Mars rover: from 13,000 mph to soft landing, with NASA's future in the balance

(CBS News) PASADENA, Calif. - NASA scientists will be on pins and needles early Monday morning when they try to land a new rover on Mars -- especially during a stretch called the "seven minutes of terror," when the spacecraft slows from 13,000 mph to what will hopefully be a soft landing.

NASA has a lot riding on the mission. Delivering the most complex -- and expensive -- robot ever sent to Mars depends on a landing like nothing ever attempted before.

As a NASA animation shows, the car-sized, nuclear powered rover named Curiosity will be lowered on cables dangling beneath a rocket propelled platform. The landing team is led by Adam Steltzner.

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"The first time it was offered up, it was called 'rover on a rope,'" Steltzner said. "And the team said 'that's crazy' -- and we put it aside."

Previous rovers sent to Mars bounced onto the planet wrapped in air bags. But Curiosity -- 10 feet long and weighing almost a ton -- is too big.

"Eventually we came upon the sky crane, which we've come to really love quite a bit," Steltzner said. But it's scary as well.

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The scary part begins as soon as the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. To slow it down engineers created the largest, strongest supersonic parachute ever made.

At 200 mph, the rocket powered brakes will switch on, and the sky crane will gently lower Curiosity to a pinpoint landing in a Martian crater. But if anything goes wrong, the $2.5-billion mission could be ruined.

Jessica Samuels is on the rover's engineering team.

"We're looking forward to a fantastic landing," she said, but "it will definitely be tense."

Still, there's a "nice, big reward at the end," Samuels said. "We've got this remote sensing mast which will be able to give us the nice 360-degree panoramas. It'll be fantastic. "

The first images could come back to Earth within a half hour of the landing. Then Curiosity will spend two years searching for evidence mars was once capable of supporting life.

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NASA's manned spaceflight missions might be a thing of the past, but Steltzner and Samuels are a new kind of explorers.

"I use robots to extend my and our human reach, but it's absolutely exploration," Steltzner said.

After suffering big budget cuts, NASA is hoping success for Curiosity will reignite enthusiasm for planetary exploration. Failure could leave NASA struggling to find support for other missions to Mars and beyond.

[OweninNJ]

I remember watching Armstrong & Aldrin walk on the moon in those fuzzy pictures on the old b&w tv my parents had in the living room. For a kid of 5, that was the most thrilling thing I could imagine. So I must say although I was quite interested in the news behind this article, my inspired balloon was instantly popped near the end of the article in reading this:
"NASA's manned spaceflight missions might be a thing of the past, but Steltzner and Samuels are a new kind of explorers."
A thing of the past? That is just sad to this once-inspired, former five-year-old kid.

[jschm2681]

For a kid of 19 it was exciting to see the moon landing. Not having a manned space program for the moon or mars is not good for the country.

[venusvegasvada]

What an incredible team and ingenious solution to a tough problem.

How little we forget the strings of failure after failure that is a fundamental part of aviation/aerospace research and development.

The statement that NASA's future hangs in the balance is false. If this probe crashes into the surface it will not be the end of NASA or unmanned exploration or unmanned exploration. Like so many setbacks we have seen before, we will learn from the errors and move forward. That's what we do and that is the future of NASA.

Good luck on Monday!