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About Me
Popular Posts
-
The Romans knew of seven bright objects in the sky: the Sun, the Moon, and the five brightest planets. They named them after their most...
-
On the afternoon of 4th March 1966, a squadron of jet fighters hovered over Aizawl and dropped bombs leaving a number of houses in flames...
-
Saturn is sometimes called the ”Jewel of the Solar System” because its ring system looks like a crown. The rings are well known, but o...
-
A new space suit, as of 2009, costs between 13 and 16 million each, to include maintenance. They do not make a new one for every astrona...
-
What happened to SS Ourang Medan or “Man from Medan” in Malaysia is perhaps one of the most fascinating and mind-boggling mysteries that ...
-
This hypothetical cosmic body acts in the exact opposite manner of a black hole. Instead of pulling in matter, a white hole expels it ...
-
There are nearly 38,000 of man made objects orbiting the earth since the launch of sputnik in 1957, such as parts of...
-
A team at Boston Children’s Hospital have invented a micro-particle that can be injected into your bloodstream to oxygenate your blood – ...
-
Popular theories solving the mystery So what caused the ships and aircraft to disappear mysteriously? There have been many research an...
-
Saturn floats. As big as the planet Saturn is, if you were to put it in the universe's biggest glass of water, it would float. This i...
Archive for September 2013
Overview
- Curiosity is just the name of the rover; the overall mission is referred to as the Mars Science Laboratory or MSL
- Of the previous 39 missions to Mars, including orbiters and landers, only 15 have been successful
- All six successful landers have been NASA missions, though a Soviet lander did broadcast for 14 minutes before contact was lost
- The Mars Science Laboratory mission cost $2.5 billion which is about $1 billion over budget
Specifications of the rover
- The Curiosity rover weighs 900 kilograms
- When on Mars it will be able to move at 30 meters per hour depending on the terrain
- Curiosity has 17 cameras and 10 other scientific instruments
- These include a mobile organic chemistry lab and a laser that can vaporise rocks
- The rover is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and lithium-ion batteries
The Mission
- The main mission is expected to last for one Martian year or about 98 weeks
The MSL mission has four scientific goals:
- Determine whether Mars could ever have supported life
- Study the climate of Mars
- Study the geology of Mars
- Plan for a human mission to Mars