Curiosity Joins Opportunity and Spirit on Mars

NASA engineers in California are working around the clock to put the finishing touches on the new Mars mega-rover before shipping it off to Florida for launch later this year. Wearing his clean suit, AP’s John Mone got an inside look at the vehicle named Curiosity.

After launch to the red planet at the end of 2011, Curiosity will be lowered on cables from a descent vehicle to explore Mars. Part of its mission is to determine if Mars ever housed life. The SUV-sized rover is better equipped than it’s two predecessors and even includes remote sensing equipment to analyze a soil sample with a laser from up to 30 feet away.

The much smaller Opportunity and Spirit ended their five-month exploratory mission of Mars’ surface years ago. First landing on opposite sides of the red planet in 2004, NASA lost communication with Spirit just over a year ago after it lost power in a Martian sand trap. Now hope is fading that the rover will power itself up and continue on its extended mission.

Arizona State University astronomer Jim Bell says the loss of Spirit’s communication came at exactly the wrong time because it was doing some very valuable science, even though it was immobile and tilting away from the sun.

Opportunity continues chugging away, feeding off the solar power that drives them during the Martian spring and summer. During the winter, the rovers hibernate and NASA engineers hope they will be able to re-establish communication when they awake.

Though Spirit’s odometer is stuck at 4.8 miles, Opportunity fully explored one crater and is on its way to another, having logged over 16 miles.

Curiosity is more than a remote controlled rover. It’s a roving science laboratory. The Mars Science Laboratory has four goals: determine if life ever arose on Mars, characterize the climate of Mars, characterize the geology of Mars, and prepare for human exploration.

This latest mission is part of a multi-decade series of missions to send probes to Mars. The data collected will eventually lead to a manned mission to Mars where a settlement could be established.

Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech