Recently I just heard that on August 5th, Curiosity, a space rover just landed on Mars! I just watched a video on it, called http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=146903741
It is really interesting how they get it to land on mars. Even at the speed of light, It still takes 14 minutes for light to get there. That’s how far away mars is from us.
First, they send the rover in space with a rocket. the rocket deploys the rover near the atmosphere of mars. The rover starts going down into Mars. The rover is now looking like this:
The rover has a special heat shield on it that keeps the rover from burning up in the massive amount of heat and friction. When the rocket drops it off, the rover starts going to mars at 1000 miles per hour. At that rate you can travel from San Francisco to New york in just 3 hours! But 1000 mph is way to fast for landing . So they use a giant supersonic parachute:
The rover has a special heat shield on it that keeps the rover from burning up in the massive amount of heat and friction. When the rocket drops it off, the rover starts going to mars at 1000 miles per hour. At that rate you can travel from San Francisco to New york in just 3 hours! But 1000 mph is way to fast for landing . So they use a giant supersonic parachute:
{insert supersonic parachute image}
But the parachute only slows it down to 200 mph. Still too much speed for landing! so now what does Nasa do? They use rockets. The rockets takes the space rover about 20 meters up from the ground. If the rockets touch the ground, they will create a huge dust storm that will damage the rover. so the rocket part launches a 20 meter rope and gently puts the curiosity on the ground. This is called the skycrane maneuver.>>>>>>
In Conclusion, this is probably going to be a success mission and going to be one that the world will remember.
I visited the Exploratorium in San Franciso musuem at The Palace of Fine Arts to see the model of the Curiosity...
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