Mission to Mars Landing on Mars: Description

Mission to Mars

Landing on Mars:

Description of a Mission - the Mars Rover Curiosity

The landing of the Mars Rover is an incredible achievement for mankind, as well as for the United States' huge lead in interplanetary science. The mission is the largest space mission to Mars ever conducted, and has cost billions of dollars and taken a decade to materialize to this point. The landing of the Mars Rover was viewed by millions of people on the Internet, and through live streams at NASA headquarters. (NASA.gov) The scientists who have been a part of the project have been giving interviews and have become instant celebrities to space fans everywhere. In business, knowing about what is happening with the Curiosity rover is important to understanding that the world is constantly changing, and that knowing the latest news that is spreading around the world is an important aspect of learning and maintaining one's ability to be at the top of his or her game.

The latest and most advanced Mars Rover is named "Curiosity," and is the size of a small SUV. It has eight robotic arms, and is powered by a nuclear reactor. (Curiosity, Wikipedia.org) The reactor serves a dual purpose; the first being to power the rover for ten years as it travels through the extreme climate of Mars makes for a very difficult scientific mission. The second function of the nuclear battery is that of a heat source, helping Curiosity to maintain its core functions throughout the year. The previous Mars rovers had to hibernate at nighttime due to the lack of sunlight and the bitter cold outside. Curiosity will be able to conduct its scientific missions year round. The rover will be able to use onboard laser beams to analyze rock fragments. It contains several cameras to observe every second of its Martian adventure. The rover also tested a new way to land on Mars that may be vital for any future man mission to the red planet. Instead of parachuting to the surface, like the previous two rovers, Curiosity was airlifted down, and then it descended to the surface on a platform that was being suspended by short-term rocket boosters. The landing was bizarre by Earth standards, but exceptional science requires exceptional solutions.

The mission to Mars is more than simply seeing if NASA can reach the red planet with such a large payload. The mission was developed with many types of detectors that are piecing together the puzzle of Mars' surface. The deep grooves that can be seen with the naked eye on the surface of Mars were once thought to be the canals of alien Martians. With the advance of powerful telescopes, however, we can now see that the surface of Mars was indeed barren of life. The mission of Curiosity goes one step beyond our current knowledge by determining whether running water did at once time spread across the surface of Mars, and if so, whether any forms of Martian life formed on the surface. This life would have been very simple, basically microbes, but the Curiosity rover has the tools to study this life as if it were a mobile laboratory for NASA scientists. Once the primary experiments of Curiosity have been performed, more experiments can be ordered for the remainder of the battery life on the rover, which can be up to ten years.