Curiosity Rover: Our Lastest Steps on Mars

The past few months have proved to be a time of enormous scientific accomplishment. Not only have the atomic physicists come to find the fist piece of hard evidence to support the Higgs boson theories, but NASA's planetary scientists have successfully landed another rover onto the surface of Mars.

The image above depicts the Mars Curiosity Rover before it was sent into space nine months previously. Image provided by NASA.

As many of you may already be aware, NASA’s Curiosity Rover, landed on the surface of the planet on August 6th, 2012 after an approximate 8 month journey through space. It landed in Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars’ surface. The approximate landing site can be seen on the Google Mars website (link provided below). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google Mars, it is a map program very similar to Google Earth that provides information about the topography and geography of Mars' suface. It was created from satelite imagery accumulated from several past and current Mars missions. It is not yet as complex as Google Earth, but it does give the viewer a pretty good idea of Mars topography.

Like many past Mars missions such as the Mars Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Phoenix Lander, and several others, the Curiosity Rover was designed to record images of the planet and carry out several important experiments that will allow scientists back home to learn more about the red planet. In particular, Curiosity is tasked to collect rock and soil samples using on board equipment, process and distribute the samples to the appropriate test chambers and/or analytic chamber and use the samples collected to look for evidence of microbial life.

The mission is designed to have a power supply that should allow for a full Mars’ year of exploration (687 Earth days). The Curiosity rover holds the ultimate scientific payload in that it holds several billion dollars worth of scientific equipment which includes such instruments as:

1. Mars Hands Lens Imager- a camera mounted on the arm of the rover that allows for extreme close ups shots of rocks and soil.
2. ChemCam - an instrument that can send laser pulses that vaporize thin layers of material or soil targets. It includes a spectrometer to identify the atoms that are excited by the laser
3. Radiation Assessment Detector - an instrument that will characterize the radiation environment on the surface of Mars.

These are just a few of the many instruments that the rover is equipped with, for more information about the instruments check out the NASA Fact sheet (link below).

 If the Curiosity Rover were to discover microbial life on Mars, it would mean that Mars had at one point in its planetary history sustained life. This could also hold the potential for future life on Mars as well. So far though, no previous Mars missions have found any solid evidence to support the idea that microbial life is currently or once was on Mars. For now though, scientists can only wait and see what the rover will discover in its nearly two year journey on the surface of the red planet.

Sources and Links:

1. Google Mars Link: http://www.google.com/mars/#lat=5.090944&lon=148.359375&q=Gale Crater
2. NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
3. NASA Fact Sheet: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/mars-science-laboratory.pdf