Mars Rover to Land After 352 Million-mile Space Jaunt

The excitement at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California neared threshold levels on Thursday as its Mars rover made its final approach to the red planet and its planned landing on Sunday (August 05). The mission hopes to unlock clues to whether there was ever life on Mars.

 

[Adam Steltzner, NASA Engineer]:

"The purpose of this is that we are taking a big rover to the surface of Mars. We are looking to do big science and big science requires big instruments, requires big rover and novel entry, descent and landing system which I just spoke about. The science, the goal, is to understand the past environment and present environment of Mars, to see if it has a possibility for being habitable for life."The rover, also known as Curiosity, has been careening towards our neighborly planet since its launch in November. The nuclear-powered rover the size of a compact car is expected to end its 352-million-mile journey on August 6.Landing is by no means guaranteed. To transport the one-ton rover and position it near the mound, engineers devised a complicated system that includes a 52-foot diameter supersonic parachute, a rocket-powered aerial platform and a so-called "sky crane" designed to lower the rover to the ground.But scientists like their chances.

 

[Adam Steltzner, NASA Engineer]:

"There is a lot of intellectual investment, the team has developed a truly fantastic, novel EDL (entry, descent and landing) architecture that is the product of our imaginations. It is exactly what we think it should be."The actual landing zone is a 12-mile-by-4-mile area inside an ancient impact basin known as Gale Crater.The crater, one of the lowest places on Mars, has a 3-mile-high mountain of what appears to be layers of sediment.Scientists suspect the crater may have once been the floor of a lake.

 

[Michael Myers, NASA Scientist]: 

"I think also as background and some necessary steps, we need to take measurements on Mars to understand the planet. Not only in terms of science but to understand what would be the safest way to get to Mars and to learn the safest way to get there and to have humans get there and explore."

 

NASA last week successfully repositioned its Mars-orbiting Odyssey spacecraft so that it would be able to monitor Curiosity's descent and landing and radio the information back to ground controllers.