The biggest rover to ever attempt a landing on Mars is due to touch down on the 6th of August at 6.31am. The Rover which is the size of a large car is nuclear powered has a powerful laser to vaporise rocks as well as an onboard chemistry lab specifically designed to search for life.
With two thirds of Mars missions failing, everyone at Nasa will be keeping everything crossed for next Monday morning.
Horizon did a program yesterday about the rover. You can catch it on i player for a short time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01llnb2/Horizon_20122013_Mission_to_Mars/
The landing involves an extraordinary sequence to take the speed from 3.6 miles per second, thats 13,000 miles per hour down to zero using an atmospheric heat shield burn, followed by a parachute deployed at super sonic speeds, then rockets fire to slow the rover further, before the amazing rocket powered hovering crane lowers the rover on a cable winch to the surface.
I will be tuning it to Nasa TV for this one.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
With two thirds of Mars missions failing, everyone at Nasa will be keeping everything crossed for next Monday morning.
Horizon did a program yesterday about the rover. You can catch it on i player for a short time.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01llnb2/Horizon_20122013_Mission_to_Mars/
The landing involves an extraordinary sequence to take the speed from 3.6 miles per second, thats 13,000 miles per hour down to zero using an atmospheric heat shield burn, followed by a parachute deployed at super sonic speeds, then rockets fire to slow the rover further, before the amazing rocket powered hovering crane lowers the rover on a cable winch to the surface.
I will be tuning it to Nasa TV for this one.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html