Radar for Mars Gets Flight Tests at NASA Dryden

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Feature: 2011-188 June 21, 2011

Radar for Mars Gets Flight Tests at NASA Dryden

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-188&cid=release_2011-188

Southern California's high desert has been a stand-in for Mars for NASA technology testing
many times over the years. And so it is again, in a series of flights by an F/A-18 aircraft to test
the landing radar for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.

The flight profile is designed to have the F/A-18 climb to 40,000 feet (about 12,000 meters).
From there, it makes a series of subsonic, stair-step dives at angles of 40 to 90 degrees to
simulate what the Mars radar will see while the spacecraft is on a parachute descending
through the Martian atmosphere. The F/A-18 pulls out of each dive at 5,000 feet (about 1,500
meters. Data collected by these flights will be used to finesse the Mars landing radar software,
to help ensure that it is calibrated as accurately as possible.

The testing is a collaboration of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., with
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Earlier tests, with a helicopter carrying the
test radar, simulated the lower-altitude portion of the spacecraft's descent to the surface of
Mars. For more information about the F/A-18 tests, see
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/F-18_flying_msl_radar.html .

The Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, named Curiosity, will be shipped this month from
JPL to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to be readied for launch between Nov. 25 and
Dec. 18, 2011. The spacecraft will arrive at Mars in August 2012. After Curiosity lands on Mars,
researchers will use the rover's 10 science instruments during the following two years to
investigate whether the landing area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for
microbial life.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars
Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More
information about the mission is online at: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

-end-

To remove yourself from this mailing, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=pmL0KgM3KrL4JrJ&s=eoKQLPOpFaJCKOOvEoE&m=ceLNKPMmH8IFJYI

To remove yourself from all mailings from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=ifJMKVOBIkKRL7L&s=eoKQLPOpFaJCKOOvEoE&m=ceLNKPMmH8IFJYI