It will take eight and a half months for Curiosity to make the 345-million-mile journey
to Mars.
The rover, officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory, was hoisted
into a cloudy sky on Saturday morning by an Atlas V rocket. More than 13,000
guests crowded the Cape Canaveral space center for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s first mission to Earth’s
next-door neighbor in four years, and the first launching of a Martian rover in
eight years.
Pan Conrad, a NASA astrobiologist whose
instrument seeking carbon compounds is on the rover, had a shirt made for the
occasion. The blue blouse was emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words
“Next stop Mars!”
The one-ton Curiosity is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 scientific instruments that
will sample Martian soil and rocks, analyzing them on the spot. It also has a
drill and a stone-zapping laser machine.
It is “really a rover on steroids,” said
Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science at NASA. “It’s
an order of magnitude more capable than anything we have ever launched to any
planet in the solar system.”
The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission
is to see whether Mars might once have been hospitable for microbial life — or might
even still be conducive to life. No actual life detectors are on board; rather,
the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.
With Mars the eventual goal for astronauts,
NASA will also use Curiosity to measure radiation on the planet. The rover also
has a weather station that will measure temperature, wind and humidity, and a
computer application with daily weather updates is planned.
The world has launched more than three dozen
missions to Mars, the planet most like Earth in the solar system. Yet fewer
than half of those quests have succeeded.
This month, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in
orbit around Earth, rather than
en route to the Martian moon Phobos.
“Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the
solar system,” Ms. Hartman said. “It’s the death planet, and the United States of
America
Curiosity’s landing next August will be particularly
hair-raising.
In a protective
“aeroshell,” the rover will be
lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and a tether system similar to
the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.
Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags, as its
much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity , did in 2004.
Besides, the new method should provide for a more accurate landing. Astronauts
will need to make similarly precise landings on Mars one day.
Curiosity will spend at least two years
roaming around Gale Crater,
chosen as the landing site because it is rich in minerals. Scientists have said
that if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, that
would be it.
“I like to say it’s extraterrestrial real
estate appraisal,” Ms. Conrad said with a laugh last week.
Curiosity’s seven-foot robotic arm has a
jackhammer on the end to drill into the rock, and a seven-foot mast is topped
with high-definition and laser cameras. No previous Martian rover has been so
sophisticated or capable.
The rover, about 10 feet long and 9 feet wide,
should be able to go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer
because of its power source: 10.6 pounds of radioactive plutonium. The nuclear
generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launching
accident.
NASA expects the rover to put at least 12
miles on its odometer.
This is NASA’s third space mission to be
launched from Cape Canaveral since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet this summer. The Juno probe is en route to Jupiter, and
the Grail mission’s twin spacecraft are set to arrive on the Moon on New Year’s Eveand New Year’s Day.
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