The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover has begun it's Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) phase of the mission.

Launched two days after Thanksgiving in 2011, MSL is now poised for its most critical phase of the mission. On Mon. Aug 6 @ 1:31 am EDT, millions of people around the world will be anticipating signals from the one-ton Curiosity rover indicating it has arrived safely on the surface of Mars.

A short video "Seven Minutes of Terror" has gone viral and captured the attention of major news media everywhere. Everything MSL needs to do has been programmed and tested over the past several years. With round-trip communication lag of almost a half-hour, the vehicle operates completely autonomously. From Earth, we're listening for the events as they played out at Mars fourteen minutes earlier.

Special events are being held to witness an incredibly amazing feat of engineering and science. The landing will be streamed on big screens for the public, even in Times Square NYC! Other events have been identified by The Planetary Society.

I will be watching from the Planetfest Event in Pasadena, CA with family, friends and members of FRC Team 980. Shortly after landing, I plan to be back at JPL as a member of the MSL/RAD team. For sure, those seven critical minutes of autonomous action will be heart-pounding excitement.

A newly-released 3-D animation featured here allows the user to control the viewing perspective and speed of Curiosity's EDL. Check out the preview, then watch the real thing on NASA-TV or at one of the special events.

Go Curiosity!

P.S. This is the biggest and most powerful car Dave sent taken to Mars!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

The Autonomous period of this mission is going to be sick, In FRC i thought that just doing something for 15 seconds was crazy, but reentering the atmosphere in autonomous and having it do so many things during that phase is gonna be insane

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Regarding PlanetFest, Team 696 will be doing a demo too.

I'll see you there Mr. Brinza.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Team 696 has an awesome robot; they will represent FRC very well. Team 980 offered to do a demo at Planetfest, but we didn't hear back.

Of course, this event is really about witnessing history being made in space exploration.

It's very cool that some of the people who work on MSL are (or have been) involved in FRC.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Don't forget, it all happens tonight!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Who's going to be watching? I will be

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Ill be watching for sure.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Will.i.am on NASA TV now, talking about NASA STEM initiatives and FIRST!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Thanks for the tip!

Less than two hours to go!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I just saw Dave at his station :)

EDIT: If you want to stalk Dave here is the direct mission control feed stream. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/media_flash.html

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Should we be worried that Dave Lavery helped design this thing? I mean, what if it starts spewing game hints? Or eating Krispy Kreme during descent? This could be disastrous! :ahh: :ahh: :ahh:

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I'm up and watching. Go NASA team!


I have officially now watched more video of the Curiosity landing than I have spent in the past month watching TV, reading the news, or watching the Olympics.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I was pleasantly surprised that Will.i.am just made an appearance on NASA TV to talk about FIRST and STEM.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I'm thinking of hanging a 3D-printed model from my quadrotor.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:27908
Do you all really, really want a photo?

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Less than 10 minutes from entry and 20 minutes from touchdown! Don't forget to watch.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

It really is crazy that I keep looking for Dave in the background...I feel a little bit like a stalker...:D

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I can promise you are not the only one. To quote Aaron

(Sorry I had to)

EDIT: 7 minutes of terror has begun!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

its in the 7 minutes of terror! LEEEEEROY JEEEEEENKINS!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

AND SHE LANDS!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Parachute out, wheels down, images up...I think it was successful

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Dave officially has way too many cars on Mars. Congrats everyone on pulling off one crazy complicated autonomous mode.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Congratulations NASA what an autonomous!!!
You could see Dave in the control center on the NASA feed.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I see Dave, and he looks pretty excited !!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Great success! Definitely worth staying up for!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

That's what I call inspiration! Definitely worth staying up for!

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

it worked :)

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

#daremightythings is going to be the theme for the next school year for my students; I imagine that most of them don't even know what happened tonight. They are so worried about Snooki and Jwow, they have no idea about the amazing things our country and mankind has accomplished.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Yay NASA!!! :ahh:

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

"Everyone should go out tomorrow head held high saying "that is my rover" because it is." -Charlie Bolden

Great day for NASA and science as a whole.

Congratulations to the NASA team.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Looking for the images? So is the rest of the world. NASA TV just reported that an abundance of traffic has crashed www.NASA.gov, but the images can be found here

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/


Man... Dave has more cars on Mars, than I've had cars.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I wonder if they had any FIRST alums working on this project.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

One student alum and several founding and former mentors from Team 696 have been involved or are currently involved with different aspects of the project.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Mars Lander Cost....2.5 Billion Dollars
Miles to Mars...94 to 235 million miles (depending on orbits)
Lines of code written for the Lander 500,000

Reaction of the staff in the control room upon landing...
Priceless
(even Dave got a little excited)

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

254 day trip to mars =)

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I don't remember the exact number, but they just said in the post-landing conference that it's about $7 per American. What an excellent deal!

Being able to say to myself "I met him!" every time I see Dave on the livestream...feels good, man.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

The Museum of Flight here in Seattle put on an event led by Planetary Resources which has hired a significant portion of the MSL team. They had an absolutely wonderful 2 hours behind the scenes lecture to kick it off, however the best part was to watch the engineers who designed and built it celebrate it when their subsystem worked. I was like three seats away from the landing gear guy.

Even better was the Museum of Flight filled all of their theatres to capacity and had many more people in the lobby and attendees were young and old, men and women, engineers and nontechnical people. And everyone cheered at every step along the way, and when it was over the engineers up front got mobbed. That's what I want to see.

Major props to anyone who worked on the project! :cool:

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

That's awesome. The VP of Spacecraft Development at Planetary Resources was one of the founding mentors of 696. Some of my best memories of high school were seeing original CAD prints of the MER wheels that he designed, and he and I picking parts of the Small Parts catalog in 2002, and going to the hardware store with him. We are so fortunate that such amazing engineers have the generosity to volunteer portions of their lives to inspire our youth. Planetary Resources also has two other former mentors from 696.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Watch the press conferences on NASA later today and over the next several days for more images.

I'd like to see an image from the orbiter with the rover/backshell under the parachute!

P.S. There a several mentors (past and present) who work on MSL.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Better question:

How many Chairman's Award veterans are working in NASA's marketing department these days? Atleast half the awesomeness of the MSL is the genius marketing of this landing.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

Ask and you shall receive...




The full image and caption is here.

-dave


.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I saw somewhere that there was a 1.5 mile error between the target and actual landing site. Divided that by the distance the rover traveled from here to Mars that's an error of about 1.5*10^-7%!! :ahh:

Think about that the next time you're trying to get a game piece into a goal. :cool:

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

OK, but I get 6 weeks with at the budget of the Curiosity mission (i went with 2.5 billion over 8 years, making 6 weeks come out at approximately 35.9 million dollars) :)

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I think I could make a pretty good robot for 35 million dollars...:rolleyes:

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

You can see the President talking to JPL here:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/video...a_id=150373681

There is a familiar face on the left.

Re: The Ultimate Autonomous Mode: MSL EDL!
 

I think if Dave's chest swelled any more, he'd pop. And deservedly so.

I liked the 'Bobak is my co-pilot" sign as well.