Mars in a Minute: How Do You Land on Mars?

Getting a spacecraft to Mars is one thing; getting it safely to the ground is a whole other challenge! This 60-second video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains three ways to land on the surface of the Red Planet.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[NightBazaar]

"There's nothing easy about landing on Mars." I agree with that statement. The landing of the MSL is going to be a remarkable accomplishment.Hopefully it won't land on a large rock. What is the terrain like at the expected landing site? Sandy? Rocky? Generally flat?

[JPLnews]

Curiosity will land at the foot of a layered mountain inside the planet's Gale Crater. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle.

[v16050118130114]

Admit it, NASA... you're only doing the "jetpack + tethered landing" technique to show off. ;-)

[Ben Pratt]

And hopefully everyone remembered to do their math with the correct units of measure. The whole english to metric conversion failure thing would not be good to do again.

[cannonCoder]

dahhh! NASA, please stop hitting yourself in the head by dumbing stuff down! I know that it's not friction that heats up anything entering an atmosphere but the air getting compressed in front of the spacecraft.

[ironarrow117]

9 people couldn´t land on Mars >u<.

[zeratul575]

heheh maybe they are i wouldnt be surprised

[jasleil]

Apparently, he has not been a mars rover before. LOL

[sillygames]

You trollin? It's already been done successfully.

[ActivationKnee]

Option 1 is stupid.

[Tragono]

I think.

[Tragono]

Yes.

[AirStryke71]

Oh, that was nothing. NASA programmed a satellite to take a picture of the rover descending with its parachute... 3 days before it even entered the atmosphere. If their calculations were 1 second off, on the rover or satellite, or either crafts were off by a small margin, than there would be a blank photo. THAT is NASA showing off.

[SpaceAnimator]

No. The rover is too heavy to land using the traditional lander+airbags. One of the options for landing considered in 2007 was to place the rover on a Phoenix like lander. The skycrane got top marks though.

On August 6 2012, the rover landed perfectly with the skycrane.