It would suck if you blew it off and it landed right in the path of your ramp that was supposed to deploy afterwards from inside!
Quote from: Basto on 03/09/2017 08:13 pmQuote from: Negan on 03/09/2017 03:49 pmIt will be very interesting to see how all that interior space is utilized for Mars missions.Try driving that out of the little hatch...A bigger hatch is possible. At one time Elon Musk said it is possible to increase the hatch width to include the area now used for windows, that is a big hatch.
Quote from: Negan on 03/09/2017 03:49 pmIt will be very interesting to see how all that interior space is utilized for Mars missions.Try driving that out of the little hatch...
It will be very interesting to see how all that interior space is utilized for Mars missions.
[Paul] Wooster [SpaceX] on slip of Red Dragon from 2018 to 2020: have a lot of things on our plate at SpaceX; nothing specific to this mission. #LPSC2017
QuotePaul Wooster, SpaceX, on Mars landing site selection: looking at sites at latitudes < 40˚, elevation as low as possible. #LPSC2017https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/843229275025227777QuoteWooster: identified several candidate sites, but many likely too rocky. Arcadia region looks promising. #LPSC2017https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/843229571642286081Edit: from context I think he's talking about Red Dragon landing site
Paul Wooster, SpaceX, on Mars landing site selection: looking at sites at latitudes < 40˚, elevation as low as possible. #LPSC2017
Wooster: identified several candidate sites, but many likely too rocky. Arcadia region looks promising. #LPSC2017
Cross-posting as shows some on-going Red Dragon work, although discussion of landing site specifics probably best in original landing site thread:Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 03/18/2017 09:40 pmQuotePaul Wooster, SpaceX, on Mars landing site selection: looking at sites at latitudes < 40˚, elevation as low as possible. #LPSC2017https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/843229275025227777QuoteWooster: identified several candidate sites, but many likely too rocky. Arcadia region looks promising. #LPSC2017https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/843229571642286081Edit: from context I think he's talking about Red Dragon landing site
Boo. I'd do Mellas Chasma. Just 10 degrees off the equator, so super good solar power capability (can use a simplified single axis tracker), plus it's very low altitude, has multiple possible sources of water nearby, and the views are INCREDIBLE.
Good point for a first landing. But by all rights, with a fully propulsive (plus heatshield) landing, they should be able to get an arbitrarily small landing ellipse if they could get a good location fix from satellites.I think a few small areosynchronous areolocation satellites should be launched soon. Or maybe a small version of SpaceX's constellation. If SpaceX's constellation is anything like Iridium's, it should be possible to get better than 10m location fix (Iridium can do about 5m fix, single-sigma, with a little effort).
[...] matching image data to pre-loaded maps of the target area.
Quote from: Phil Stooke on 03/20/2017 02:31 am[...] matching image data to pre-loaded maps of the target area. This is a very good point and is easily overlooked by long-time experts because the capability is actually rather new. It might take a fair bit of processing power and data storage, but with each Mars launch opportunity Moore's Law tilts the decision in favor of this type of approach....
Quote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:20 amGood point for a first landing. But by all rights, with a fully propulsive (plus heatshield) landing, they should be able to get an arbitrarily small landing ellipse if they could get a good location fix from satellites.I think a few small areosynchronous areolocation satellites should be launched soon. Or maybe a small version of SpaceX's constellation. If SpaceX's constellation is anything like Iridium's, it should be possible to get better than 10m location fix (Iridium can do about 5m fix, single-sigma, with a little effort).There isn;t going to be a Mars GPS by 2020. So without that the ellipse must quite large.I have not seen any estimates of a landing ellipse size for Red Dragon. I doubt that it is gong to be better than 10 km radius
Quote from: Dalhousie on 03/20/2017 02:39 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:20 amGood point for a first landing. But by all rights, with a fully propulsive (plus heatshield) landing, they should be able to get an arbitrarily small landing ellipse if they could get a good location fix from satellites.I think a few small areosynchronous areolocation satellites should be launched soon. Or maybe a small version of SpaceX's constellation. If SpaceX's constellation is anything like Iridium's, it should be possible to get better than 10m location fix (Iridium can do about 5m fix, single-sigma, with a little effort).There isn;t going to be a Mars GPS by 2020. So without that the ellipse must quite large.I have not seen any estimates of a landing ellipse size for Red Dragon. I doubt that it is gong to be better than 10 km radiusIt's possible to use the existing telecom assets at Mars for this purpose. It has been done before by a rover.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:56 amQuote from: Dalhousie on 03/20/2017 02:39 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:20 amGood point for a first landing. But by all rights, with a fully propulsive (plus heatshield) landing, they should be able to get an arbitrarily small landing ellipse if they could get a good location fix from satellites.I think a few small areosynchronous areolocation satellites should be launched soon. Or maybe a small version of SpaceX's constellation. If SpaceX's constellation is anything like Iridium's, it should be possible to get better than 10m location fix (Iridium can do about 5m fix, single-sigma, with a little effort).There isn;t going to be a Mars GPS by 2020. So without that the ellipse must quite large.I have not seen any estimates of a landing ellipse size for Red Dragon. I doubt that it is gong to be better than 10 km radiusIt's possible to use the existing telecom assets at Mars for this purpose. It has been done before by a rover.For landing? if so, which mission?
Quote from: Dalhousie on 03/20/2017 03:15 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:56 amQuote from: Dalhousie on 03/20/2017 02:39 amQuote from: Robotbeat on 03/20/2017 02:20 amGood point for a first landing. But by all rights, with a fully propulsive (plus heatshield) landing, they should be able to get an arbitrarily small landing ellipse if they could get a good location fix from satellites.I think a few small areosynchronous areolocation satellites should be launched soon. Or maybe a small version of SpaceX's constellation. If SpaceX's constellation is anything like Iridium's, it should be possible to get better than 10m location fix (Iridium can do about 5m fix, single-sigma, with a little effort).There isn;t going to be a Mars GPS by 2020. So without that the ellipse must quite large.I have not seen any estimates of a landing ellipse size for Red Dragon. I doubt that it is gong to be better than 10 km radiusIt's possible to use the existing telecom assets at Mars for this purpose. It has been done before by a rover.For landing? if so, which mission?It was done after landing since it's experimental, of course. One of the MERs.And the idea is mostly getting a good fix before atmospheric interface. Do that, and the gyro drift while doing EDL will be fairly small. Should get within a kilometer.
"And the idea is mostly getting a good fix before atmospheric interface. Do that, and the gyro drift while doing EDL will be fairly small. Should get within a kilometer."Uncertainty during EDL is much more about uncertainty in the atmospheric conditions. Pressure, temperature, dust loading, winds, it's not the Moon. That's why terrain relative navigation is going to be used to help 2020 get where it's going - AKA comparing images to a pre-loaded map. And people are planning to use TRN on the Moon too (Astrobotic is testing it and there's plenty of literature about it now). It's fairly mature and no need for a GPS-style constellation. Go the image route!