If all goes well, the first of NASA's two robot geologists will bounce over rocks and roll to a safe stop on the surface of Mars at about 8:35 p.m. PST tomorrow.
An hour and a half earlier, the Spirit spacecraft will rotate so its heat shield faces forward for the final approach. At 8:14 p.m. PST, the entry vehicle is scheduled to separate from the cruise stage. The rover should come screaming into the Martian atmosphere at 12,000 mph fifteen minutes later.
During the next six minutes, Spirit will jettison its heat shield, deploy its airbags, fire its retro rockets, cut loose its backshell and parachute, and bounce on the Martian surface. The rover, protected by a lander structure and airbags, could bounce up to five stories high and rock and roll as far as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) before it comes a stop. This landing process is similar to that used in the successful 1997 landing of the Mars Pathfinder.
Then we hope Spirit fares better than the European Space Agency’s Beagle 2, which attempted to land last week, but hasn’t been heard from. Getting to Mars isn’t easy. NASA says, two out of three missions to the red planet have failed.
Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity, which will land in three weeks, are much more mobile than the Mars Pathfinder rover. The Spirit and Opportunity robotic explorers will be able to trek up to 40 meters (about 44 yards) across the surface in a Martian day. Both robots will carry several instruments that them to search for evidence of liquid water that may have existed in the Mars' past.
Cross your fingers and hope that Spirit and Opportunity perform as well as Stardust.
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