RocketSTEM Issue #12 - July 2015 | Page 50

the Curiosity Mars Landing. Duna is the equivalent of Mars in the Kerbal universe, and Ellison worked to perfectly recreate the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars which used the sky-crane landing method. A small rocket carrying the rover parachutes down to the Martian surface, then fires rockets to hover in mid-air before lowering the rover the rest of the way to the surface on a cable. To the average person, this may seem like a complicated mission to take on, but for someone that works for NASA and is constantly exposed to these concepts, the fact that above