Community members and students packed into a small classroom Wednesday night to hear former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientist Phil Knocke.
Knocke worked on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission that featured two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. These two rovers landed in 2004. However, the focus of the night was the Curiosity rover, which just landed on Aug. 6.
Knocke’s presentation began with a short history of each successful mission to Mars before he delved into the most recent rover, Curiosity. Knocke’s presentation featured a thorough overview of the actual Curiosity rover, the landing process and plans for it while on Mars.
Knocke began by telling the crowd how massive the new rover is compared to Spirit and Opportunity, the two he worked on just eight years ago.
“Spirit and Opportunity were 400 pounds each,” Knocke said. “At the time I thought that was a pretty big rover.”
Just eight years later, however, Curiosity weighs in at approximately one ton and is the size of a small car.
“It has 165 pounds of science instruments,” Knocke said. “That is about 10 times more than the mass of the Spirit and Opportunity’s science instruments.”
Included in those instruments is a camera that has the capability of taking high-quality video of Mars.
“I cannot wait to see the first video on Mars,” sophomore Ryan Walker said.
Despite its size, one thing it lacks is speed.
“It’s huge, it’s capable, but it’s not very fast,” Knocke said.
Knocke told the audience the top speed is only 1.5 inches per second. Consequently, after eight years on Mars the Opportunity rover has an odometer reading of only about 20 miles, he said.
Helias High School junior Melissa Cassmeyer said the rover’s lack of speed was what she found most surprising from Knocke’s presentation.
After going through the specifics about the rover, Knocke moved on to detailed analysis of the landing process.
The audience learned about every step that must go right for the rover to go from 13,200 mph when it enters Mars’ atmosphere just 78 miles away to a speed of just 1.7 mph at touch down — all of which happens in just seven minutes.
Knocke showed the audience the video “Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity’s 7 Minutes of Terror,” which has more than 2 million views on YouTube. The video features NASA scientists describing in detail the landing process and their emotions as they wait to find out if all their work will be a success.
After the presentation, Knocke opened the floor up for questions. He was asked what it takes to get a “cool job” at NASA’s JPL branch.
Knocke replied saying it takes a lot of schooling, but he said it was all worth it once he finally got the job.
“I was surprised at how much I used my educational background at JPL,” Knocke said. “I used every bit of it.”
He was also asked whether he thought there would ever be a manned mission, to which he replied, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Cosmic Conversations occur on the first Wednesday of each month. The Department of Physics and Astronomy hosts the event in collaboration with the Central Missouri Astronomical Association. After each event Laws Observatory is open and attendees can view the stars.