The invader prepares its attack: For the first time today Curiosity flexed its robot arm.
War of the Worlds! The Earth invading spacecraft on Mars has fired its laser for the first time!
Forgive me the hyperbole. I have this childhood vision from that moment when I first read H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, when the Martian tripod first rose up and fired its death ray at a crowd of curious humans. And here we are, a century after Wells penned that classic science fiction novel, and humans have put a spacecraft on Mars, Curiosity, capable of firing lasers! The laser isn’t a death ray but a scientific tool, but nonetheless the ironies remain delicious.
Curiosity’s travel plans tentatively outlined.
The promised land: where Curiosity is headed.
This image (cut out from a mosaic) shows the view from the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover toward the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, where Curiosity is likely to begin its ascent through hundreds of feet (meters) of layered deposits. The lower several hundred feet (meters) show evidence of bearing hydrated minerals, based on orbiter observations. The terrain Curiosity will explore is marked by hills, buttes, mesas and canyons on the scale of one-to-three story buildings, very much like the Four Corners region of the western United States.
Click through to the image itself. Like all mountains, what appears to be a featureless mountainside from a distance instead becomes a complex and rough terrain in close-up.
How Curiosity’s nuclear power plant works.
Interesting factoid: The tread of Curiosity’s tires will leave behind an imprint that reads “JPL,” only it is written in Morse code, not plain English.
Curiosity views its surroundings. More images here.
In another story, there is speculation that Curiosity’s first image actually captured the dust cloud produced when the spacecraft’s Sky Crane/rockets crashed after placing the rover on the ground and then flying away.
Compare this image, taken right after landing, with this image, taken later. The splotch on the horizon has disappeared.
The first color image from Curiosity.
And from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, images (scroll down to Update II) showing all of Curiosity’s hardware scattered across the Martian surface. More here.
And here is a good overview of the possible directions Curiosity might roam in the coming days.
The first science images from Curiosity, including nearby Mt. Sharp. More here.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter last night captured a spectacular image of Curiosity descending by parachute to the surface of Mars.
The first high resolution image from Curiosity.
This image isn’t that different from the first two, showing one of the rover’s wheels and the horizon. This camera is for guiding the rover’s movement and is not one of the cameras that will used for science. Nonetheless, it reconfirms that Curiosity is functioning as expected.
The United States has done it again: Curiosity has landed safely on Mars. Images have already been received, with the first showing one of the rover’s wheels on the ground. NASA has posted those first images. More here.
Tonight at 10:30 pm (Pacific), the new Martian rover Curiosity will hopefully touch down safely on the Martian surface to begin several years of research in the crater Gale.
What has been most amazing to me is the amount of interest in this landing by the press, especially the mainstream press. Normally these outlets don’t care that much for space exploration, a trend that began after the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 when it became trendy in liberal circles to down play space exploration so that “the money could instead be spent solving our problems here on Earth.”
Today, however, I count more than forty news articles on this upcoming landing, most of which come from mainstream sources. It seems that these outlets have finally discovered something that has been obvious from the beginning: the American public is fascinated with space exploration, and if you want to attract readers, it is better to provide coverage of what interests them rather than push a political agenda that few agree with.
Anyway, if you want to follow the landing live, go here for a full outline of options. Or go directly to NASA TV. Most of what you will see will the control room at JPL, with many engineers staring at computer screens waiting to find out if the landing was a success, about twenty minutes after it took place. This is because it will take that long for the communications signals to travel from Mars to the Earth. Essentially, Curiosity is on its own in this landing.
Curiosity’s journey and upcoming landing, a summary.
Good news: Mars Odyssey has successfully adjusted its orbit so as to provide up-to-the-minute communications when Curiosity lands on August 5.
Curiosity takes a picture of itself on its way to Mars.
The next Mars rover will land at Gale Crater.
The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater spans 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits. The crater is named for Australian astronomer Walter F. Gale. . . . The portion of the crater where Curiosity will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The layers at the base of the mountain contain clays and sulfates, both known to form in water.
More here, including images of landing site.
Gale Crater now heads the list for Curiosity’s landing site on Mars.
