Plan to land rover on Mars sounds crazy; we’ll see

Curiosity has a pretty challenging landing ahead of her on Sunday. (AP Photo/file)

Mars is set to get its latest visitor Sunday night when NASA’s new robotic rover, named Curiosity, attempts to land there. But this landing will be anything but routine because Curiosity is a very big girl.

“This new rover they’re sending weighs one ton. It’s by far the largest space craft ever sent to Mars or any other planet, and they had to devise a whole new system to get this thing on the ground,” Clara Moskowitz, a senior writer at Space.com, tells Ross and Burbank.

When you hear the plan, which involves something called a skycrane, Moskowitz says it sounds crazy, but it’s really the most reasonable thing scientists could come up with.

“So the space craft comes in and in the descent stage releases this little rack that is going to hold the rover up wheels down. It’s going to be attached by tethers and the skycrane is going to hover in the air and lower the rover down to the ground slowly on tethers. Once Curiosity rover is on the surface of Mars, the skycrane will then fly away and land a safe distance apart.”

Watch: Video explaining Curiosity’s landing process:

The skycrane is charged with aiding the craft in cutting its speed from 13,000 miles per hour down to zero says Moskowitz.

“They didn’t have any way to have the space craft touchdown itself on the surface. It was just going to be going too fast, and it would be too dangerous.”

The skycrane’s cameras will send scientists the first indication of whether the landing has been successful. Moskowitz says there is a 15 minute delay in transmission because of the distance between Earth and Mars, so scientists will be helplessly waiting.

“Curiosity has to do it all by itself, nobody back on earth is going to be controlling any step of this because it takes about 15 minutes to send any signal,” says Moskowitz. “We’re only going to find 15 minutes after the fact whether it is safely sitting on Mars or whether it crashed a little bit ago.”

When asked whether she thinks the landing will be successful, Moskowitz is pretty optimistic.

“Space is really risky and I think that you never have a sure thing, but I think the chances are low that it’s not going to work. They have done everything they possibly can to design the most reliable system they can.”

The design of the craft sounds pretty impressive. Moskowitz says Curiosity, which is the size of a Mini Cooper, is like a mobile chemistry and geology lab with a robotic arm, tons of cameras, and equipment to do science experiments.

While she says NASA is being pretty careful to say they’re not looking for life, she says they are looking for evidence that Mars is or was habitable at one time.

Mars has been a prime target for space exploration for decades, in part because its climate 3.5 billion years ago is believed to have been warm and wet, like early Earth.

Moskowitz says Curiosity is slated for a two year mission. Hopefully she’ll be able to carry out that mission, and maybe last even longer.

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
The Associated Press contributed to this report.