perhaps minute by minute, details of the Mars landing? Apparently we are just minutes away from that excursion. (11:20, CDL )

http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml

will tell you exactly how far away Curiosity is from Mars and how long to entry and touchdown, along with some cool visuals.

[Nowhere Man]

From Steve Collins, spaceship pilot, at 23:43 ET:

Whew. We're in our seats and ready to put this puppy on the ground. Had a
couple hours of mega-stress running down a minor parameter "surprise". Turned
out to be no-action-needed, but ACS was in the hot seat for a while. The
navigation looks great. We're about 200 m from the navigation state loaded
onboard. JPL is stuffed to the gills with VIP guests. and there are cameras
everywhere. The visualization stuff is looking really great. If you can catch
the landing online or via Nasa TV, do it.

Steve Collins MSL Cruise ACS

Fred

[R.A.F.]

I have Reese's Pieces. Nobody told me about the tradition before I made my shopping list.

I just found out about it (and happened to have some on hand) from the Google+ cast....there are more scientists, there, than you can shake a stick at...


....about an hour to go.

[Solfe]

http://eyes.nasa.gov/launch2.html?document=$SERVERURL/content/documents/msl/edl.xml

will tell you exactly how far away Curiosity is from Mars and how long to entry and touchdown, along with some cool visuals.

Beautiful link. Thank you.

[ToSeek]

Beautiful link. Thank you.

That's courtesy of our own djellison.

[ToSeek]

Missed the 60-minute mark. We're down to 55 now.

[sts60]

I'm on vacation, sitting in the auditorium at Univ. Alaska - Anchorage science building. They're showing the feed on big screens. Great turnout, at least a hundred people with an hour to go. (Hey PetersCreek, I'm just up the road from you!)

[R.A.F.]

I'm watching NASA select on Xbox live...and the image is VERY fine....HD and all that.

[Nowhere Man]

In this gigapan, you can see all of the mission team members. Steve Collins is to the left, in the second row, just behind the "Activity Lead" sign.

Fred

[ToSeek]

I'm on vacation, sitting in the auditorium at Univ. Alaska - Anchorage science building. They're showing the feed on big screens. Great turnout, at least a hundred people with an hour to go. (Hey PetersCreek, I'm just up the road from you!)

I thought about going in to Goddard but decided to just prop up in bed. I have a 9 am meeting, after all.

[ToSeek]

45 minutes to touchdown.

[ToSeek]

30 minutes to touchdown. Under 13 minutes to cruise stage separation.

[Jens]

They were just passing peanuts around. Is there any rule that people who are allergic to peanuts can't be on those teams?

[R.A.F.]

When the landing is confirmed, It's going to be pandemonium at JPL.

Stage sep coming up.

[ToSeek]

5 minutes to cruise stage separation.

[R.A.F.]

Anticipation.........

[ToSeek]

My NASA TV stream is about 20 seconds behind, I think.

[R.A.F.]

Reminds me of waiting for the Neptune pictures back in 1987...can't believe that was 25 years ago...


edit to add...and that is because it wasn't...that was in 1989.


DOH!



7 minutes to entry...

[kamaz]

Cruise stage separated.

RCS warmup.

[ToSeek]

15 minutes to touchdown. Cruise stage separation confirmed.

[kamaz]

Cruise balance mass separated; vehicle at entry attitude.

[Jens]

And actually, since there is a 14-minute time lag, it's already landed in a way, hasn't it.

[ToSeek]

Phil just noted that on Mars Curiosity is either on the ground or not. 14 minute light-time delay.

[ToSeek]

5 minutes to entry.