No previous Martian rover has been so sophisticated or capable. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned. The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded. Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.
In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.
Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags like its much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, did in Besides, this new way should provide for a more accurate landing. Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen as the landing site because it's rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it would be there.
The rover - 10 feet long and 9 feet wide - should be able to go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer because of its power source: The nuclear generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launch accident. NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the Martian surface.
This is the third astronomical mission to be launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA since the retirement of the venerable space shuttle fleet this summer. NASA hails this as the year of the solar system.
Explore further. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. More from Astronomy and Astrophysics. Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form. While we are getting used to new sounds of our names, we are marvelling at the landscape in front of us, which is very diverse, both in the rover workspace and in the walls around us.
Planning is all about getting the data, and here are three new sols to do so. This is because the rover could shift if the rock suddenly moved or broke under the wheel while the arm is out and close to a target. The engineers are working diligently to keep all our instruments safe, so they called a weekend with no contact science.
It happens occasionally, and except for that little rock squeezed under the rover wheel, all is happy and safe on Mars and on Earth. The team quickly turned to the instruments that do not need arm use to add a few more of those observations. Curiosity has a few other items on her to-do list over the weekend. CheMin is investigating a sample we drilled a while back and that has been kept in the sample cell since: Zechstein.
If you now wonder when and where Zechstein was, look here. Of course, the weather will be observed through temperature, pressure and atmospheric imaging observations, which include a dust devil movie.
Navcam right image showing the drive direction and the dark, low resistant ridge that we are driving towards in this plan.
Another successful drive on Mars resulted in a dusty bedrock workspace with nodules and small raised ridges in front of the rover. Curiosity also has a view towards larger scale, dark, resistant ridges that we have noticed within the more subdued and lighter coloured, more typical bedrock in this area.
Is the ridge there because of the presence of a harder, more resistant mineral that might have formed as fluid flowed through the rock? Determining the chemistry of the feature could help to figure out why the ridge is there. Looking further afield, Curiosity will image one of the larger scale, dark, resistant ridges with a ChemCam RMI mosaic.
The drive planned tosol should take us closer to one of these ridges, which we hope to investigate in future plans. Our plan was also full of atmospheric and environmental observations, particularly as we are expecting an increase in dust within the atmosphere as a regional storm passes by. We planned Mastcam basic tau, crater rim extinction and sky survey observations as well as a Navcam line of sight observation and suprahorizon movie.
As the APXS payload uplink and downlink lead today, I was responsible for reporting on the downlink from the previous plan and uplinking our observation for this plan. I also helped to pick the El Fosso target. Today was one of those planning days when everything went smoothly. We have to ensure the safety of our instruments and the rover. Tosol, Curiosity woke up in a new mapping quadrant, Roraima. The Roraima quadrant is named after the northern-most state of Brazil and Mount Roraima, which is the highest peak in the Pakaraima mountains which sits between Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana.
The terrain in the Roraima region on Earth looks somewhat similar to the area Curiosity is in — with flat-topped hills and some steep slopes. Curiosity will be heading toward a narrow pass bordered by some small flat-topped mesas worthy of the Roraima name.
As we head southward, we will likely be parking near some of these tall hills and cliffs in order to get close-up images. On Saturday, three of the crew simulated a descent on to the surface of Mars in a "lander" module.
The next walk, by Smoleevskiy and a Chinese crew member, Wang Yue, is scheduled for Friday, followed by another four days later. The landscape is covered with reddish sand and built to resemble the surface of the Gusev crater on Mars, a potential landing spot for a future mission to the planet.
The next logical step for Mars exploration is permanent settlement, where crews that go to Mars stay and build a new society. Humans settling on Mars will inspire us all to make Earth a better place.
Technology, scientific understanding, cooperation — is there anything we cannot achieve? Mars One was founded in with the goal of sending humans to Mars to stay. Instead of trying to return them, more crews would be sent every two years, establishing a permanent, ever-growing settlement on the Red Planet. Permanent settlement missions place even higher demands on the crew than a return mission. A first permanent settlement crew would be on Mars for two years before the second crew joins them.
They would be able to communicate with friends and family on Earth, but only with time delays.
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