The complex landing of the Curiosity rover is just the beginning of the process. In the next two years at least, the scientists will try to find, with the help of the ten scientific instruments, organic materials and evidence of life on Mars in the past and possibly also in the present
"Contact confirmed, we have landed safely on Mars," announced the loudspeaker in the control center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) after the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover landed on Mars.
Lair entered the atmosphere at a speed of over 21 thousand km/h. Curiosity's unique landing system worked well during the challenging entry, atmospheric transition and landing, allowing the vehicle to land and take pictures shortly afterwards.
Outbursts of excitement, applause and hugs erupted in the control room at JPL and on social media after contact with the ground was confirmed. Upon landing, the Curiosity rover completed its eight-month, 560-million-mile journey to reach Mars, land on the surface, use a supersonic parachute and a jet-powered space crane, and now begin a two-year mission to search for past or even present life on Mars.
After years of planning, setbacks, ups and downs for the Red Sea Science Laboratory, teams of scientists and engineers were able to celebrate. As of 08:32 a.m. on August 6, Curiosity became the largest rover to ever travel on Mars.
During the two-year mission, Curiosity will explore Gale Crater by driving, digging, collecting samples, taking endless pictures and firing their laser beam at rocks to determine the chemical composition of the Martian region. In particular, the scientists will try to look for organic carbon that may indicate fossilized life forms. The spacecraft's instruments will also "smell" the air on Mars and try to sniff if it contains gases such as methane, which may be a sign of life.
Curiosity carries ten scientific instruments with a total mass 15 times that of the previous rover Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are for the first time on Mars, such as the laser device that will be used to examine the composition of the elements in rocks from a distance. The vehicle will also use excavators and instruments at the end of its robotic arm to collect soil and dust samples from the rock core and then the samples will be transported to the laboratory analysis instruments inside the vehicle.
To handle this entire scientific toolbox, Curiosity is twice as large and five times heavier than its predecessors Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the vehicle within driving range of the crater's interior mountains, which are made of layers. Observations from the route identified minerals such as clay and sulfate in the lower layers, which indicates the wet history of these areas.
"This is an impressive achievement. This is a great day for the American people," says NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Everyone this morning should raise their chests and say that this is my vehicle on Mars because it belongs to all of us."
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Noam, some people have already booked a place on flights to Mars, you can't disappoint them.
Would it not have been better to invest these large funds in building a power plant in space? - No. It is better to move forward in small, measured steps and gain ability and knowledge.
I believe (not based on reading articles about the project)
That this project was launched before NASA's strategic decision to withdraw from manned space travel
I mean, since the motivation was-
If not send astronauts to Mars - at least explore it in order to do so in the future. — NASA did not get off manned flights. She got off the space shuttle and is working on developing a new launch system. They are still talking about sending astronauts to Mars, they have been talking since the XNUMXs (USA). There are technological and medical problems that prevent this. And of course money.
If it turns out in the future that the occupation of space should be done by robotic activity and not by human presence-
This project will probably turn out to be a huge "white elephant" that only delayed the development of space exploration! - Definately not. You sent an advanced robot. *You are now exploring Mars by robotic activity*.
And in the same matter-
The International Space Station - which without a doubt is a really fun project -
Isn't it better to run all the experiments there by remote control?
What is the motivation to keep people there?
Isn't this the thought of unexpected discoveries required for colonization in space? — Wow, a complex topic. We can discuss it until tomorrow.
pleasantness
pleasantness,
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the motivation for the task is scientific-technological, and not curiosity. You really don't spend so many resources on curiosity. Want to understand, then investigate. How did the Hubble launch help you in life (at least at the space station you conduct experiments, also on humans)? What will the next space telescope launch help you with?
Regarding the second point you raised, why not build a power plant in space: in my opinion, these are two fundamentally different challenges, mainly in the level of the technological challenge and the cost of construction and operation (it is not enough that you build a power plant in space, you also need to launch, operate, control, maintain). To build a robot that works with more or less traditional methods (except for the landing and the laser gun), that will travel on Mars and be safe for the human race - that's one thing. to build a space station that will provide energy, from orbit, perhaps with human operators.... Where do you even start? Even if you don't spend the money on a research vehicle to Mars (or 2.5 times on chips as I wrote on Facebook), there will still be a lot of unfulfilled fantasies. Does that mean you should focus on one thing only? What lofty goal will we have in twenty-five years? And where will the knowledge come from for the girls? the experience? How will you develop an ability?
It has been argued that there are enough economic and safe methods to produce energy on Earth without needing power plants in space. The fact that they are not realized is another story.
What substance in the atmosphere did the parachute mainly work on? on the carbon?
Back to the above discussion-
I was asked by my wife - what is the great importance of finding water on Mars?
My answer was - in favor of settlement in the future.
As you Oded says here - this is research with a curious and not useful motivation.
If so I join my wife-
Would it not have been better to invest these large funds in building a power plant in space?
The challenges in this are many and far-reaching and the unexpected discoveries - surely they too will emerge.
I believe (not based on reading articles about the project)
That this project was launched before NASA's strategic decision to withdraw from manned space travel
I mean, since the motivation was-
If not send astronauts to Mars - at least explore it in order to do so in the future.
