The Latest Kind

Curiosity: the desire to learn or know about anything

One of the most recent and greatest accomplishments ever done by NASA happened in August. Less than two months ago, the newest rover to the Mars collection has landed on the surface. It's name is Curiosity.

Perfect Name
A name that suites the rover perfectly well. Curiosity sets out to do just exactly what we are thinking about of Mars. We are curious to find out just what type of planet it used to be. The mysteries behind the scientific guesses that there used to be water on Mars, or if Mars would be a candidate of sustaining life in the past or possible, us in the future.

Curiosity's Delivery Package
Before Curiosity is able to be sent to Mars, JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) of NASA had to gather data about how they were going to land safely. As in the previous rover missions, NASA would still use a heat shield to get into Mar's atmosphere. The heat shield slows down the delivery package down considerably much, from 13,000mph to about 1,000 mph. That's about 92% of a loss of speed just from the heat shield. Then once it's down to 1,000mph it needs something else to slow it down even further.

JPL will use a parachute to slow down the rover after the heat shield gets dislodged. After the parachute is deployed it would slow down its decent to about 200 mph (Wall). But this parachute had to be much bigger than the previous ones because of the size of Curiosity was nearly twice as big as Spirit and Opportunity. This was an easier fix than the next problem.

Instead of using cushions around the rover like they did with Spirit and Opportunity, JPL had to figure out another way of landing because once again of the size of Curiosity. So they came up with a brand new idea for the car sized rover to land. NASA said this would be the "least crazy" idea they could come up with. It was a method called the Sky Crane. The Sky Crane would use rockets to slow down Curiosity until its speed is less than 2 mph (Wall). At long last, Curiosity will descend onto the Mars surface while attached to cables. Once all of the 6 wheels have touched down the Sky Crane would then detach the rover and fly away to a safe distance and crash.

Here is a video on what is known as the "7 minutes of terror."

Curiosity's Landing & Discovery
As Curiosity landed on Mars, it's first phases of operating was to test its instruments and programs. It was able to send quick low quality images of its landing within minutes of touching down. Some time after landing, Curiosity was able to send some better HD pictures of rocks and dirt it has found. These pictures were able to provide very good scientific evidence that there was once water on Mars (Kaufman). In the Washington Post here's what article writer, Marc Kaufman, had to say.

The confirmation of water flows came in the early days of a mission that had very consciously discarded the long-standing NASA directive to “follow the water” in Mars exploration.Although finding and studying the signatures of past water flows are important for Curiosity’s goal of identifying habitats that could have supported life, the mission motto is now “follow the carbon.” That element is present in all organic compounds, which are the building blocks of life on Earth and are expected to have been similarly essential to any possible Martian life.

Curiosity will be on Mars for the remainder of its life. Its mission will last about 2 years. It's got a lot of ground to cover to reach its final destination, Gale Crater. Its findings will possible change all of what we know on Mars and what we don't know. Curiosity is one of NASA's latest and greatest creations and this rover will help broaden our knowledge of the Mars frontier.

The horizon is setting, and so am I.
This is BE#8
Signing out...

Works Cited

Wall, Mike . "Mars Rover Curiosity's Sky Crane Was 'Least Crazy' Idea, NASA Says." 
          The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 03 Aug. 2012. Web. 02 Oct. 2012
          <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/03/mars-rover-curiosity-sky-crane_n_1738742.html>.

Kaufman, Marc. "Curiosity Mars Landing Site." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 
          28 Sept. 2012. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health
          -science/curiosity-rovers-mars-landing-site-was-once-covered-with-fast-moving-water-nasa-
          says/2012/09/27/9ce654a0-08d2-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_story.html>.

YouTube. Dir. NASA JPLnews. YouTube. YouTube, 22 June 2012. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. 
          <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s>.