Rachael Porter for NPR NASA engineer Adam Steltzner led the team
that designed a crazy new approach to landing on Mars. NASA
engineer Adam Steltzner led the team that designed a crazy new
approach to landing on Mars. Rachael Porter for NPR It's called
the seven minutes of terror. In just seven minutes, NASA's
latest mission to Mars, a new six-wheeled rover called
Curiosity, must go from 13,000 mph as it enters the Martian
atmosphere to a dead stop on the surface. During those seven
minutes, the rover is on its own. Earth is too far away for
radio signals to make it to Mars in time for ground controllers
to do anything. Everything in the system known as EDL — for
Entry, Descent and Landing — must work perfectly, or Curiosity
will not so much land as go splat. The team that invented the
EDL system has spent nearly 10 years together, designing,
building, testing, tweaking, retesting and retweaking. Now all
they can do is sit and wait to see if their design works.
Because the new Mars rover is five times heavier