by Chris McMahon
It’s been an exciting few weeks with the successful landing of Curiosity on the surface of the Red Planet. Thankfully the shamans of the Martian desert tribes considered the omens favourable and neglected to use their formidable mind powers to sabotage the mission. They have once more retired to their subterranean aquifers and palace-caves, allowing Curiosity to have its way with the dusty surface.
The landing was truly a cool thing – the one-ton rover hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack that gently lowered it into place.
Curiosity is right at the start of two-year mission that will focus on looking for indications of past life, particularly to determine whether prior conditions on the planet have be conducive to microbial life. It will do this by focussing on rocks.
It has been cunningly landed inside Gale Crater next to a three mile high mountain 96 miles in diameter, which has a nice array of exposed strata. The success of the landing – right on target – was truly stunning.
The mission team are now gearing up to follow the Martian day as they make use of the available light on the Red Planet. Since the Martian day is 40min longer than ours, their work shifts will start 40min later each day.
In an incredible piece of luck, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter managed to capture a picture of the descending Curiosity rover while it was still connected to its 16 metre wide (51 feet) parachute as it hurtled toward its landing site in Gale Crater. You can see the images here. The image was taken while the MRO was 340 kilometres (211 mi) away. Another image of Curiosity on its parachute can be found here.
One of the first things that Curiosity did when it hit the surface was to raise its high-gain antenna, which will increase the data rate at which it communicates with Earth (allowing better photos). Data will be relayed via Mars orbiter to conserve Curiosity’s power.
Curiosity carries 10 science instruments, including a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks elemental composition from a distance and an X-ray spectrometer. It has 17 cameras including a focusable colour camera on the tool-bearing turret at the end of Curiosities robotic arm. It is also capable of using a drill and scoop to supply samples to its on-board instruments. Observations from orbit indicated clay and sulphate minerals in the lower layers of the crater’s interior mountain, a promising indication of a wet history.
The latest video updates on Curiosity can be found here on the NASA site, with the latest pics in the Image Gallery. It’s truly spooky to look at these images, so clear you’d think you could just walk out onto the surface.
Let’s hope Curiosity manages to keep working way beyond its planned two year life, much as the smaller rovers Spirit and Opportunity managed to exceed all expectations of useful life.
Anyone else got any Curiosity news?
Mad Genius Club 
16 responses to “Hello Mars!”
You did hear about the last Martian flatcat? It was lounging at the landing point.
Yes, it’s true. Curiosity killed the flat cat.
Nice one. Now the flat cat is even flatter than it was before:)
At least it won’t be breeding at insane rates any more.
Yes – the poor old Martian flatmice had been hunted almost to extinction:)
And may this rover exceed it’s designed lifespan by as much as the first two!
And settle, once and for all, the Question. AKA, is there life on Mars. Hopefully, positively. 🙂
Absolutely. The science to come out of this one is going to be very interesting indeed. The combination of laser and X-ray spectrometer means than can check the composition of rocks at a distance, which is pretty damn cool. Me – I’m hoping that actual life does exist in the subsoil somewhere.
I’ve always found panspermia to be an intriging idea. But until we find other life, there’s no way to test it.
Yes. I certainly credit the possibility, but don’t really have an opinion either way. I suspect it might be one of many mechanisms. In any case, my feeling is life will arise pretty much anywhere it can.
There is a certain likelihood that there IS, indeed, life on Mars, NOW, because, no matter how hard they try, they never completely sterilize the vehicles they send.
LOL. Yep – we keep forgetting about that. I remember reading out the amazing survival rates of bacteria and viruses that made to the Moon and back. Pretty scary stuff really.
When Sojourner landed in 1997 was the only time I recall everyone at the little airport where I worked stopping what they were doing and watching the TV. All the APBs (airport bums), flight instructors, the secretary, mechanics as they rotated off shift, all clustered in the pilots’ lounge watching for the latest pictures and talking about space exploration, their memories of the Apollo program, the Space Shuttle and other such. And Matchbox ™ released a limited edition rover model. I’m glad we can still get excited about rovers and space exploration.
When I was a kid it seemed these things were happening all the time. I really wish there was more exciting stuff happening on the frontiers like this. It’s fantastic to be lifted out of your life and have your mind expanded to a new frame of reference – to see the possibilities.
Yes!
Y’a know, I was talking with someone recently and mentioned that I read science fiction. The other person looked back at me, wide-eyed, and asked, “You like all those monsters?” They know me as a professor who teaches software engineering, project management, risk management, research methods, empirical approaches, and other stuff like that, not a wild-eyed believer in monsters.
When I asked, they explained that to them, science fiction meant monsters such as Alien, Predator, and so on. Even Star Wars and Star Trek were mostly monsters, as far as they knew.
I tried to explain that to me, it’s more about looking at what humanity can do when faced with possibilities. Going beyond the day-to-day humdrum, and reaching for the stars.
But I’ll bet that if I suggested that Curiosity is a part of the science fiction world, I’d probably get reminded that they haven’t found any monsters.
Just pondering. How do you explain that science fiction and fantasy really isn’t just monsters, or I guess the latest is twinkly vampires? I mean, I see a continuity between science fiction dreaming about the infinite possibilities and steps like Curiosity, but it seems as if many people consider one to be unbelievable while the other is science. How do we build that bridge, to let people wander into the larger fields of science fiction?
It’s sure a lot cheaper to send a mission to Mars, or anywhere else, on paper. Call it a simulation, powered by the imagination of the author and the reader, that can go almost anywhere. And when it’s good, it shows us what might be, and how we might act when that happens.
Probably the easiest way is to show how science fiction as opened the way for new inventions by laying the conceptual framework and showing what’s possible. Like Arthur C Clarke wth his satellite ideas, the communications devices that appeared in SF long before they were made real, the concept of the internet (even thought it was not called that in fiction). OK – some things we did not get, like flying cars, but there is a lot of other technology that was first conceived in print.
Everything has to be imagined first, before it can be made real. Damn – wish I had more specific examples to list.
My “relationship” to Curiosity is in a sort of weird place.
I’m really really happy about it. I’m absolutely jazzed about the science that is going to happen. I’m hoping that my “formation of the solar system” EPS 365, class that starts on Tuesday, is going to be hijacked by Mars.
I have questions! I want to know if Mars had plate tectonics since it had volcanoes. I want to know if it ever had a magnetic field. I want to know how the iron oxidized without free oxygen, or if there was free oxygen could it exist in the absence of photosynthesizing life. And if non-life processes create free oxygen, then why do we assume that this never happened on Earth? Probably curiosity is going to be able to check some things… evidence of magnetic fields should be present in rocks. But I doubt any of my questions will be answered any time soon. (I might have to decide to take the grad school route and do it myself.)
But for NOW mostly, it’s just a source of frustration to try to be interested in what Curiosity is up to.
Sort of a paradox, that way.