This graphic shows the locations of the cameras on NASA’s Curiosity rover. NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, loaded with the most-sophisticated instruments ever used to explore another world, touched down on the Red Planet early Monday morning, on a quest for signs of whether the Red Planet has evidence of past and present habitable environments. Nasa/ZUMA Press/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: zumawireworldphotosfive608796
While there are American heroes in London right now, there are also American heroes in Pasadena, California. NASA has just successfully landed the rover Curiosity on the surface of Mars Sunday night. The touchdown climaxes an eight year project, with the past eight months spent traveling to Mars. Curiosity launched from Cape Canaveral November 26, 2011 and successfully landed in Gale Crater (it’s on Mars) on August 6th. The most exciting part came during the final seven minutes through the Martian atmosphere. This little guy was all on his own to let the protective heat shield fall away, deploy his parachute, and fire rockets to slow his 13,000 mph speed. 14 minutes after Curiosity’s landing, NASA received it’s first photograph. Surviving those seven minutes of terror should merit a gold medal. The picture was a little grainy due to all of the dust kicked up, but still pretty cool nonetheless.
This artist’s concept shows the sky crane maneuver during the descent of NASA’s Curiosity rover to the Martian surface.The entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phase of the Mars Science Laboratory mission begins when the spacecraft reaches the Martian atmosphere, about 81 miles (131 km) above the surface of the Gale crater landing area, and ends with the rover Curiosity safe and sound on the surface of Mars set for August 5, 2012. In the depicted scene, the spacecraft’s descent stage, while controlling its own rate of descent with four of its eight throttle-controllable rocket engines, has begun lowering Curiosity on a bridle. HANDOUT/REUTERS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: rtrlfive408412
About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA�s Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home, Gale Crater as seen in this photograph released by NASA August 6, 2012. Mission Control at NASA�s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, received the image, taken by one of the vehicle’s lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras � or Hazcams. The rover landed on the Martian surface shortly after 10:30 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday (1:30 a.m. EDT Monday/0530 GMT) to begin a two-year mission seeking evidence the Red Planet once hosted ingredients for life, NASA said. HANDOUT/REUTERS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: rtrlfive420578
And what would be more romantic than a sunset on Mars? Curiosity sent back its first color photograph, and it just happened to be the rim of Gale Crater with a setting sun. Just check out this picture and imagine a picnic blanket and your significant other.
9.5 feet long and 8.9 feet wide, this is easily the biggest rover ever sent to space, about the size of a compact car, but with new metals, weighs only 1,982 pounds. Since this is the heaviest piece of machinery so far to be landed on Mars, NASA now is turning its hopes to sending a manned trip to the red planet, hopefully by the mid 2030’s. That would be pretty cool right? Following behind the other two rovers to have landed on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, scientists have evolved the construction to combat past difficulties. Since Spirit and Opportunity were both solar powered, they had to hibernate during the winter. Curiosity is nuclear powered, so that’s one point for NASA.
Pasadena California USA- (L-R) MSL-JPL team leaders John Grunsfield, Charles Elachi, Pete Theisinger, Richard Cook, Adam Steltzner and John Grotzinger, talk during a press conference for Curiosity landing Mars and on target Sunday evening at 10:32 pm PST. at JPL in Pasadena. Gene Blevins/Polaris/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: polphotos062879
An image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter, capturing the Curiosity rover still connected to its 51-foot-wide (almost 16 meter) parachute as it descended towards its landing site at Gale Crater on August 5, 2012 is seen in this handout picture released by NASA on August 6, 2012. “If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape,” said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California “When you consider that we have been working on this sequence since March and had to upload commands to the spacecraft about 72 hours prior to the image being taken, you begin to realize how challenging this picture was to obtain.” HANDOUT/REUTERS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: rtrlfive422587
With one phase over, Curiosity will start digging in the dirt for some of the building blocks of life, like carbon. It will also attempt to determine the evolution of the Martian atmosphere, the process of rock formation, the water and carbon dioxide cycle (if it’s there), and determine the spectrum of radiation on the surface.
NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, successfully landed on Sunday night and if all goes well it will begin searching for organic molecules in the Red Planet’s soil. This photograph of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, was taken during mobility testing on June 3, 2011. The location is inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. This mission will land Curiosity on Mars in August 2012. Researchers will use the tools on the rover to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ZUMA Press/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: zumawireworldphotosfive607424
Michael Meyer (L-R), lead scientist of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist, California Institute of Technology, Don Hassler, principal investigator, Radiation Assessment Detector on MSL, Southwest Research Institute and Michael Malin, principal investigator, Mars Descent Imager on MSL, Malin Space Science Systems discuss during a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calfiornia August 2, 2012. A graphic of the MSL Curiousity rover is shown in the background. The rover is set to land in the late evening of August 5, 2012. FRED PROUSER/REUTERS/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: rtrlfive408365
While it may seem like a lot of hype over nothing, successfully landing Curiosity truly is something to celebrate and is a huge step forward for humanity.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden congratulates NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John M. Grunsfeld after the Mars Science laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity successfully landed on Mars, Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes. BILL INGLES/UPI/Newscom. Find it on Newscom.com: upiphotostwo178449
Find more pictures of this historic event back at Newscom.
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