On 8/6/2012 10:02 AM, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 8/6/12 12:34 AM, Sam Wormley wrote:
Curiosity has landed and is alive!

Curiosity lands on Mars
Most challenging robotic mission ever attempted is a success so far.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/...lands-on-mars/

Some events in the control room timeline as they arrived (14 minutes
after they actually took place on Mars):

10:14 Lost telemetry, received heartbeat signals
10:15 Cruise stage separation, vehicle turns to the correct attitude,
which means that the reaction control system rockets are working
10:20 5 minutes to entry, heartbeat tones still coming, spacecraft at
about 5.5 km/sec
10:22 MRO began storing data for retransmission
10:24 Reentry began, signal dropped, indicating a change in antennas
10:26 Odyssey data begins flooding in, MSL deccelerating at about 11 G's
10:28 17 kilometers altitude
10:29 Down to about Mach 2, parachute will deploy at Mach 1.7
10:30 Parachute deployed!!! Spacecraft decelerating well!
10:30 Still descending, at 6.9 kilometers
10:31 86 meters/second, 4.2 kilometers and descending
10:31 Powered flight!!! yes!!! down to 500 meters altitude, 50 m/sec
10:32 10m/sec, 40 m altitude
10:32 1.5m/sec descending, skycrane is working!!!
10:32 Touchdown confirmed!!!! The skycrane worked!!!! Joy in control
room. Everyone's faces are red.
10:34 First thumbnail of Curiosity's wheel rolls in, cameras working
10:35 Full-sized picture with Curiosity's wheel, Martian horizon
arrives to sheer joy in the control room

Touchdown time was 10:14:39pm Pacific Time, 0.04435, 140.46kg of fuel
remaining (out of 400kg to start) in descent stage as it flew away.


Notice that it went from Mach 2 to 86 m/s in two minutes, and then
within another minute it had slowed down to 1.5 m/s and touchdown.
That's pretty remarkable in itself.