News Flash: NASA Launches Mars 'Curiosity' Rover on Its Historic Mission (VIDEO)

        

NASA has launched its next Mars rover, capping a long-awaited mission to investigate whether the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life. The car-size Curiosity rover -the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL- blasted off atop its Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 a.m. ET Saturday, streaking into a cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The huge robot's next stop is Mars, though the 354-million-mile (570-million-kilometer) journey will take eight and a half months.

Curiosity should revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet and pave the way for future efforts to hunt for potential Martian life, NASA researchers said.

"It is absolutely a feat of engineering, and it will bring science like nobody's ever expected," Doug McCuistion, head of NASA's Mars exploration program, said of Curiosity. "I can't even imagine the discoveries that we're going to come up with."

Curiosity sports a rock-zapping laser and equipment designed to identify organic compounds — carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life as we know it. Some of these instruments sit at the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm. The arm also wields a 2-inch (5-centimeter) drill, allowing Curiosity to take samples from deep inside Martian rocks. No previous Red Planet rover has been able to do this, researchers say.

"We have an incredible rover," said MSL deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "It's the biggest and most capable scientific explorer we've ever sent to the surface of another planet."
Assessing Martian habitability

Curiosity is due to arrive at Mars in early August 2012, touching down in a 100-mile-wide (160-km) crater called Gale.

While the rover's launch was dramatic, its landing will be one for the record books, if all goes well. A rocket-powered sky crane will lower the huge robot down on cables — a maneuver never tried before in the history of planetary exploration.

A giant mound of sediment rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) into the Martian air from Gale Crater's center. The layers in this mountain appear to preserve about 1 billion years of Martian history. Curiosity will study these different layers, gaining an in-depth understanding of past and present Martian environments and their potential to harbor life.

"Going layer by layer, we can do the main goal of this mission, which is to search for habitable environments, " Vasavada said. "Were any of those time periods in early Mars history time periods that could have supported microbial life?"

If Curiosity climbs higher, its observations could shed light on Mars' shift from relatively warm and wet long ago to cold, dry and dusty today, researchers said.
"We want to understand those transitions, so that's why we're headed there [to Gale]," said Bethany Ehlmann of JPL and Caltech in Pasadena.

Curiosity isn't designed to search for Martian life. In fact, if the red dirt of Gale Crater does harbor microbes, the rover will almost certainly drive right over them unawares.The MSL is a key bridge to future efforts that could actively hunt down possible Martian life forms, researchers said. Curiosity's work should help later missions determine where — and when — to look.

"We don't really detect life per se," Vasavada said. "We set the stage for that life detection by figuring out which time periods in early Mars history were the most likely to have supported life and even preserved evidence of that for us today."


The Daily Galaxy via NASA, jpl.nasa.gov and msnbc.msn.com

Comments

[Mike]

Awesome, good luck and godspeed Curiosity!

[Logan Fisher]

" In fact, if the red dirt of Gale Crater does harbor microbes, the rover will almost certainly drive right over them unawares." So it has a rock vaporizing laser but no microscope. No wonder we haven't found microbes or fossils yet. That's like sending a blind man to the zoo and having him sniff around to figure out what animals are there.

[DwarfGalaxy]

Thousands of years from now, beings from another system will find strange mechanical objects half-buried and frozen on the surface of what we call Mars, concluding that they are not alone in this Universe after all. Little do they know at that point, that the creators of those strange machines are long gone, having self-destruct in a catastrophic series of wars.

[dr burke]

So, they launch a Mars probe designed to drill in rock, but land in clay that will
muck it up and stick to the drill head device? You know how sticky clay is, may even
stick to the wheels? I wonder how you laser clay? Hmmmm. Science at its best.
I would drill last there, if I were they. So work Nasa.

[dr burke]

I would drill there last. Good work Nasa.

[Gaugain Perpignac]

God speed Atlas. Good job NASA.

[Jos van Son]

I don't understand the sceptisism about the missions investigation and the choises of the experts. Let them go ahead and be curious about the results. Good work Nasa, step by step.

[smartypants]

OK, it is like this. The laser is to scare the crap out of the microbes, and while they are crapping they should give off some methane so the detectors will pick them up! Sounds simple enough. Hahahaha. Honestly though, I havent read anything on this craft we are sending there as far as what instruments it has or its capabilities, BUT I am sure the clay there will either be frozen or dried out and not stick to anything (at least till the laser melts it). Just remember that this is all new still even to the people who have the most experience in launching and running machines on distant planets and we are still in the very much lower part of the learning curve. Mistakes will happen and rovers will be roverjacked by martians tired of walking. But even if only 1 instrument onboard works we will learn with it. Sorry for lecturing but some times i cant shut up. Hahahahaha
I was looking at the picture though and it looks like the central hill/mountain has been blurred out. Or maybe it flinched just as the photo snapped. Look like this to anyone else?

[SB]

Uh, sorry guys, there are 3 parts here on my workbench here, ah, I think they're suppose to hold on the rover wheels on the left side, ah, is it too late to ah, turn it around? It will only take me a minute or two. Ah, guys?

[Mark]

I would give everything to drive that rover remotely on mars by my will :)

[Greg]

Clay on earth is sticky because it is moist with water. The clay on mars is left over from a watery period millions of years ago.. I doubt it is still moist.

[SB]

The clays can hold H2O making it frozen and clumpy, the Phoenix lander had a problem with too much cohesion of the soil. It wouldn't fall out of the scoop into the kilns. Not so much of a problem near the equator.

[UGGs On Sale]

I will support what the thread starter has said in every word, which also expresses my point of view completely.