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NASA braces for "7 minutes of terror" Mars plunge

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PASADENA, Calif.Hurtling ever closer to Mars, NASA's most high-tech interplanetary rover prepared for the riskiest part of its journey: diving through the Martian atmosphere and pulling off a new landing routine.

Nerves will be on overdrive Sunday night as the Curiosity rover attempts a dizzying "seven minutes of terror" routine that ends with it being lowered by cables inside a massive crater if all goes according to script.

Hours before the 10:31 p.m. PDT planned touchdown, Curiosity was in excellent health and speeding toward the top of Mars' thin atmosphere.

"We're having a very clean ride right now. It's a little spooky," said Allen Chen, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission.

Not ones to tempt fate, flight controllers planned to break out the "good luck" peanuts before Curiosity takes the plunge as part of a long-running tradition.

One scientist who can relate to the building anxiety is Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, who headed NASA's last successful rover mission in 2004.

This time around, Squyres has a supporting role and planned to view the landing with other researchers in the "science bullpen."

"Landing on Mars is always a nerve-racking thing. You're never going to get relaxed about something like landing a spacecraft on Mars," said Squyres.

Sunday's touchdown attempt was especially intense because NASA is testing a brand new landing technique. There's also extra pressure because budget woes have forced NASA to rejigger its Mars exploration roadmap.

"There's nothing in the pipeline" beyond the planned launch of a Mars orbiter in 2013, said former NASA Mars czar Scott Hubbard, who teaches at Stanford University.

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NASA braces for "7 minutes of terror" Mars plunge

NASA Spacecraft Speeding Toward Epic Mars Landing

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Next stop, Mars.

NASAs Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover are preparing to enter the Martian atmosphere, following an 8 month race to the red planet at 8,000 miles per hour. By the time it arrives at Mars, gravity will have accelerated the spacecraft to a whopping 13,200 mph.

NASA must then slow it down.

Following seven minutes of terror beginning at 1:31a.m. EST early Monday morning a reference to the nerve-racking landing NASA has planned, which involves Curiositys screaming race to the surface and a dangle off a rocket-powered sky crane the rover will be set to begin its mission: the study of our planetary neighbor, and the quest for signs of life there.

Curiosity is the culmination of a decade of exploration. We can now begin to move toward finding the fingerprints of life on Mars, said Scott Hubbard, a Stanford University consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

The space agency said Curiosity remains in good health, and was steering so smoothly between planets that a planned minor course correction Saturday wasnt necessary. And with the gravitational pull of Mars already tugging on the spaceship, arrival is being closely monitored by the watchful eyes of mission control.

After flying more than eight months and 350 million miles since launch, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is now right on target to fly through the eye of the needle that is our target at the top of the Mars atmosphere, said Mission Manager Arthur Amador of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

In keeping with a decades-old tradition, peanuts will be passed around the mission control room at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for good luck. The space agency said it was optimistic that everything would go according to plan.

"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I'm confident," Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters, said Saturday. "We have the A-plus team on this. They've done everything possible to ensure success, but that risk still exists."

A Twitter feed for the rover itself happily chirped notice Saturday evening of its imminent arrival at Mars.

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NASA Spacecraft Speeding Toward Epic Mars Landing

NASA | Imported Dust in American Skies – Video

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02-08-2012 13:16 NASA and university scientists have made the first measurement-based estimate of the amount and composition of tiny airborne particles that arrive in the air over North America each year. With a 3D view of the atmosphere now possible from satellites, the scientists distinguished dust from pollution, and calculated that dust is the main ingredient of these foreign imports. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on facebook: Or find us on Twitter:

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NASA | Imported Dust in American Skies - Video

Curiosity’s Landing on This Week @NASA – Video

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03-08-2012 18:08 The much-anticipated landing of the Mars Science Laboratory with Curiosity, the Red Planet's next resident rover, is this Monday, at 1:31 am Eastern. Having been configured by the MSL flight team for entry, descent and landing the spacecraft is on final approach for its targeted touchdown in Gale Crater. Coverage of Curiosity's landing begins Sunday at 11:30 pm Eastern on all three NASA TV channels, nasa.gov, AND, Xbox 360. Also, engineers at the Johnson Space Center have conducted test firings of the Project Morpheus Lander, the quickest trip ever to the International Space Station of an unpiloted Russian Progress resupply ship , Marking History at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility and more!

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Curiosity's Landing on This Week @NASA - Video

NASA Chooses Next-Gen Companies for Human Spaceflight – Video

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03-08-2012 12:47 At a briefing from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announces new agreements with three American commercial companies, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX and Boeing, to design and develop the next generation of US human spaceflight capabilities, enabling a launch of astronauts from US soil in the next five years.

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NASA Chooses Next-Gen Companies for Human Spaceflight - Video

NASA taps Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada to develop new spacecraft

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On a cloudless morning, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stood at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. where the U.S. dominated human spaceflight for half a century and revealed plans for the space agency's next chapter.

On Friday, NASA handed out $1.1 billion in contracts to three companies to privately develop a new generation of spacecraft that could one day ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Now that the space shuttle fleet has been retired, NASA has no way to travel to the space station other than shelling out $63 million each time one of its astronauts rides on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

"By investing in American companies and American ingenuity, we're spurring free-market competition to give taxpayers more bang for the buck," Bolden said during the news conference. "We're also making important progress toward ending the outsourcing of American aerospace jobs and bringing them right back to Florida and other states all across this country."

Southern California's aerospace industry was a major beneficiary of the announcement. Hawthorne-based rocket maker Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, won $440 million from NASA to develop its hardware. And Boeing Co., which develops spacecraft in Huntington Beach and uses rocket engines made by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, won $460 million.

And $212.5 million went to Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., which is building a space plane that resembles a miniature space shuttle.

The awards are part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which lays the groundwork for a new reliance on private companies to transport astronauts.

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, who was visiting Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Caada Flintridge in anticipation of Sunday's Mars rover landing, said the companies have plenty of work ahead.

"We anticipate a lot of exciting things from these companies over the next 21 months," she said. "NASA is ready to loosen its grip and let these companies take over."

The overall design of NASA's previous space-going vehicles and their missions were tightly controlled by the government and contracted to aerospace giants.

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NASA taps Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada to develop new spacecraft

Three firms share $1.1 billion of NASA space taxi work

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PASADENA, California (Reuters) - PASADENA, Calif. Aug 3 (Reuters) - NASA will pay more than $1 billion over the next 21 months to three companies to develop commercial spaceships capable of flying astronauts to the International Space Station, the agency said Friday. The lion's share of the $1.1 billion allotted for the next phase of NASA's so-called “"Commercial Crew" program will be split ...

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Three firms share $1.1 billion of NASA space taxi work


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