My University worked on some aspects of the mission package (If I remember correctly, it will be the communications equipment on board)
Below are a couple of links to news articles, but what I really want to talk about in this blog post is the Sky Crane and the landing.
Long story short, the capsule blasts through the atmosphere, heat-shield down at a rediculously high speed. The atmosphere decelerates the landing capsule, and when it gets closer, it pops open a parachute, and drops the heat shield to lose weight.
At this point it then descends, slowing as it does so until it gets to a nominal height for the Sky-Crane to take over, which fires rocket boosters to halt the descent and hover in place.
The Sky crane is literally a hovercraft, like something from Sci-Fi - it is a big platform that hovers some 10-20M off the ground, and lowers the Rover on a crane to the surface. Once the crane detatches - the Sky Crane platform fires its thrusters and literally blasts itself off into the distance a couple of hundred meters and is destroyed. Talk about fire and forget. The technology in this must have cost Millions, if not more - and the amount of testing done on it is extreme.
The logistics involved mean that everything has to work first time, or the mission is lost. Lets not forget the rover itself weighs in at over a ton.
The Navigation has to coordinate something entering the atmosphere at speeds higher than a sniper round, to land the capsule in a landing area, out of sight, that is some 10km square. Ideally in the middle of that area. Years can be spent just picking and choosing a landing location.
Anyway, i waffle - it all fascinates me and I done a study on the design and building of this rover, and studied the mission logistics.
I have included a video from YouTube that was referred to in that class - enjoy!!
Job well done guys, quality information.
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