Mars Curiosity

The Mars rover Curiosity safely landed on the red planet in the Gale crater on August 5, 2012. It was launched November 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will remain for one year on Mars, which is about 687 Earth days, however,  the parts are expected to physically last for about four (Earth) years. 

The rover houses 17 cameras. It weighs over a ton and is the size of a car.

It is the most advanced piece of engineering that has ever been to Mars. 

This is what it looks like:

The rover landed in the Gale Crater to study Mount Sharp. 
Here is picture of the crater, with the landing area circled. 
Mount Sharp is visible in the center of the crater. 



The Mars mission has four scientific goals: determine whether Mars could ever have supported life, determine the role of water, and to study the climate and geology of Mars.

 

Curiosity has six main scientific objectives:

1. Determine the mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials.
2. Attempt to detect chemical building blocks of life (biosignatures).
3. Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils.
4. Assess long-timescale Martian atmospheric evolution processes.
5. Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.
6. Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.
   

As part of its exploration, it also measured the radiation exposure in the interior of the spacecraft as it traveled to Mars, and it is continuing radiation measurements as it explores the surface of Mars. This data would be important for a future manned mission.

It takes seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface. At this point, the spacecraft operates itself. No guidance from Earth will be received and any tiny error will ruin the entire process. NASA referred to this 7-minute time frame as the '7 minutes of terror.' The craft is speeding toward the red planet at 13,000mph and it has to decelerate to zero and resist 1600 degree heat from moving so fast. Information from Curiosity takes 14 minutes to reach Earth. This means that when we get confirmation that it's at the top of the atmosphere, the rover will have already been on the surface of Mars, 

dead or alive, for seven minutes.  

Click here for a video explaining the dangerous landing of Curiosity.

This video says it all. All the planning, testing, and engineering that went into building Curiosity is incredible. Of all the billions of things that could have gone wrong, even just one minor detail, the rover had a PERFECT landing!

NASA has done a great job!

Here is a picture of the landing process that's detailed in the video.

Here is another picture, very similar to the one above, 
but explaining why the '7 minutes of terror' are so scary and important.

Within minutes of landing, Curiosity sent this image to NASA. 

You can clearly see the wheels of the rover sitting on the surface of MARS! 

This has definitely brought out my inner nerd.

Another image soon arrived from the other side of the rover. 

In this one, the rover captured it's own shadow. 

This image shows Mount Sharp. 

This mountain is the main focus on this research trip.  

The first color image from the rover.

An image captured of the craft in decent with the parachute deployed. That parachute is the largest and strongest supersonic parachute ever built. 
It must withstand 65,000 pounds of force.

Here is a diagram of the entire MSL spacecraft.

(1-Cruise stage; 2-Backshell; 3-Descent stage; 

4-Rover; 5-Heat shield; 6-Parachute)

The only part that reaches the surface of Mars is the part number 4.

 

Here is a picture of the 'crime scene.'
After lowering the rover, the sky crane flew away and crashed far away from the rover. You can see where the rover landed and where other debris landed on the Martian surface in this picture.

The rover landing happened at 1:30am on Sunday night (August 5). 

I stayed up watching the mission control of the propulsion lab in California even thought I had to get up early the next morning. It was so worth it.