As previously mentioned here, I had been looking forward to the Mars landing of the Curiosity rover and managed to watch it live on CNN.com last night.
Once the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) entered the Martian atmosphere it was exciting to monitor the seven-minute plunge to the surface of the planet along with scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
I knew the rover had its own twitter account, but I didn’t know that Curiosity is female. The NASA officials kept referring to the rover with the 3rd person singular female pronoun; e.g. “She had a perfect landing.” Maybe that’s because of the teenage girl who won the naming contest for the rover or the three women who communicate on behalf of the rover via @MarsCuriosity? Regardless, a nice touch and a small nod to improving stereotypes, biases and other cultural beliefs about women in science and technology.
The slideshow contains some screenshots I took that show:
- NASA scientists monitoring the MSL’s landing
- MSL entering the Martian atmosphere protected by a heat shield; its progress is shown by the white trail above the horizon line
- supersonic parachute deploying to slow down the spacecraft
- MSL rapidly losing speed
- Rocket-powered sky-crane emerging
- Sky Crane lowering rover to ground via steel cables
- Images transmitted by rover shortly after landing
As a side note, Intel’s wholly-owned Wind River subsidiary wrote the software that guided the U.S. space agency’s Mars Science Laboratory to its bulls-eye landing on Mars. Wind River’s VxWorks provides the core operating system of the spacecraft’s control system.