Making expensive craters on Mars

[GregLocock]

Nice paper on landing on Mars

http://www.ssdl.gatech.edu/Papers/Technical Papers/IEEE Paper 06 ID0076 FINAL.pdf

I gather a translation into English is in progress.

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[btrueblood]

Nice link, Greg. You're right about the translation though, it seems to be written in alien-speak (the TLA's are a dead give-away). Clearly the locals on Mars are getting a little bored, and are trying to scare up some new targets. Wonder what anti-probe technology the Martians will come up with next.

 

[IRstuff]

THIS got accepted? Yikes, the IEEE's standards must have taken nosedive. Acronyms used without definition, not following conventional style guides, invented unit symbols, etc. MOLA, I still haven't figured out; the one definition readily found, Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter, makes no sense in the context of the article.

It's also a bit out-of-date, since it seems to have been ignorant of the EDL systems of Mars rovers.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[btrueblood]

The orbital laser altimeter was my guess too, IRstuff. I think they mean to say "altitudes as measured from the zero datum determined from the Mars Global Surveyor's Martian Orbital Laser Altimeter data, ref. NASA document xyzblahtyblah."

Um, it did have mentions of the latest two sucessful rovers (Opportunity and Sojourner), just not well labelled. There's a graph or two in there with unlabelled axes also...sigh. Beta as the ballistic coefficient, fine. I really liked the plots where, with L/D ratios of about 0.5 or so, you have to dip below zero altitude before climbing back out. I guess they are promoting areolith-braking now instead of aero-braking.

Ok - a little explanation: Ares is the (greek?) name for Mars, thus areolith for rock/dirt on mars, regolith for lunar rocks/soils...right, stupid joke.

I didn't even see the IEEE as the recipient though, until you mentioned it. What the heck is an obvious AIAA (if not SAE) paper doing in an electronics journal? I knew the IEEE was trying hard to be the Wal-Mart of Engineering Journals, but this is ridiculous.