New NASA rover to scout for life's habitats on Mars

[Abin Sur]

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-rover-scout-lifes-habitats-mars-062217776.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A nuclear-powered rover as big as a compact car is set to begin a nine-month journey to Mars this weekend to learn if the planet is or ever was suitable for life.

The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT) on Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.

The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth.

"This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday.

...

Curiosity's toolkit includes a robotic arm with a drill, onboard chemistry labs to analyze powdered samples and a laser that can pulverize rock and soil samples from a distance of 20 feet away.

If all goes as planned, Curiosity will be lowered to the floor of Gale Crater in August 2012 by a new landing system called a sky crane. Previously, NASA used airbags or thruster jets to cushion a probe's touchdown on Mars but the 1,980-pound (900-kilogram) Curiosity needed a beefier system.

"There are a lot of people who look at that and say, 'What are you thinking?'" Theisinger said. "We put together a test program that successfully validated that from a design standpoint it will work. If something decides to break at that point in time, we're in trouble but we've done everything we can think of to do."

The rover, which is twice as long and about three times heavier than the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, also needed more power for driving at night and operating its science instruments.

Instead of solar power, Curiosity is equipped with a plutonium battery that generates electricity from the heat of radioactive decay.

(more at link)

[L0oniX]

1. Maybe they can spend more millions to make one that finds life in Detroit.

[RKP5637]

2. Probably the human species F'ed up Mars and came here eons ago to F up Earth too. No wonder

we are isolated in a far corner of the universe. It's more than chance IMO.

[Abin Sur]

3. Mars *might* have been marginally habitable a couple billion years ago.

Humans have only been around for a few hundred thousand years, depending on your definition of "human". That makes a Martian origin for humanity unlikely, to say the least. :)

[RKP5637]

5. Yeah, good point!

:) :) :) :hi:

[meow2u3]

4. Do they want to vaporize Marvin the Martian before he blows up the Earth?

NASA must be looking for his Imodium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator. :rofl: