Dear Central Committee of the Orange Order, Many of us will be following the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory in the wee hours of Monday, August 6. I think that it would be grand if you could place the orange hand of fate onto one of our science guys and have a live blog of the event. In your most infinite wisdom you have probably already made preparations to have this done - if so please forgive your humble servant for his temerity in making this request. For the members of the proletariat who are unfamiliar with the MSL and the "seven minutes of terror", I will share a few links and some of the info that I have about the Mars' rover, Curiosity, below the fold. Warning: I am not a science guy, just a guy who likes science.
Like I said above, I can't give you a science heavy diary, but I'll give you my take on Curiosity. The mission is the Mars Science Laboratory or MSL. NASA's website provides a full explanation of the mission. The mission involves landing the rover Curiosity (weighing an incredible 2000 lbs) on the surface of Mars to spend the next two years searching Gale Crater for signs of habitability in Mars' past.
Here is the official mission statement:
Mars Science Laboratory will study Mars' habitability
To find out, the rover will carry the biggest, most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the martian surface. The rover will analyze samples scooped from the soil and drilled from rocks. The record of the planet's climate and geology is essentially "written in the rocks and soil" -- in their formation, structure, and chemical composition. The rover's on board laboratory will study rocks, soils, and the local geologic setting in order to detect chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the martian environment was like in the past.
Just landing this rover on Mars is a massive challenge. Watch
this video which shows how Curiosity is suppose to land on the planet. This is several degrees of magnitude harder than previous landings on Mars. And the success rate for landings is not great - Wiki shows 30% success for landers and 80% success for rovers. The U.S. is the only country to successfully land on Mars. I am blown away by the audacity of the MSL planners to propose this mission and the NASA administrators to approve it.
My wife and I watched it take off live on NASA tv back in November. And we have been following Curiosity's tweets. Yes, they have given it a personality which will make it that much more painful if she doesn't land successfully.
The landing will take place at 1:31 a.m. EDT August 6 and will be streamed live and broadcast on NASA tv. Millions of people are going to be following the landing. There are going to be live events at NASA facilities and local science centers. Curiosity will be out of contact with us for seven minutes while she travels through the Martian atmosphere and goes through her landing procedures. Because of the difficulties of this landing and the tremendous heart that the mission specialists have put into the project, they are calling these the "seven minutes of terror". There is also the 14 minute time delay, due to the time that it takes a radio signal to travel from Mars to Earth, before we will know if she has landed safely.
Why should the Dkos community celebrate this effort? If for no other reason it represents the coming together of two things that the right-wingnuts hate - science and government. Together they have the chance to accomplish something that is almost unbelievable. We as an animal species are sending a piece of our technology 600,000,000 km to explore another world. I know that some folks think that money spent on space exploration is wasted. I can't agree. I think that this gives us an opportunity to do something constructive as a species. We spend so much time with our eyes on the ground that just for a moment to look up and see the stars is inspiring.
There is a plaque on the rover that has President Obama's and, his science adviser, John Holdren's signature.
Here is an excellent diary (better than this one) on the MSL mission by Jim In Iowa.
Diane Rehm did a show on the mission on Monday. During the show it was agreed that this will be the most important NASA mission of the decade.
I'd love to be laying on my couch watching NASA tv Sunday night/Monday morning with my Ipad on my chest following a Dkos live blog. I know that they are having events at NASA facilities around the country so blogging from one of those would be super cool. Anyhoo, I bow to the Kos gods and ask them to look with favor upon this request.
1:31 PM PT: "Deep Texan" pointed out these two videos on NASA's site:
Captain Kirk's and Wesley's take on the mission
http://www.nasa.gov/...