Why the Fairing Falls Away
Salem explains what the nose cone of a rocket actually does, why it is thrown away minutes after launch, and how engineers are now catching and reusing it at sea.
The Seven Minutes Before Mars
0:00 / 1:10
Sample the first 60 seconds free. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.
Show notes
Entry, descent and landing, minute by minute
By the time a Mars spacecraft hits the atmosphere, the radio delay means the team on Earth is watching something that already happened. Salem and flight controller Priya Raman go through the whole sequence, from the heat shield to the sky crane, and explain why it has to be fully automatic.
- Why nobody can send a command during the descent
- Heat shields, parachutes and the thin Martian air problem
- The sky crane manoeuvre and the decision to build it
- What the controllers are actually looking at on their screens
- Lessons the Hope orbiter team took from the landers
Recorded in Salem's studio in Abu Dhabi.
Transcript
Welcome back to Payload Fairing, I am Salem Al Mazrouei. Today we talk about the seven minutes that engineers call the seven minutes of terror, the time between a Mars spacecraft touching the atmosphere and touching the ground. Here is the strange part. Because of the radio delay, by the time the team on Earth sees the entry begin, the landing has already happened one way or the other. Nobody can help. My guest is flight controller Priya Raman, who sat at a console for one of these, and she walks us through every stage: the heat shield, the parachute, the rockets, the cable that lowers the rover like a crane. I will add what our Hope team learned from watching. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Seat belts on.
Open as text