After a successful launch this passed Saturday at 10:02am (eastern) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA's car-sized rover called Curiosity is headed for Mars. As we speak the $2.5 billion (day-umm) Mars Science Laboratory is blasting through space, quickly closing the 354 million mile (570 million kilometer, DAY-UMM, DAY-UMM) gap between Earth and Mars. It'll take this nosy bastard 8 and a half months to reach its destination which should put the rover on the Red Planet sometime in August 2012.
"We are in cruise mode," said MSL project manager Pete Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our spacecraft is in excellent health, and it's on its way to Mars."
So most of us have seen Mission to Mars, Red Planet, Ghosts Of Mars and let us not forget the cinematic master work that is Mars Attacks. So why the hell are we going over their to start shit with the big red rock and probably provoke an interplanetary incident anyway?! Well, MSL (Mars Science Laboratory, remember that there will be a test...at some point...probably...not)--Yeah so MSL wants to confirm or not confirm if Mars is, or ever was able to support microbial life. And if you saw any of those aforementioned documentary pieces then the answer would be a resounding YES, and laser guns. The space nerds over at NASA have been planning this Spielbergian mission since 2003 and was originally scheduled for a 2009 launch (slackers). Unfortunately they couldn't meet the 2009 deadline so they pushed it back to this passed Saturday which helped boost the overall cost by 56%. Theisinger while overall satisfied with the mission so far quickly pointed out that the launch was only phase one of a very complicated mission slated to last a minimum of about 2 Earth years (or until the lasers start firing). Theisinger went on to say, "We all recognize that this is the prologue to the mission — necessary, but not sufficient." "We all have our work cut out for us in the next eight and a half months."
Yeah, Curiosity isn't supposed to land on the Red Planet until sometime in August 2012. But the mission team members won't exactly be chillin' in Miami catching a Heat game (lock-out be damned) during the 1-ton rover's long cruise. No, them dudes will. be. workin'. For example, Curiosity's transport craft will make a series of trajectory changes during its journey, with the first happening in about 2 weeks. An engineering test is also scheduled to occur in the next few weeks, with a check of the rover's 10 science-y instrument-y doodads coming shortly thereafter (hey I didn't get Black Friday off either, suck it up nerds). Mission scientists will spend the 8 and a half month trip preparing for the rover's "peace keeping" spy work on Mars' surface. During this time they'll stage 10 separate operational readiness tests, gauging their ability to respond to any potential fuck ups that may occur. "You're basically just kicking the tires and trying to shake it all out," Caltech's John Grotzinger, MSL's project scientist, told Space.com.
When it does touch down on the Martian surface Curiosity will land at the 100-mile-wide (160-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. A mound of sediment rises 3 miles (5 km) into the Martian air from Gale's center. The rover will spy on this mountain's many layers, scrutinizing the red dirt and rocks for any signs that Martian environments may once have been habitable. The rover's landing will likely be more nerve racking than its launch did. A rocket-powered sky crane will lower Curiosity down onto the red rock on cables, a ballsy maneuver that has never been tried before (in real life). The MSL team have spent innumerable hours not playing Skyrim but instead designing, testing and validating this unprecedented landing system, and they won't even think about picking up a controller over the next eight and a half months to make sure they have the best chance of successfully getting Curiosity onto Mars' surface. Good luck guys it'll be awesome if you can finally not make Richard Branson sound like a crazy person. Mars here we come!! Props to MSNBC.
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