NASA Curiosity Rover Report — September 19, 2013

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A NASA Mars Curiosity rover team member gives an update on developments and status of the planetary exploration mission. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered Curiosity to its target area on Mars at 1:31:45 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6, 2012 which includes the 13.8 minutes needed for confirmation of the touchdown to be radioed to Earth at the speed of light. The rover will conduct a nearly two-year prime mission to investigate whether the Gale Crater region of Mars ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks’ elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover’s analytical laboratory instruments.

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6 Comments

  1. If you wanted to send a program that was roughly one gigabyte in size to curiosity, how long would it take, and what is the rover's upload and download speed?

  2. Dear NASA, thank you for not completely obscuring the evidence of ancient structures technology and the evidence of a long ago civilization in your photo releases. Yes I do think it is annoying that you trickle the information in the manner you do, but I am grateful you leave at least what you do. Folks on YouTube who are experts at photo analysis have found buildings and even technology. Artifacts are everywhere. In some of the photos it looks like ancient junk is strewn everywhere. Thanks

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