Philosophy
"Mars rover aims for deep crater"
by
Jonathan Amos
July 22nd, 2011
BBC News
Nasa's next Mars rover will be aimed at one of the planet's deepest craters.
MSL-Curiosity weighs almost a tonne and is the size of a Mini Cooper.
It will carry instruments to study whether Mars had the conditions in the past to support microbial life.
The US space agency has selected an equatorial depression called Gale Crater to investigate that question.
The $2.5bn rover will launch from Florida in November.
It should touch-down at the Red planet in August 2012.
Gale Crater is about 155km in diameter, and its lowest point is about 4.6km below datum, the reference point on Mars from which all other elevations are measured.
The landing zone will be much narrower than the crater's width. But Nasa has high confidence the rocket-powered descent system designed for MSL-Curiosity can put it inside a target zone less than 20km across.
If this Skycrane, as it is known, works as planned, the rover will be delivered close to the central peak of the crater.
This is a huge mountain that contains layers of deposits that should offer an impressive view of millions of years of Martian geological history.
It's also going to be just an incredibly beautiful place... where you have steep-sided cliffs with the rover going in the shallower valleys between them.
"What we've learnt over 150 years of exploration is that if you start at the bottom of the pile of layers and you go to the top, it's like reading a novel," said mission project scientist John Grotzinger from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"We think Gale Crater is going to be a great novel about the early environmental evolution of Mars that offers strong prospects potentially for the discovery of habitable environments, and maybe even a shot at discovering organic compounds."
Dr Grotzinger stressed that MSL-Curiosity is not a life-detection mission; it cannot identify microbes or even microbial fossils. But it can assess whether ancient conditions could have supported organisms.
This means Gale must show evidence for the past presence of water, a source of energy with which life forms could have metabolised, and a source of organic compounds with which organisms could have built their structures.
Gale has been chosen because satellite imagery suggests it may well be one of the best places on Mars to look for these biological preconditions.
Gale Crater [Wikipedia]
Mars Science Laboratory [Wikipedia]
"Curiosity"--Clara Ma names next Mars rover
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- Soon..."curiosity" Will Be "up, Up, And Away" Towards Mars...november 25th, 2011
"NASA: New Mars rover will look for the ingredients of life" November 10th, 2011 Los Angeles Times If you think that people who believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life are kooks, you probably haven't talked to a NASA space scientist...
- The Lambroghini Of Mars?--at 0.00037mph
"Pull over buddy. This is a school zone." "Martian Road Trip: A Three-Year Journey at 0.00037 M.P.H." by Michael D. Lemonick August 15th, 2011 Time Missions to Mars rarely go as planned. In some cases, that's a bad thing: from 1998...
Philosophy
"Curiosity" to land in Mars' Gale Crater
"Mars rover aims for deep crater"
by
Jonathan Amos
July 22nd, 2011
BBC News
Nasa's next Mars rover will be aimed at one of the planet's deepest craters.
MSL-Curiosity weighs almost a tonne and is the size of a Mini Cooper.
It will carry instruments to study whether Mars had the conditions in the past to support microbial life.
The US space agency has selected an equatorial depression called Gale Crater to investigate that question.
The $2.5bn rover will launch from Florida in November.
It should touch-down at the Red planet in August 2012.
Gale Crater is about 155km in diameter, and its lowest point is about 4.6km below datum, the reference point on Mars from which all other elevations are measured.
The landing zone will be much narrower than the crater's width. But Nasa has high confidence the rocket-powered descent system designed for MSL-Curiosity can put it inside a target zone less than 20km across.
If this Skycrane, as it is known, works as planned, the rover will be delivered close to the central peak of the crater.
This is a huge mountain that contains layers of deposits that should offer an impressive view of millions of years of Martian geological history.
It's also going to be just an incredibly beautiful place... where you have steep-sided cliffs with the rover going in the shallower valleys between them.
"What we've learnt over 150 years of exploration is that if you start at the bottom of the pile of layers and you go to the top, it's like reading a novel," said mission project scientist John Grotzinger from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"We think Gale Crater is going to be a great novel about the early environmental evolution of Mars that offers strong prospects potentially for the discovery of habitable environments, and maybe even a shot at discovering organic compounds."
Dr Grotzinger stressed that MSL-Curiosity is not a life-detection mission; it cannot identify microbes or even microbial fossils. But it can assess whether ancient conditions could have supported organisms.
This means Gale must show evidence for the past presence of water, a source of energy with which life forms could have metabolised, and a source of organic compounds with which organisms could have built their structures.
Gale has been chosen because satellite imagery suggests it may well be one of the best places on Mars to look for these biological preconditions.
Gale Crater [Wikipedia]
Mars Science Laboratory [Wikipedia]
"Curiosity"--Clara Ma names next Mars rover
- "kowabonga Dudes. Surf's Up."...curiosity Hits The Beach With A Sand Sample
"Nasa's Curiosity Mars rover to scoop sand sample" by Jonathan Amos October 5th, 2012 BBC News The Curiosity rover is preparing to scoop its first sample of Martian soil. The vehicle, which landed on the Red Planet in August, has driven up to a...
- Pyramidal Mars Rock And Curiosity Get Together
In a series of new raw images taken by Mars rover Curiosity's Navcams, it appears that mission managers have given the command for the rover's robotic arm to reach out to its first contact science target, a pyramid-shaped rock named "Jake...
- Curiosity Could Jeopardize Data By Contanination
"If the Mars rover finds water, it could be H2 ... uh oh!" If Curiosity locates H2O, a simmering NASA controversy will boil over. The rover's drill bits may be tainted with Earth microbes that could survive upon touching water. by Louis Sahagun...
- Soon..."curiosity" Will Be "up, Up, And Away" Towards Mars...november 25th, 2011
"NASA: New Mars rover will look for the ingredients of life" November 10th, 2011 Los Angeles Times If you think that people who believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial life are kooks, you probably haven't talked to a NASA space scientist...
- The Lambroghini Of Mars?--at 0.00037mph
"Pull over buddy. This is a school zone." "Martian Road Trip: A Three-Year Journey at 0.00037 M.P.H." by Michael D. Lemonick August 15th, 2011 Time Missions to Mars rarely go as planned. In some cases, that's a bad thing: from 1998...