NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Report – May 16, 2013
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.
Now, this takes us to the meat of the problem. Most proposals are in fact poorly designed and much too risky. A real mission to Mars will take some serious improvements in space transportation.
Right again, because the transportation problem does in fact have good, sensible solutions. One guy solved the LEO problem only to have DoD snatch it up and classify it, never to be seen again. A guy named Clapp used some common sense and realized it can be done with simple aircraft. Works for DARPA now and the AF is flying his toy on the same inclination as the Chinese space station. But NO, it's not being used to spy on them, they just exactly matched inclination to 50 deg for no reason.