The previous rovers, such as Mars Exploration Rovers, used airbags and bounced on the ground several times to land on Mars. However, Curiosity used different process. After deploying its parachute and slowing down correctly, it separated from the parachute facilities and fell down with the special machine called Sky Crane. The crane hovered and hanged the rover with a cable. When the rover touched down, it flied away with the cable.
The processes are explained on this page: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1300
This achievement was made also by the spacecrafts orbiting Mars. Mars Odyssey helped the communication between Earth and Curiosity at the entry and descending.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1265
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are gathering data around the rover.
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1297
I think spacecrafts orbiting an celestial object are important to make the environment for exploration because they can establish the network around the object and Earth.
Even in deep space where a rover has to work by itself without the control room, if there are orbiters, they can seize the information of wide areas of an object.
In the future, it may be a major way to send a rover with many orbiters and machines scattering around an object rather than sending just a single rover or spacecraft.
No comments:
Post a Comment