Congratulations NASA, it's a ... Rover?

This week the Mars Science Laboratory completed the first part of it's mission, flying from its birthplace in California to it's launch-pad in Florida. Here it will take it's first steps on a year long flight to Mars. NASA's latest prodigy arrived late on Wednesday night, weighing 7500 pounds and with all 3 of it's cameras, 4 spectrometers and 5 other sensors perfectly intact. 

Mars Rover Curiosity, Left Side View (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The last expedition to Mars proved a huge success, mostly down to the Spirit Rover. Spirit's heroic contribution to the exploration of Mars is to be commemorated in a service later this year, after Nasa chose to pull the plug on the ailing old timer on 24th May 2011. Spirit beautifully surpassed all expectations by running 5 3/4 years longer than her originally intended 90 sol (1 sol = 24hr 37 minutes) expedition. She even transmitted data and collected samples despite having to traverse backwards, dragging an injured front wheel in her wake! 

 A video from NASA reflecting on Spirit's Triumphs on Mars 

MSL's rover Curiosity is bigger, heavier and can travel further than Spirit and her brother Opportunity. Although Curiosity will still retain many of their more successful features she will also have equipment to gather samples of rock and soil and be able to distribute them to onboard analaytical instruments. And, unlike previous rovers, Curiosity is powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium. This means she can collect data for a full year, where previous, solar powered rovers, went into hibernation during winter months.

It's intended launch later this year, is a shimmering star on the horizon for Mars scientists, representing the first leap into a new decade of space exploration. The mission goal is to determine whether the landing site and surrounding areas have ever (or still can) support life. It also aims to prepare for human exploration by demonstrating the ability to land a very large and heavy rover, very precisely.

Curiosity's Science Instruments showing the 4 spectrometers and 3 cameras on board.

The Spacecraft has been designed to steer itself into landing in a similar series of moves that the astronauts landing a rocket would use, then slowly lower the rover into place by tether. This has made several, previously inaccessible, landing sites available by increasing the accuracy of landing by 5 times. However, the landing could still be anywhere within an area of 20 kilometers (see ellipse in image below). 

Image of Gale Crater showing 20km wide possible landing ellipse and layered mound in centre (NASA/JPL image)

The landing site will be chosen later this week by a crack team of scientists, choosing a spot which fulfills these criteria:

 i) Evidence that the area may once have, or still can, support life

 ii)Meeting the safety requirements and engineering problems faced by landing a rover

iii) Allow the rover to operate and perform its duties immeadiately

Out of four options the Gale Crater was today tipped by Nature to be favourite. The 3.5 billion year old crater is named after Walter Frederick Gale, an australian banker who became a renowned astronomer after discovering several comets and describing the canals on Mars. The crater has long been topic of discussion due to the layered mound in the centre. Suspected to be layered clay minerals with alternating layers of sulfur and oxygen-bearing minerals above, this peak could have formed due to periodic flooding and be protecting complex organic minerals indicative of microbial life. There are also several channels carved into the sides of the mound by water erosion which would provide ideal cross-sections for the rover to analyse. The Gale Crater is competing against Eberswalde Crater and Holden Crater who's river delta sediments may hide organic lakebed deposits. Whilst Mawrth Vallis, the mineralogists favourite as it contains some of the oldest and most complex rock sequences on Mars, appears to have come in last in a site selection workshop last month.

Layers visible in Gale Crater- Image taken by HiRise (NASA/JPL image library)

NASA is expected to make the decision next Friday and announce which landing site has won the week after, the rover will then remain incubated until it's launch from the Kennedy Space Centre at the end of the year. Congratulations NASA!