The Euphoria of Touching Mars

Authored by supercluster.com and submitted by EricFromOuterSpace
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Three minutes before touchdown and nine miles from the landing site, a supersonic parachute deployed, slowing the flying saucer by two-thirds. Twenty seconds later, it jettisoned its heat shield, exposing directly for the first time the rover to its Martian environs. The spacecraft thus began scanning the surface of Mars to get a lock on where it was, exactly, and where it needed to be. The parachute had slowed it to 200 miles per hour now, the contraption two and a half miles from the surface, and the same distance from its target. Within seven seconds, the computer had worked out where it was and where it was going. One minute from touchdown, the back shell and parachute were jettisoned, and a final descent stage, a kind of crown of retrorockets atop a contracted rover, started blasting like hell. The whole thing was by then 70 feet from the ground and slowed to four miles per hour. The descent stage — a sky crane now — began to lower the rover on a twenty-foot tether, and in sixteen seconds, the landing speed at precisely zero, the rover’s wheels pressed into sienna soil.

p_larrychen on February 25th, 2021 at 15:52 UTC »

Wait—how was that poll question phrased? The one where they determined the public prefers Mars over the Moon? Why are Lunar and Martian exploration presented in opposition to each other? One of Artemis’ major goals is to put people on the Moon specifically to practice for Mars

SirTrentHowell on February 25th, 2021 at 15:46 UTC »

A golden age of good science fiction along with the resurgence of private space exploration have probably been pushing this which is great.

kroganwarlord on February 25th, 2021 at 15:03 UTC »

Yeah, but it'll be safer, quicker, and more effective in the long term to start attempting colonization efforts on the moon.

I'm gonna blame The Martian for that one.