PDF-(EBOOK)-The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job (Springer

This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet Curiosity It is a oneton robot with two brains seventeen cameras six wheels nuclear power and a laser beam on its head No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover from its rocketpowered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system Its lavishly illustrated text explains how all the instruments work its cameras spectrometers samplecooking oven and weather station and describes the instruments abilities and limitations It tells you how the systems have functioned on Mars and how scientists and engineers have worked around problems developed on a faraway planet holey wheels and broken focus lasers And it explains the grueling mission operations schedule that keeps the rover working day in and day out. Activity Description. In this activity your pupils will learn more about the Curiosity Mars rover and apply that knowledge to think about, plan or design their own Mars rover.. The presentation is designed to be teacher-led, with opportunities for group discussion and/or individual work. The presentation contains a mix of technical facts about Curiosity, along with linked YouTube videos showcasing some of the scientists and engineers who are working on the mission.. The Robotic Rover on Mars . Aviel. . Atias. Omri. Ben . Eliezer. Yaniv. Sabo. 29/04/13. 1. Curiousity. Exploring Mars . 2. Curiousity. 3. Curiousity. Exploring Mars . 4. Curiousity. 5. Curiousity. and. . Curiosity. Rover. Metka Batič. Mars. Red planet – . iron. . oxide. Thin. . atmosphere. Large temperature . changes. No magnet . field. . – . radiation. 2 . Moons. : . Phobos. , . Deimos. Mission time line of Curiosity. Launched Date: November 26, 2011. Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Reached Mars: August 6, 2012. Mission would last for 2 years. Image Courtesy: NASA. Mission Objective. Ashwin . Vasavada. ,. . Project Scientist for Curiosity, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, U.S.A. .. Jens Frydenvang. , Curiosity Science Team Member, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S.A., and University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.. In its eerie likeness to Earth, Mars has long captured our imaginations—both as a destination for humankind and as a possible home to extraterrestrial life. It is our twenty-first century New World its explorers robots, shipped 350 million miles from Earth to uncover the distant planet’s secrets.Its most recent scout is Curiosity—a one-ton, Jeep-sized nuclear-powered space laboratory—which is now roving the Martian surface to determine whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Red Rover, geochemist Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam laser instrument on the rover and veteran of numerous robotic NASA missions, tells the unlikely story of his involvement in sending sophisticated hardware into space, culminating in the Curiosity rover\'s amazing journey to Mars.In so doing, Wiens paints the portrait of one of the most exciting scientific stories of our time: the new era of robotic space exploration. Starting with NASA’s introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, scrappier, more nimble missions became the order of the day, as manned missions were confined to Earth orbit, and behemoth projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge scientific opportunities, but tight budgets meant that success depended more than ever on creative engineering and human ingenuity. Beginning with the Genesis mission that launched his career, Wiens describes the competitive, DIY spirit of these robotic enterprises, from conception to construction, from launch to heart-stopping crashes and smooth landings.An inspiring account of the real-life challenges of space exploration, Red Rover vividly narrates what goes into answering the question: is there life elsewhere in the universe? The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob ManningIn the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven\'t found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity\'s Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project\'s chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA\'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.Manning\'s fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn\'t be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity. In its eerie likeness to Earth, Mars has long captured our imaginations—both as a destination for humankind and as a possible home to extraterrestrial life. It is our twenty-first century New World its explorers robots, shipped 350 million miles from Earth to uncover the distant planet’s secrets.Its most recent scout is Curiosity—a one-ton, Jeep-sized nuclear-powered space laboratory—which is now roving the Martian surface to determine whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In Red Rover, geochemist Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the ChemCam laser instrument on the rover and veteran of numerous robotic NASA missions, tells the unlikely story of his involvement in sending sophisticated hardware into space, culminating in the Curiosity rover\'s amazing journey to Mars.In so doing, Wiens paints the portrait of one of the most exciting scientific stories of our time: the new era of robotic space exploration. Starting with NASA’s introduction of the Discovery Program in 1992, scrappier, more nimble missions became the order of the day, as manned missions were confined to Earth orbit, and behemoth projects went extinct. This strategic shift presented huge scientific opportunities, but tight budgets meant that success depended more than ever on creative engineering and human ingenuity. Beginning with the Genesis mission that launched his career, Wiens describes