Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Mars Science Laboratory: We Did It!


After its successful launch on Nov. 26, 2011, and a 36 week (254 days) journey, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover is on the surface of Mars! Curiosity landed on Mars at 10:32 p.m. PDT, Aug. 5, 2012.

This was a special day for all of us @ Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As senior software engineer and a member of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems group for NASA, this was a historic day. Our team has played an integral part in calibrating the landing gear. The calibration of landing gear during descent sequence has been successfully tested by a F-18 a year prior to launch. This was by far the most complicated landing sequence ever attempted. We have provided high rate data clock/orbit products to help Curiosity stay on course. Mission well done!

The complexity of the landing sequence is seen in this video below:


Here is the actual video from the descent:



Congratulations to our colleagues in the web group for designing a great user experience for people around the world to witness this historic event. To find out more about Mars Science Laboratory, visit MSL.

I encourage you to check out our realtime precise point positioning data products (popularized by many Location Based Services) at Global Differential GPS.



President Obama called today and expressed his thoughts, here is the video.



Follow me on twitter (at armjan) for latest news about MSL.
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