If space truly is the final frontier, than NASA just sent another unmanned explorer to our second most-visited outpost.
After eight years of planning and a six-month trip, the Mars Science Laboratory space probe mission successfully completed its goal: to safely land Curiosity, the most expensive and most sophisticated rover NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists have ever built.
Curiosity touched down on the Martian surface late Sunday night following a complex seven-minute landing sequence. It was unprecedented and the engineers who waited breathlessly at JPL”s Pasadena facility burst into raucous cheers and applause when touchdown was confirmed.
I”m sure many would react similarly with the fate of a $2.5 billion project hanging overhead.
And now, this newest rover will perform experiments in an attempt to better understand our desert planetary neighbor.
Scientists believe that billions of years ago Mars used to be covered in water much like Earth.
I remember learning in Astronomy 101 that many theories abound as to why Mars changed from a watery planet similar to Earth, one that possibly might have contained some form of life, into the desert planet with a carbon dioxide atmosphere.
Water still exists in its polar regions, though it is frozen carbon dioxide, known as “dry ice,” and not the familiar water on Earth. The search for Mars” watery history is one of the many reasons that NASA continues to explore the now-arid planet.
Much like its name, Curiosity”s mission is to perform experiments in another attempt to discover Mars” ancient history and see if it really was similar to our own planet.
Curiosity is building upon the success of past planetary probes and rovers during the past 50 years.
NASA first sent spacecraft to Mars in the early 1960s, with Mariner 4 performing the first “flyby” mission to the planet in 1965. It provided the first pictures, however grainy, of the Martian surface. Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 followed in 1969, performing a tandem “flyby.” The dual mission photographed approximately 20-percent of the planet”s surface.
In 1971, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet as it entered the Martian orbit. It photographed more than 70 percent of the planet”s surface from an altitude of 930 miles.
In 1976, NASA”s Viking program landed two probes on the Martian surface. The data these two probes collected formed much of what scientists knew about the planet until the late 1990s. The probes also had two orbiters that continued to orbit Mars and transmit data and photos back to Earth. They provided the first pictures of the planet”s rocky, desert surface.
The Viking program lasted into the early 1980s. Its images and data collected formed many of the hypotheses for the presence of water on Mars. Huge river valleys were found and showed the presence of flooding, carving out the landscape.
On July 4, 1997, tiny rover Sojourner wheeled off its landing craft and onto the Martian surface. It was the first rover on the planet. It operated for 83 Martian days, or sols, analyzing rocks near its landing site and transmitted back about 550 photos. The rocks were found to be similar to rocks found on Earth, with evidence of Martian volcanic activity in the past as well as flooding.
In January 2004, twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the surface inside separate craters they were to explore. Originally designed to last for 90 sols, the two rovers received five mission extensions as they explored much of the Martian surface.
Spirit traveled 4.8 miles on Mars before one of its wheels got stuck in a crater and was shut down in 2010. Opportunity has traveled more than 20 miles on the surface and, aside from being shut down occasionally during Martian winters, is still active and researching craters on the surface.
Curiosity is estimated to be the size of a small SUV, much larger than Spirit and Opportunity, which makes it more mobile on the rocky surface. It will continue to analyze rocks and craters and search for water, as well as assess Martian atmospheric evolution processes.
I”m excited to see what Curiosity will discover about Mars. I found many of the theories that Mars was similar to Earth fascinating and hope the data continues to show this.
I also hope it can shed some light on how Mars evolved into a desert planet. It could offer insights into preventing the same thing happening on Earth. To quote “the Science Guy” Bill Nye, “science rules.”
Kevin N. Hume can be reached at kevin.n.hume@gmail.com or call directly 263-5636 ext. 14. Follow on Twitter: @KevinNHume.
