A recent NASA Image of the Day was Curiosity, the successor to Spirit and Opportunity.
Curiosity is the rover that will house NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), due to launch on November 25, 2011, and land on Mars on August 6, 2012. The rover and its mobile lab will perform a wide range of remote sensing tasks, including (hopefully? finally?) answering the question of whether Mars is or was capable of supporting microbial life.
At 900kg, Curiosity is five times as massive as the spectacularly successful Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and it will house ten times the mass of scientific instruments. Powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, Curiosity will be capable of traveling at up to 90 m/hr and will easily roll over obstructions as large as 75cm. The rover is controlled by a pair of onboard computers that are admittedly less powerful than an iPhone, but they’re also hardened to withstand the radiation and other hardships of space travel and interplanetary exploration.
Curiosity will be deployed to the surface of Mars using a new high-precision entry, descent, and landing system, as depicted below:
If you’d like to know more about the Mars Science Laboratory, the Wikipedia page includes a lot of high-level information that will be of interest. As well, back in April, Boing Boing had a great series of photos showing the rover during assembly.
By Roy Wood
June 17, 2011 | 8:15 am |
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