by The Design
as defined in NASA Procedural Requirements document NPR 8020.12D. Fluid-
formed features such as Recurring Slope Lineae are included in this prohibition. Any
evidence suggesting the presence of Special Regions or flowing liquid at the actual
MSL landing site shall be communicated to the Planetary Protection Officer immedi-
ately, and physical contact by the lander with such features shall be entirely avoided.
1.7.5 Final assembly
Finally, the time came to put together all the pieces of the puzzle. The rover and MMRTG
met for the first time for a fit check on July 12. The MMRTG produces a prodigious
amount of heat, so it wasn’t safe to install it permanently until the last possible moment.
Handlers removed the MMRTG to storage in its own cavernous, climate-controlled room.
Assembly was interrupted in September by an emergency situation discovered during
drill testing back at JPL. The drill percussion mechanism developed a short circuit that
could damage the rover’s electronics if it occurred on Mars, jeopardizing the mission. The
engineers developed a solution quickly, but implementing the solution required opening
up the rover’s belly pan and adding a new wire to ground the rover’s power bus. This
“battle short” wouldn’t prevent future shorts in the drill, but would protect the rover’s
59 Stabekis (2012)
60 United Nations COSPAR (2011) COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy
1.7 Final Preparations (2010–2011) 51
electronics if it happened again. The project agreed to take the risky step of performing
surgery on the rover just weeks before launch. 61 It turned out to be a wise decision, as the
drill percussion mechanism has indeed experienced shorts on Mars (see section 5.3.4.2).
Stacking of the spacecraft components began inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing
Facility on September 23, with the connection of the descent stage to the rover and then
the backshell. They topped the stack with the cruise stage on October 10, and lifted the
stack onto the base of the heat shield on October 11, completing the assembly of the space-
craft, except for the MMRTG (Figure 1.24).
Figure 1.24. On October 11, 2011, the spacecraft stack was completed. NASA/KSC release KSC-2011-7350.
Two weeks later, with the spacecraft flipped upside down, they enclosed the saucer-
shaped craft inside the fairing that would protect the spacecraft during its trip through
Earth’s atmosphere (Figure 1.25). MSL needed the full width of the Atlas V’s largest, 5-meter fairing, but little of the length; most of the interior of the tall fairing remained 61 Manning and Simon (2014)
52 Mars Science Laboratory
empty. They delivered the spacecraft in its nose cone to the launch pad on November 3,
then hoisted it atop the rocket (Figure 1.26).
Figure 1.25. MSL is dwarfed by its fairing, October 25, 2011. NASA/KSC release KSC-2011-7530.
The final step in assembly took place at the top of the tower just a week before launch.
The MMRTG was finally installed on November 17 (Figure 1.26). A hatch in the fairing, and a matching hatch in the aeroshell, allowed technicians access to insert the MMRTG,
and then to sew on the cloth windbreak over the MMRTG’s cap (Figure 1.27). With the MMRTG in place, cooling the spacecraft became a top priority. An air conditioning system in the launch tower blew chilled air through an inlet in the fairing onto the cruise stage radiators, helping to dissipate the heat for the week that led up to launch.
1.7 Final Preparations (2010–2011) 53
Figure 1.26. Workers lift the MMRTG, in a protective cage, to the top of the Atlas V rocket in its launch tower on November 17, 2011. NASA/KSC release KSC-2011-7836.
54 Mars Science Laboratory
Figure 1.27. Engineers work through a hatch in the rocket fairing and a second hatch in MSL’s backshell to install the MMRTG onto the rover, November 17, 2011. NASA/KSC release KSC-2011-7900.
1.8 REFERENCES
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2
Getting to Mars
2.1 LAUNCH
Mars launch opportunities happen about every 26 months, as Earth begins to approach
Mars from behind on its faster inside track around the Sun. The earliest MSL could launch
was November 25, 2011; any earlier, and it would arrive at Mars with too much speed for
the entry, descent, and landing system to dissipate. The latest it could launch was December 18; any later, and the Atlas V 541 rocket wouldn’t have enough thrust to deliver the spacecraft to its rendezvous point with Mars.
Within that 24-day period, no matter the launch date, MSL would arrive at Mars within
a 15-minute window on August 6, 2012. That choice of timing allowed both Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey to be in position to perform relay communica-
tions during MSL’s landing without any adjustment to their orbits. The orbiter relays were
crucial, because only 5 minutes after atmospheric entry, Mars would block the visibility of MSL’s direct-to-Earth radio communications.
