Curiosity depended upon dropping ballast weights to maintain it's attitude during re-entry (entry?) to the Martian atmosphere. The amount of ballast is surprising. Two heavier weights were dropped to bring the nose up and allow aerodynamic maneuvering. Then six more 55 pound ballast weights were dropped to level the craft off. Six times 55 pounds is 330 pounds of ballast. That's a lot, considering the entire lander only weighed 1924 pounds.
I hate to Monday morning quarterback a successful mission, but you would think they would have used some kind of steering fins sticking out in the airstream. That's a lot of dead weight to blast all the way to Mars.
2 comments:
You might like this thread on reddit. The people behind the MSL are answering questions.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ybmmh/we_are_engineers_and_scientists_on_the_mars/
The reason for the ballast is pretty clever actually. Because of of the thinner atmosphere large steering fins wouldn't really work. They would also need to fit the fins into a pretty small capsule.
I think it also fits well into the KISS theory. You do all the modeling up front and the computer is programmed to dump them at certain times.
Certainly an awesome achievement and I think NASA is using the publicity to get people more interested in science. Lord knows that we need engineers more than paper pushers.
I like the Reddit thread!
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