NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2016–2021
5:08 · 3.2M views · Jun 22, 2012
NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.
HN repeatedly recommends it as an awe-inspiring example of engineering problem solving and the go-to explainer on how Mars landings work.
9 comments from Hacker News
Reminds of the "Seven Minutes of Terror" video that NASA put out ahead of the Curiosity landing explaining how they intended to make it safely to the surface. this video (Note: I get goosebumps every time I watch this, absolutely amazing problem solving.)
If you have not watched the seven minutes of terror video produced by NASA, you absolutely must. It details exactly how they put these amazing machines on the surface of Mars. this video
> I still haven't seen any case for visual programming. Aerodef, automotive, etc all use some form of visual programming. Controls engineers rarely write code, the systems are way too complex. E.g. I highly recommend watching this video from JPL to give you an understanding of where such tools excel. It's about simulating, iterating and then having scientists and engineers autogenerate the code they couldn't possibly write or test this video
Curiosity used aerobraking, parachutes AND a skycrane to land. There's a great video here: this video Previous solutions weren't used because they were less crazy, but because they were more mass efficient for "small" payload sizes.
JPL produced a video titled "7 minutes of terror" that detailed the landing procedure they used for Curiosity, and it's worth a watch. It goes into detail on everything you see in the articles landing video: this video