[meteorite-list] NASA Ready For November Launch Of Car-Sized Mars Rover (MSL)

[Ron Baalke]

Nov. 10, 2011

Dwayne Brown      
Headquarters, Washington                      
202-358-1726 
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-6278 
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov 


MEDIA ADVISORY: 11-379

NASA READY FOR NOVEMBER LAUNCH OF CAR-SIZED MARS ROVER

WASHINGTON -- NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, which 
will examine one of the most intriguing areas on Mars, is in final 
preparations for a launch from Florida's Space Coast at 10:25 a.m. 
EST on Nov. 25. 

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will carry Curiosity, a 
rover with more scientific capability than any ever sent to another 
planet. The rover is now sitting atop an Atlas V rocket awaiting 
liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 

"Preparations are on track for launching at our first opportunity," 
said Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "If weather or other factors 
prevent launching then, we have more opportunities through Dec. 18." 

Scheduled to land on the Red Planet in August 2012, the one-ton rover 
will examine Gale Crater during a nearly two-year prime mission. 
Curiosity will land near the base of a layered mountain 3 miles (5 
kilometers) high inside the crater. The rover will investigate 
whether environmental conditions ever have been favorable for 
development of microbial life and preserved evidence of those 
conditions. 

"Gale gives us a superb opportunity to test multiple potentially 
habitable environments and the context to understand a very long 
record of early environmental evolution of the planet," said John 
Grotzinger, project scientist for MSL at the California Institute of 
Technology in Pasadena. "The portion of the crater where Curiosity 
will land has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried 
sediments. Layers at the base of the mountain contain clays and 
sulfates, both known to form in water." 

Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as earlier Mars 
rovers Spirit and Opportunity. The rover will carry a set of 10 
science instruments weighing 15 times as much as its predecessors' 
science payloads. 

A mast extending to 7 feet (2.1 meters) above ground provides height 
for cameras and a laser-firing instrument to study targets from a 
distance. Instruments on a 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) arm will 
study targets up close. Analytical instruments inside the rover will 
determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with the 
arm's powdering drill and scoop. Other instruments will characterize 
the environment, including the weather and natural radiation that 
will affect future human missions. 

"Mars Science Laboratory builds upon the improved understanding about 
Mars gained from current and recent missions," said Doug McCuistion, 
director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in 
Washington. "This mission advances technologies and science that will 
move us toward missions to return samples from and eventually send 
humans to Mars." 

The mission is challenging and risky. Because Curiosity is too heavy 
to use an air-bag cushioned touchdown, the mission will use a new 
landing method, with a rocket-powered descent stage lowering the 
rover on a tether like a kind of sky-crane. 

The mission will pioneer these precision landing methods during the 
spacecraft's crucial dive through Mars' atmosphere next August to 
place the rover onto a smaller landing target than any previously for 
a Mars mission. The target inside Gale Crater is 12.4 miles (20 
kilometers) by 15.5 miles (25 kilometers). Rough terrain just outside 
that area would have disqualified the landing site without the 
improved precision. 

No mission to Mars since the Viking landers in the 1970s has sought a 
direct answer to the question of whether life has existed on Mars. 
Curiosity is not designed to answer that question by itself, but its 
investigations for evidence about prerequisites for life will steer 
potential future missions toward answers. 

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. Curiosity was designed, developed and assembled at 
JPL. Launch management for the mission is the responsibility of 
NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in 
Florida. NASA's Space Network, managed by the Goddard Space Flight 
Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide space communications services 
for the rocket. NASA's Deep Space Network will provide MSL spacecraft 
acquisition and communication throughout the mission. 

For more information, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/msl 
	
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