The first day of the launch period was also the day after the Thanksgiving holiday. MSL
team members gathered with their families in Florida resorts and timeshares, feasting and
awaiting the fireworks at Kennedy Space Center. On November 19, NASA announced a
one-day delay to replace a flight termination system battery.
MSL launched at 15:02:00 UT (10:02 a.m., local Florida time) on Saturday, November
26, 2011 (Figure 2.1). The Atlas V Common Core Booster ignited first, combusting kero-sene with liquid oxygen. The four solid rocket boosters lit up a split second later. The
solids burned out after 90 seconds and were jettisoned 22 seconds after that. At launch plus 3 minutes 22 seconds, the clamshell of the payload fairing split open, exposing the spacecraft to space for the first time. Another minute later, the Atlas engine shut down and separated from the Centaur upper stage (Figure 2.2).1
1 Details of the launch and cruise events throughout this section are from Abilleira (2013)
© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
57
E. Lakdawalla, The Design and Engineering of Curiosity, Springer Praxis Books,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68146-7_2
58 Getting to Mars
Figure 2.1. MSL launched on an Atlas V 541 from the Eastern Test Range of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 15:02:00 UT (10:02 a.m., local Florida time) on Saturday, November 26, 2011. Scott Andrews/Canon.
2.1 Launch 59
Figure 2.2. Atlas V 541 launch vehicle facts and timeline. Modified from United Launch Alliance press kit.
60 Getting to Mars
Four minutes 37 seconds after launch, the Centaur ignited and burned liquid hydrogen
in oxygen for 7 minutes, placing the spacecraft into a 165-by-265 kilometer parking orbit
at an inclination of 28.9°. It coasted for 20 minutes. During the coast phase, MSL was
active, reporting via the launch vehicle’s radio through the Tracking Data Relay System
satellites to Earth that the solar cells on the cruise stage were generating power, charging the batteries.
Thirty-two minutes and 23 seconds after launch, the Centaur ignited again, burning for
8 minutes to inject MSL onto its transfer trajectory to Mars. This burn deliberately targeted the spacecraft slightly away from Mars, in order to prevent the non-st
erilized Centaur
upper stage from impacting the Martian surface and potentially contaminating it. With the
trans-Mars injection achieved, the Centaur performed one last maneuver, spinning up the
spacecraft to 2 rotations per minute. Finally, 44 minutes after launch, pyrotechnics cut the spacecraft’s connection to the Centaur, and push-off springs shoved it gently away at a
relative velocity of 0.27 meters per second (Figure 2.3).
Figure 2.3. RocketCam views of the departing MSL spacecraft following separation from the Centaur upper stage. The six sets of cruise stage solar arrays are visible. Screen captures from NASA Television broadcast, November 26, 2011.
With spacecraft separation achieved, MSL was on its own. The spacecraft waited 1
minute in order to avoid interference with the Centaur’s continuing radio communications.
Then it turned on its amplifier, powered up the transmitter, and contacted Earth directly for the first time. As MSL zoomed away from Earth, Australia’s deep-space communications
dishes listened. Within 20 seconds, a ground station in Dongara, Western Australia, locked
onto its carrier signal; two dishes (DSS-45 and DSS-34) in Canberra achieved carrier lock
2 seconds later. Within another 30 seconds, the stations achieved telemetry lock, success-
fully decoding the signal to receive MSL’s reports of spacecraft health. This initial telemetry confirmed that the spacecraft was thermally stable, generating power, and was
commandable. That state of affairs meant that the launch phase was over; the cruise phase
had begun. Later analysis of the trajectory would reveal that “the trans-Mars injection and spacecraft separation provided by the Centaur was outstanding and set a new standard on
launch vehicle performance. ”2
2 Abilleira (2013)
2.2 Cruise 61
2.2 CRUISE
2.2.1 The cruise stage
The cruise stage made MSL an interplanetary spacecraft (Figure 2.4). It sensed the Sun,
tracked the stars, generated power, kept the rover cool, and performed trajectory correction maneuvers to steer the spacecraft’s course to Mars. It did not have independent telecommunications capability. A cone-shaped medium gain antenna mounted to the cruise stage
relied upon transmitting and receiving hardware buried in the descent stage. The cruise