WASHINGTON – When engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) realized they had to start from scratch in order to safely land a Mini Cooper-sized rover on the surface of Mars, they realized simulating the fiery descent and landing widely known as the “Seven Minutes of Terror” would require an unprecedented amount of computer simulations and testing.
They turned to companies like Siemens PLM Software to help conduct thermal design and analysis studies to determine how the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying the Curiosity rover would behave as it descended through the thin Martian atmosphere made up mostly of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. NASA engineers had to figure out how to protect the spacecraft moving at speeds as high as 13,000 miles per hour as it descends to its landing site from temperatures as high as 1,447 degrees C.
If the spacecraft survives the fiery entry into Mars’ atmosphere and its sky crane successfully lands Curiosity on the surface early Monday morning (Aug. 6), the rover must then be able to operate at temperatures ranging from -135 degree C to +50 degrees C.
Tim Nichols, managing director of Siemens PLM Software (PLM stands for Product Lifecycle Management) said in an interview that program managers also had to find ways to model the G forces on the spacecraft during entry, descent and landing. Early in the risky program, Nichols continued, JPL engineers realized they needed a far more integrated approach to simulating the hazardous automated landing and the spacecraft’s predicted behavior as a way to minimize risk.
The automated entry, descent and landing sequence of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that will use a risky sky crane landing technique to lower the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars. (Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)