WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000
Mary from White Plains: Can you explain how the six months of aerobraking works and why it's necessary?

00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Sure. When we aerobrake the spacecraft, it's a lot like putting the drag flaps up on an airplane.

00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:22.000
As an airplane comes in to land, it puts the flaps up on the wings, and it changes the shape of those wings from being a very smooth,

00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:27.000
aerodynamic surface to something that's really resisting the air and acting like a brake.

00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:36.000
And we did the same thing with our spacecraft, we fully deploy the solar arrays. They're creating as much friction on the atmosphere as possible.

00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:46.000
That allows us to slow down in the atmosphere and eventually get into a very low orbit. By doing that, we save on the amount of fuel that we have to carry.

00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.000
That amount of fuel is a big fraction of the weight of the spacecraft.

00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:58.000
That means we go in a smaller rocket, and that saves us money which we can then put into other things, such as the instruments.

00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:06.000
So, it, by aerobraking and slowly slowing down, we can bring ourself to a very low altitude over the planet that lets us get closer to the

00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:14.000
planet and use our high-resolution camera to get the best pictures and our other instruments,

00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:19.000
as well, get closest to the surface as possible and get the best data that we can.

00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:24.000