Mars Science Lab tweaks flight path and timing
BY JUSTIN RAY SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: January 12, 2012
The Mars Science Laboratory, speeding along its interplanetary flight path some 81 million miles from Earth, executed the largest course-correction maneuver of the mission Wednesday night by firing its thrusters more than 200 times in a three-hour period.
"We've completed a big step toward our encounter with Mars," said Brian Portock of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., deputy mission manager for the cruise phase of the mission. "The telemetry from the spacecraft and the Doppler data show that the maneuver was completed as planned."
This is an artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during its cruise. The spacecraft includes a disc-shaped cruise stage (on the left) attached to the aeroshell that contains the rover and descent stage. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The car-size Curiosity rover is headed for a landing inside the Gale Crater the night of August 5 (U.S. time) in a scientific expedition to determine if the region had conditions suitable for the rise of microbial life on the red planet.
This first trajectory correction maneuver accomplished moving the craft's track about 25,000 miles closer to aim at Mars, erasing the deliberate miss of the planet so that the spent rocket body following Curiosity won't hit Mars. It also moved up the Mars arrival time by about 14 hours.
"The timing of the encounter is important for arriving at Mars just when the planet's rotation puts Gale Crater in the right place," said JPL's Tomas Martin-Mur, chief navigator for the mission.
The complex burn sequence was split into two categories -- changing velocity in the direction of the axis of the spacecraft's rotation and changing velocity in a direction perpendicular to that as Mars Science Lab rotated at about 2 rpm.
"The maneuver used the eight thruster engines on the cruise stage of the spacecraft, grouped into two sets of four. It began with a thrust lasting about 19 minutes, using just one thruster in each set and affecting velocity along the direction of the axis of rotation," officials explained in a statement.
"Then, to affect velocity perpendicular to that line, each set of thrusters was fired for 5 seconds when the rotation put that set facing the proper direction. These 5-second bursts were repeated more than 200 times during a period of about two hours for a total of about 40 minutes."
The burns began at 6 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) and the entire operation lasted about 175 minutes.
In the end result was a total change in the spacecraft's velocity by 12.3 miles per hour, giving Curiosity slight increase in speed and tweaking to its direction of travel.
The second course-correction is scheduled for March 26, albeit just one-sixth the magnitude of Wednesday's operation.
As of Thursday morning, Mars Science Lab is traveling at about 10,300 mph relative to Earth and at about 68,700 mph relative to the Sun.
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