Richard Cook
Richard Cook
ahead decent effort landing risk validation
Obviously, the entry, decent and landing is a very big challenge. I think we're going down the path...retiring a lot of the risk in the technology. But there's still the whole validation process...and still a lot of effort ahead to make that work.
arms issues looked technical
We've looked at a lot of the technical issues and, hopefully, have our arms around a lot of them.
below breaking certain concerns level pieces spacecraft
When you get below a certain level you have concerns about overheating the spacecraft or potentially breaking pieces of it off,
hoped signal
We didn't get a signal at 8:30 p.m. We hoped we would.
begin midst next opportunity planning
We are in the midst for proceeding with our planning for our next communications opportunity, which will begin tomorrow.
ideas less plan
We're sprouting new ideas as we go along, and the plan is more or less the same.
quite state sure
We're in a state where we're not quite sure what's happened,
certainly five lasts thinking
If it lasts for five times that...I wouldn't be all that shocked. But we certainly don't want to go into it thinking that way.
belief everybody goes less signal telling time
As time goes by, and I'm not telling you otherwise, we're less confident. At this point, though, we still have a lot of things we can try and we're doing that ... Everybody has the belief that we can still get a signal from the spacecraft.
hear period
There is still a very real possibility that we may not hear anything during that whole period of time.
amazed both capability certainly chemist circles drive fairly people point size speed
MSL is like a chemist on Mars. From a technological point of view, people will be fairly amazed by both the size and the capability of MSL. It will certainly be able to drive circles around MER to a certain extent. Not speed wise. But from how long MSL can go every day...it will be able to do much more.
knowledge trajectory
The trajectory didn't change. Our knowledge of it did.
christmas light looking power signal tree
The signal we are looking for is very, very weak, about 1 watt of power -- or like looking for a Christmas tree light on Mars,
factors several team tension
The tension on the team is up by several factors because of what happened.