Curiosity Rover on Track for Early August Landing
A maneuver on Tuesday adjusted the flight path of NASA's Mars Science  Laboratory spacecraft for delivering the rover Curiosity to a landing target  beside a Martian mountain.
Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status ReportPASADENA,  Calif. -- A maneuver on Tuesday adjusted the flight path of NASA's Mars Science  Laboratory spacecraft for delivering the rover Curiosity to a landing target  beside a Martian mountain.The  car-size, one-ton rover is bound for arrival the evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT  (early Aug. 6, EDT and Universal Time). The landing will mark the beginning of  a two-year prime mission to investigate whether one of the most intriguing  places on Mars ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life.The  latest trajectory correction maneuver, the third and smallest since the Nov.  26, 2011, launch, used four thruster firings totaling just 40 seconds. Spacecraft  data and Doppler-effect changes in radio signal from the craft indicate the  maneuver succeeded. As designed by engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion  Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the maneuver adjusts the location where the  spacecraft will enter Mars' atmosphere by about 125 miles (200 kilometers) and  advances the time of entry by about 70 seconds."This  puts us closer to our entry target, so if any further maneuvers are needed, I  expect them to be small," said JPL's Tomas Martin-Mur, the mission's  navigation team chief. Opportunities for up to three additional trajectory  correction maneuvers are scheduled during the final eight days of the flight.The  maneuver served both to correct errors in the flight path that remained after  earlier correction maneuvers and to carry out a decision this month to shift  the landing target about 4 miles (7 kilometers) closer to the mountain.It altered  the spacecraft's velocity by about one-tenth of a mile per hour (50 millimeters  per second). The flight's first and second trajectory correction maneuvers produced  velocity changes about 150 times larger on Jan. 11 and about 20 times larger on  March 26.Shifting  the landing target closer to the mountain, informally named Mount Sharp, may  shave months off the time needed for driving from the touchdown location to  selected destinations at exposures of water-related minerals on the slope of  the mountain.The  flight to Mars has entered its "approach phase" leading to landing  day. Mission Manager Arthur Amador of JPL said, "In the next 40 days, the  flight team will be laser-focused on the preparations for the challenging  events of landing day -- continuously tracking the spacecraft's trajectory and  monitoring the health and performance of its onboard systems, while using  NASA's Deep Space Network to stay in continuous communications. We're in the  home stretch now. The spacecraft continues to perform very well. And the flight  team is up for the challenge."Descent  from the top of Mars' atmosphere to the surface will employ bold techniques  enabling use of a smaller target area and heavier landed payload than were  possible for any previous Mars mission. These innovations, if successful, will  place a well-equipped mobile laboratory into a locale especially well suited  for its mission of discovery. The same innovations advance NASA toward  capabilities needed for human missions to Mars.A video  about the challenges of the landing is online at:http://go.nasa.gov/Q4b35norhttp://go.usa.gov/vMn.As of June  27, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying the rover Curiosity will have  traveled about 307 million miles (494 million kilometers) of its  352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) flight to Mars.JPL, a  division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the  mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information  about Curiosity is online athttp://www.nasa.gov/mslandhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.  You can follow the mission on Facebook  at:http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityand on Twitter at:http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.