If it turns out in the future that the occupation of space should be done by robotic activity and not by human presence-
This project will probably turn out to be a huge "white elephant" that only delayed the development of space exploration!
And in the same matter-
The International Space Station - which without a doubt is a really fun project -
Isn't it better to run all the experiments there by remote control?
What is the motivation to keep people there?
Isn't this the thought of unexpected discoveries required for colonization in space?
pleasantness
According to NASA publications, testing the ground for building a human colony is a secondary goal compared to the others. written in several documents (such as this
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSLLanding.pdf
But also in more technical documents, and throughout the mission so far) that the emphasis will be on understanding how hot Mars could have been in the past.
The RAD device will indeed assist in measuring solar radiation at the landing site *also* so that we can quantify this danger to astronauts. But in principle this is it. Equally, analysis of the heat shield data will be used to draw conclusions about the heat shields of manned missions, but obviously this is not the main goal here. In fact, you can say that anything I send today can be used by me tomorrow, right? Even failures.
Again, this is according to some NASA publications. If you have a reference for information on growing plants etc...
Assaf is right.
The chances that there was life on Mars are quite slim, so it is not worth investing too much money in such an investigation at the moment. This is why the rover lab does not have tools to test the reality of life there (past and present), but only has tools to identify organic minerals (not necessarily life).
Also, they will perhaps check if there is a chance of extracting water from the soil of Mars that will be used for drinking and growing plants. The availability of this water is necessary to establish a manned laboratory on the surface of Mars in the future. Establishing a manned laboratory on Mars (say in 50 years) will allow better exploration than an unmanned laboratory. Establishing large manned colonies on Mars will take longer, if possible at all.
did not collect
The goal is not to ask if it is possible to establish a colony there, but if there were conditions for sustaining life there in the past.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the main goal is not to test if there is life on Mars, but to test if there is a life-supporting environment there. That is, is it possible to establish a colony there in the future.
It's a shame they didn't invest in a robot that would fly to more fascinating places such as the moons Europa and Titan.
In any case, maybe some natural gas or oil deposit will be discovered on Mars and they will decide to open a Paz branch there.
Maybe you will finally find employment for the Sudanese refugees (who are not Sudanese at all but never mind)
I think the cameras will still surprise you…..
They invested 2.5 billion dollars in the project. Couldn't they install a normal camera?
On channel 1 this was mentioned all day in flashes and on channel 10 it was referred to in the news.
It's 20:40 p.m., the topic was not even mentioned in a single word on Channel 2 news on TV, shame!!!!! pure shame !!!!! Just stupid reality shows, that's the education they give to the youth, science is not important enough.
A topic that should have appeared in the main title is not mentioned even in one word!!!! The Olympics are more important 🙁
Where will we get like this?
Apart from that, she hopes, even broken fossils of ancient bacteria on Mars is much better for us than nothing.
At least that means there was life there (let's just hope we didn't pollute it ourselves with our spaceships)
to aspirant
It is difficult to define Mars as a boring planet. It is the most similar to us of the other planets. Haim? Probably also there, once (my personal opinion).
Where in the solar system will we look for intelligent life? It seems that only here there are conditions for sustaining life long enough for that.
Outside the solar system these are distances we can no longer cross. Here the Voyager spacecraft has been moving for 40 years, it is one of the fastest spacecraft, and it just reached the edge of the solar system. The path to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 2250 times longer. That's moving in a super fast spaceship (for us) 88,000 years, even longer. And not sure what for.
What to do. As I always say, for now we are in prison.
🙁
Aiming far, for the sake of the site I will spare the hard words I had to answer you in light of your above response.
Anyone willing to explain to me why they invest so much in exploring a boring planet like Mars, instead of aiming a little further to places we don't know yet? After all, we already know that there is no intelligent life there, at most they will find primitive life or remnants of ancient life that we don't have much to do with.
We are interested in pictures because it is the most comfortable for us. They are interested in the state of the vehicle's internal systems, in the meteorology around it, in the hours when there is communication in front of it. in remote vehicle maintenance. The pictures will come later. For the impatient like us, you can release some colorful chart. In any case, the photos that arrive sometimes need retouching (oops they forgot to install flash and the makeup is also missing).
The truth... a disappointment. I don't understand why a camera wasn't installed on the dome that landed the vehicle. That way you could see the landing process with the vehicle hanging on the passengers and also see the immediate area around the vehicle.
This could have been the most spectacular picture and not some half-dark picture in black and white in the shadows.
First we want Coca Cola, and then we will check the land.
In any case, you can always hire the negbi for a few greenish dollars, he advised us how to bring coke to Mars...
Before building McDonald's, the land should be checked to see if it is possible to tie people there who will work for minimum wage
I really don't understand the importance of finding a life. It seems like a need to find an answer to the question of whether we are alone. A kind of romantic question.
Instead they could have focused on more important issues such as - how to turn this desert into a living and breathing planet. How do you set up a lab with people on this desolate planet. How can all the energy and power be harnessed to establish the first branch of McDonald's on Mars.
need to broadcast through the spacecraft orbiting Mars.
Bollywood has the whole movie. What didn't you know? They hide from us
It's been more than 5 hours since landing, why are there barely 3 photos?