Landing the Mars Rover with a Rocket Crane | Sci Guide (Ep35) w/ Leon Vanstone | Earth Lab
636Landing a 1 tonne vehicle travelling at 21,000 km/hr on a planet 550 million km away was never going to be easy. Leon Vanstone explains how NASA did it with the help of a 2.5 tonne hovering rocket crane (or sky crane) in this Science Guide Headsqueeze video.
One of the main problems with landing the Mars Curiosity Rover is that it was travelling so fast through space. The atmosphere on Mars is much thinner than on Earth, so it's harder to slow down. Conversely it's not so thin that atmospheric burn-out is not a serious concern. Thus after entering the atmosphere the Discovery had to jettison its heat shield and deploy a supersonic parachute whist still travelling faster than the speed of sound.
After all this the Mars Discovery, a one tonne science beast the size of a large car, was still travelling too fast. And that's when a Rocket Crane - a 2.5 tonne platform with 8 rockets strapped to it comes in really handy for landing. And we're not done yet. Leon explains all in this fascinating Science Guide video.
Check out Martin Archer's AWESOME video on when we will finally get to Mars: http://youtu.be/fYthxj-bO0I
Or if you want to know how far away aliens are check out Timandra's mind numbing NumberHub: http://youtu.be/sue_esAhcUI
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