October 19, 2016

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Landing on Mars: How and When

A graphic from the Scientific American archive provides context for this month’s Mars landing attempt

By Jen Christiansen

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

On October 16, Schiaparelli separated from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft, and headed towards its final destination, the surface of Mars. Schiaparelli is an Entry, Descent, and landing demonstrator Module (EDM). As such, its lifetime on the red planet will be short—just several days. Scientific instruments will contribute data to the broader ExoMars 2016 mission—a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos—but the craft's main goal is to demonstrate the agencies’ ability to execute a controlled Mars landing.

If successful (the craft is expected to land on October 19), Schiaparelli will be the first ESA spacecraft to operate from the surface of Mars. How have others managed the soft-landing feat? Here’s a graphic from the Scientific American archive (November 2011, nine months before Curiosity rolled onto the planet) that shows how, when, and where previous missions approached the tricky task.

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As my colleague Lee Billings (space and physics editor) notes, Schiaparelli uses a hybrid technique to land. Like others shown in the graphic above, “it will first bleed off some speed by aerobraking in the Martian atmosphere, followed by deploying parachutes. And then it will ride down on thrusters, similar to how Phoenix landed. But its final stage is sort of a riff on the airbags approach of Spirit/Opportunity—its thrusters will cut off just a few meters above the surface, and it will fall the rest of the way, landing on an underside specially designed to crush/deform to protect the rest of the spacecraft.” Check out the illustration below for details of the descent strategy, direct from ESA.

Credit: ESA, ATG MEDIALAB

Jen Christiansen is acting chief of design and senior graphics editor at Scientific American, where she art directs and produces illustrated explanatory diagrams and data visualizations. She is also author of the book Building Science Graphics: An Illustrated Guide to Communicating Science through Diagrams and Visualizations (CRC Press). In 1996 she began her publishing career in New York City at Scientific American. Subsequently she moved to Washington, D.C., to join the staff of National Geographic (first as an assistant art director–researcher hybrid and then as a designer), spent four years as a freelance science communicator and returned to Scientific American in 2007. Christiansen presents and writes on topics ranging from reconciling her love for art and science to her quest to learn more about the pulsar chart on the cover of Joy Division’s album Unknown Pleasures. She holds a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a B.A. in geology and studio art from Smith College. Follow Christiansen on Bluesky @jenchristiansen.com

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