the competitive, DIY spirit of these robotic enterprises, from conception to construction, from launch to heart-stopping crashes and smooth landings.An inspiring account of the real-life challenges of space exploration, Red Rover vividly narrates what goes into answering the question: is there life elsewhere in the universe? This book describes the most complex machine ever sent to another planet: Curiosity. It is a one-ton robot with two brains, seventeen cameras, six wheels, nuclear power, and a laser beam on its head. No one human understands how all of its systems and instruments work. This essential reference to the Curiosity mission explains the engineering behind every system on the rover, from its rocket-powered jetpack to its radioisotope thermoelectric generator to its fiendishly complex sample handling system. Its lavishly illustrated text explains how all the instruments work -- its cameras, spectrometers, sample-cooking oven, and weather station -- and describes the instruments\' abilities and limitations. It tells you how the systems have functioned on Mars, and how scientists and engineers have worked around problems developed on a faraway planet: holey wheels and broken focus lasers. And it explains the grueling mission operations schedule that keeps the rover working day in and day out. Mars, like planet Earth, is a complex and vast world with a long history. The authors of this book give a new insight of Mars by adopting an original outline based on history rather than on subtopic (atmosphere, surface, interior). They focus on the past and present evolution of Mars and also incorporate all the recent results from the space missions of Mars Express, Spirit and Opportunity.This book goes to the heart of current planetological research, and illustrates it with many beautiful images. The authors describe the magnificent scenery on Mars including Olympus Mons, more than 20,000 metres high and the solar system’s biggest volcano. At Mars’ poles, glaciers, formed from thousands of fine strata, are evidence of past climatic fluctuations. Drs Forget and Costard and Professor Lognonné introduce a new world and reveal the workings of the planet Mars. They answer the questions: How was Mars formed? Why has its evolution followed a different path to that of Earth? What do its river beds, volcanoes and glaciers tell us about its past? Could life have existed there? Does it exist there now? What processes ‘drive’ Mars today?The five parts of the book trace the history of Mars. Part 1 examines its formation from the ashes of dead stars, more than 4·5 billion years ago. Part 2 travels through its early and turbulent youth and gradual, 3·5-billion-year long metamorphosis. Part 3 traces the creation of great planetary structures while Part 4 explores this active planet as it is today, with its dust storms, water features and atmosphere, and shows that Mars is subject to continual climatic change. Finally in Part 5, the story of the recent exploration of Mars and current research in laboratories and space agencies in preparation for the missions of the next twenty years is recounted. The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob ManningIn the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven\'t found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity\'s Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project\'s chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA\'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.Manning\'s fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn\'t be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity. Engineering is where human knowledge meets real-world problems—and solves them. It\'s the source of some of our greatest inventions, from the catapult to the jet engine. Marshall Brain, creator of the How Stuff Works series and a professor at the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NCSU, provides a detailed look at 250 milestones in the discipline. He covers the various areas, including chemical, aerospace, and computer engineering, from ancient history to the present. The topics include architectural wonders like the Acropolis, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower transportation advances such as the high-speed bullet train medical innovations, including the artificial heart and kidney dialysis developments in communications, such as the cell phone as well as air conditioning, Wi-Fi, the Large Hadron Collider, the self-driving car, and more.  The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob ManningIn the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven\'t found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity\'s Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project\'s chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA\'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.Manning\'s fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn\'t be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity. Engineering is where human knowledge meets real-world problems—and solves them. It\'s the source of some of our greatest inventions, from the catapult to the jet engine. Marshall Brain, creator of the How Stuff Works series and a professor at the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NCSU, provides a detailed look at 250 milestones in the discipline. He covers the various areas, including chemical, aerospace, and computer engineering, from ancient history to the present. The topics include architectural wonders like the Acropolis, the Great Wall of China, and the Eiffel Tower transportation advances such as the high-speed bullet train medical innovations, including the artificial heart and kidney dialysis developments in communications, such as the cell phone as well as air conditioning, Wi-Fi, the Large Hadron Collider, the self-driving car, and more.