During landing, I was watching the plot of doppler shifts for Curiosity's tones, sent direct to earth. The doppler shift says how fast the spacecraft was moving relative to earth. I saw a sudden drop in doppler shift, just before they announced the parachute deploy - it was dramatic! I knew immediately that the parachute was doing something because nothing else would slow down the decent that quickly. Once earth set behind the crater rim, we no longer had a signal and relied on Odyssey for all "real-time" data. That's one of the reasons there was so much cheering when we heard that Odyssey and Curiosity were talking.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Great Mashup Video of Landing
Watch and enjoy!
During landing, I was watching the plot of doppler shifts for Curiosity's tones, sent direct to earth. The doppler shift says how fast the spacecraft was moving relative to earth. I saw a sudden drop in doppler shift, just before they announced the parachute deploy - it was dramatic! I knew immediately that the parachute was doing something because nothing else would slow down the decent that quickly. Once earth set behind the crater rim, we no longer had a signal and relied on Odyssey for all "real-time" data. That's one of the reasons there was so much cheering when we heard that Odyssey and Curiosity were talking.
During landing, I was watching the plot of doppler shifts for Curiosity's tones, sent direct to earth. The doppler shift says how fast the spacecraft was moving relative to earth. I saw a sudden drop in doppler shift, just before they announced the parachute deploy - it was dramatic! I knew immediately that the parachute was doing something because nothing else would slow down the decent that quickly. Once earth set behind the crater rim, we no longer had a signal and relied on Odyssey for all "real-time" data. That's one of the reasons there was so much cheering when we heard that Odyssey and Curiosity were talking.
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