Curiosity Fires Up the "Science Lab" --Begins Its Search for Life at Gale Crater

 

          

 

On Tuesday, or day Sol 1, Curiosity continues to familiarize itself with its new home in Gale Crater and check out its systems. The team's plans for Curiosity checkout included raising the rover's mast and continued testing of its high-gain antenna, whose pointing toward Earth will be adjusted on Sol 2.

Science data was collected from Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector, and activities were performed with the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station instrument. Curiosity transmitted its first color image from the surface of Mars, from the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, showing part of the north rim of Gale Crater. Additional calibration images were received from Curiosity's Navcam and Mastcam. That calibration test did not work as planned, but NASA said the REMS team was taking a look at the instruments parameters and expects to correct it soon.

All systems are go for deployment of the rover's remote sensing mast on Sol 2, followed by a 360-degree pan by the rover's Navcam. The Mastcam will also be calibrated against a target image on the rover. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter returned a spectacular image of Curiosity's landing site, depicting the rover, parachute, back shell, heat shield and descent stage. Data were received from both NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey.

The image above shows the location (green) where scientists estimate NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars within Gale Crater, based on images from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI). The landing estimates derived from navigation and landing data agree to within 660 feet (200 meters) of this MARDI estimate. The red line shows the northern edge of the targeted landing region, a probability distribution defined by an ellipse. The gray scale image is a mosaic from the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The color image is from MARDI.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/University of Arizona

Comments

[Paul]

It is not searching for life,it is searching for conditions that may have or still do support life as we know it.

[Shibin Dinesh]

if there were media in mars , how would they have seen the news of curiosity rover of nasa land on their surface ? Read an imaginative transcript of a news report from mars in my blog below :)
http://theeternaltruth.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/meanwhile-in-mars/

[ihumanity]

Let's start taking bets... There is microbial life on Mars or there isn't any life there whatsoever. I'm gonna bet that there is tons of microbial life

[PghPanther]

ihumanity.......

On that bet........are you talking about living mircrobial organisms?...

or the evidence of past living microbial organisms?.........

Or maybe a both?

I bet we find evidence of past life if we dig deep enough in the soil..............the radiation Mars experience makes life on the surface or 4 to 5 inches under the soil is improbable because of that.....lack of water (if that is true) is also an issue.

EO Wilson Harvard biochair says here on earth many feet below in the soil exists a whole world of slime molds that we know little about on our own planet.......could the same hold true for Mars deep in the soil away from radiation?......

I'm afraid Curiosity doesn't have the capablity of that kind of dig......

but I'll bet they find some microbial past life evidence at the level that Curosity can dig sooner or later.....

I would certainly love it if they find what you hope they do.....

[rob]

The results of the viking landers experiments for life detection were mostly POSITIVE... if you combine that with the data curiosity can collect we can have conclusive evidence for life on mars.

http://gillevin.com/mars.htm