Ups and Downs

HIGH STRUNG:  We spent a couple of hours this afternoon helping with an art installation. 

Annabelle, and dozens of other art class students, made three-dimensional hanging sculptures that tell stories about themselves. 

The problem was, how to hang them? 

The idea was to string a cable between the north and south walls of a stage, about 25 feet in all. The challenge was, the south wall that we had to get a fastener into was solid masonry, the north wall was a mystery.

Christian was prepared for the concrete wall, as we had anticipated that. That anchor went in no sweat. The north was was a bit different. We came to believe it has metal studs, and that's not what we were expecting, so we can only hope the anchor holds on that end. 

Christian did give the cable a mid-point support (a tension wire up to a concrete beam in the ceiling), so that will help. 

Once the cable was strung, it was time to hang the art - about 50 in all, I believe. 

We were relieved the cable held all the weight. We rearranged furniture on the stage 

REMAINS: We checked in on the European Space Agency's MIA Mars lander today. 

Turns out the poor thing took its 'lander' job a little too hard. The ESA believes it has found its craft, crash landed on the surface of the Red Planet. 

Take a look at 'before' and 'after' photos of one region of Mars' surface, Meridiani Planum, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. First up, the 'before.'   (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

 And here's the 'after.' See that black spot? It's likely lander. 

And the shiny spot in the frame is likely the parachute of the Schiaparelli lander. 

The 'good' news is the lander did land generally where it was supposed to (about 3.4 miles/5.4 kilometers west of its intended touchdown target, but well within the landing ellipse). Obviously, the bad news is it sure didn't land how it was supposed to. 

So far, the ESA says something went wrong to cause the craft, which is about the size of a baby grand piano, to go into free fall for the last 13,000 feet of its journey. Mission command had communication with the lander up until the very last minute of its descent. 

One potential trouble spot they're looking at early is the fact that Schiaparelli's data shows that the lander fired at least some of its braking rockets for three or four seconds. They should have fired for about 30 seconds. Having only one tenth of the required braking time would mean a rough landing, for sure. 

Though the black spot in the photo above looks tiny, it actually measures an area of about 50 by 130 feet. Clearly, that's much bigger than the lander itself; it's actually what's left of the lander and the scar it left in the landscape. 

In a statement Friday, the ESA said, “Estimates are that Schiaparelli dropped from a height of between 2 and 4 kilometers (6,500 to 13,000 feet), therefore impacting at a considerable speed, greater than 300 kilometers per hour (186 mph). The relatively large size of the feature would then arise from disturbed surface material. It is also possible that the lander exploded on impact, as its thruster propellant tanks were likely still full.”

Big bummer. 

As they say in the space exploration business, "Mars is hard."

The ESA has another Mars mission in the offing, "ExoMars." Set to launch in 2020, the mission calls for landing a rover on the Red Planet. No doubt the agency will be poring over data between now and then to try to ensure their next go has a soft landing.