Once NASA’s Curiosity rover safely touches down inside the Gale crater in August (*crosses fingers*), the real challenge begins. The 907kg, 3m long rover will begin searching for traces of a wet Martian past. But first, researchers at the JPL needed to make sure its sampling arm was up to snuff — here’s how they did it.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk around on Mars? For 99.99999% of us, this may be as close as we ever get. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has given us the honour of taking the lid off of this awesome, interactive eye-candy. Basically it’s Google Earth, for Mars.
Today the next Mars rover will start its journey to the red planet. Only this time, NASA is sending something the size of a car. How the hell?
There’s a reason Curiosity’s fancy new Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator isn’t going to be installed until just days before its launch. It’s radioactive, powered by a special form of plutonium dioxide that won’t be rendered useless by the red planet’s dust issues.
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The next Mars rover, dubbed Curiosity, is due to launch next spring and land on the red planet in August of 2012. But just today, it took its very first steps in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
