The Real “7 Minutes of Terror”
I have been captivated this week the successful landing of the Mars rover Curiosity. NASA has gone to great lengths to explain that this mission is unprecedented in regard to its complexity, intricacy, and difficulty. In their fascinating video “7 Minutes of Terror,” the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) describe the harrowing 7 minutes as the capsule enters the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph, deploys the strongest high-speed parachute ever built, then is slowed further by rockets, and then finally the rover is lowered to the surface by a complex “sky crane” maneuver—and all of this happens during the “black out” phase when there is no radio … Continue reading...