NASA Engineer Talks with Loudoun Teachers About “Curiosity”

Kobie Boykins, one of the chief engineers of NASA’s Mars rovers, spoke to Loudoun County teachers during an October 18th, lecture at George Washington University’s Loudoun Campus.

Boykins’ appearance was part of a two-day seminar for 140 Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) middle school teachers sponsored by the JASON Project. Lectures presented during the seminar included “Monster Storms,” “Tectonic Fury,” “Infinite Planet” and “Resilient Planet.” The lectures and accompanying materials were designed to give the teachers more, and more interesting, ways to offer science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) curricula to students.

Boykins talked to the teachers about the upcoming mission of the Mars rover Curiosity.

Boykins also helped construct the earlier Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Curiosity’s mission will be different from that of its two predecessors. Where Spirit and Opportunity looked at Mars’ geological history, Curiosity will examine the surface biologically – looking for signs of life that may have once existed there.
Curiosity will begin its journey sometime after its launch window opens on November 25th. Once in space, it will take eight months (“plus or minus a couple of days”) for Curiosity to reach Mars.

Curiosity will land much differently than Spirit and Opportunity.

The two earlier rovers landed on Mars by literally bouncing to the planet’s surface on giant airbags. Curiosity, which is the size of a Mini-Cooper, is too large for the airbags. It will be lowered to the surface by a wire hooked to a spacecraft. When Curiosity hits the surface, the spacecraft will disengage from the rover and fly away from the landing site before hitting Mars’ surface.

Boykins showed a video of a test at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that tested the landing technology. The test cost $150,000. “We did one of them.”

Not wishing to chance the landing to one test, Boykins added that NASA ran 123 smaller tests and more than 100,000 computer simulations to make sure the landing would work with a 99 percent degree of certainty.

The power source for Curiosity also surpasses the earlier rovers.

Spirit and Opportunity got their power from solar arrays that Boykins designed. Originally designed to last 90 days, these solar arrays kept the rovers working from 2004 to 2010. Curiosity will be nuclear-powered and is designed to run for two Martian years. (That’s one year to we Earthlings.) Boykins said its lifespan could far exceed that if the earlier rovers are any indication.

Curiosity will land in Mars’ Gale Crater, which is about twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. The crater will allow Curiosity to examine different strata of Mars’ surface. Boykins hopes that the rover will discover evidence of water, clay and salt.

Curiosity is equipped with a laser beam that it can use to vaporize pieces of rock. Sensors on the craft will then analyze the vapor to detect what minerals it contains. It also has a drill to bore into rocks to see if they contain fossils.

“It’s just the coolest thing ever,” said Boykins.

Painstaking doesn’t begin to describe the pace at which Curiosity will perform its work. It takes the rover 40 minutes to cover the length of a football field. “You can’t describe it in miles per hour because it’s too darn slow.”

While it’s cool, Boykins said Curiosity is equipped with a computer that is not state-of-the-art. Boykins said his cell phone has 1,000 times the computing power of the computer aboard Curiosity. That’s because sophisticated computers are affected adversely by the type of radiation found in space. Boykins said NASA favors sticking with tried-and-true technology it knows will stand the rigors of space travel.

And there’s no such thing as “real-time” pictures from Mars.

Boykins said it takes at least 10 minutes for a transmission to reach Earth from Mars under the best of conditions. The maximum time is 37 minutes and there will be times when the position of the sun interrupts transmissions.

LCPS is teaming with the JASON Project to bring the experiences of scientists like Boykins into local classrooms.

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Posted by Resident on Oct 24 2011. Filed under Loudoun County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.