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I was referring to the successful landing of Pathfinder but yeah... Space is Hard and NASA is good at it are both very true.
by fouronnes3 5y ago
I was referring to the successful landing of Pathfinder but yeah... Space is Hard and NASA is good at it are both very true.
- garmaine 5y agoMost of the velocity of Pathfinder was shed using aerobraking and parachutes. The crash-balloon landing system just shed the last tiny sliver of velocity after cutting the chutes.
- Sharlin 5y agoAh, yeah, you could call airbags lithobraking. I thought you referred ironically to the Mars Polar Lander, but it of course flew in the 1999 launch window rather than 1997.
- phkahler 5y agoAfter Pathfinder someone from NASA wrote a book about their new "faster, better, cheaper" approach to missions. Usually you can't have all 3 but they managed to get lucky. That made it particularly amusing when the book and concept were getting popular as the next 2 missions were failing.