NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Report — February 14, 2014
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.
You guys are truly the unsung heroes (besides our soldiers of course) of this country. If it were not for the free spirited geeks we would have collapsed like the Egyptians and the Romans did with their top heavy culture!
Asteroid coming!!!
Thanks JPL…..but these updates are getting few and far between ! More regular updates please !
when will curiosity start to analise the rock layers of mount sharp?
Why aren't the wheel-tires made of something sturdy like lightweight vest bulletproofing?
Why haven't you returns to the moon
UNBELIEVABLE! It's Unbelievable how sloppy the science on this mission is. They see what looks like activity of liquid on Mars marking the surface and possibly making stone like debris. They don't even consider that the liquid could be have been a number of liquids besides water because they are their for ONE REASON; to prove life existed on other planets.
THEN; according to extrapolation from a Nat Geo TV report, the wonder minds of NASA decided that they needed to take samples of the building blocks of living organisms FROM EARTH TO MARS! SO they loaded a number of these samples from earth and brought them along. WHY? The only thing we get from the rover is data; everything it returns can be interpreted here with all the samples you could ever need, without contaminating ALL OF MARS by bringing life along for the ride!
THEN one their very first soil sample experiment they realized that part of these samples of life had been broken open in transect and leaked out in the test unit and ultimately WAS RELEASED ONTO THE SURFACE OF MARS TO BLOW AROUND AND CONTAMINATE THE WHOLE PLANET!
This means that all future test that report life on Mars are suspect AT BEST.
They Call This Science? Why?
iM gAy