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Curiosity Closes in on its New 'Home'
Sat, 04 Aug 2012 07:20:24 PM EST
With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science
Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages
of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at
10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Curiosity remains in
good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight
team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the
spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon,
as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to
the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the
eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion
system. As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately
261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little
more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).
Received on Sat Aug 04 2012 - 21:02:37 EDT
