[meteorite-list] NASA Lands Car-Size Rover Beside Martian Mountain

[Ron Baalke]

Aug. 05, 2012

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

Guy Webster / D.C. Agle 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-6278, 818-393-9011 
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov  / agle at jpl.nasa.gov 

RELEASE: 12-267

NASA LANDS CAR-SIZE ROVER BESIDE MARTIAN MOUNTAIN

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has 
landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a 
rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week 
flight and begin a two-year investigation. 

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity 
succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on 
Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway 
maneuver of the rocket backpack. 

"Today, the wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for 
human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover 
ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will 
seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on 
Mars -- or if the planet can sustain life in the future," said NASA 
Administrator Charles Bolden. "This is an amazing achievement, made 
possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world 
and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for 
sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030's, and today's landing marks a 
significant step toward achieving this goal." 

Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT Aug. 5, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near 
the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter 
inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover 
will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable 
for microbial life. 

"The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of 
Triumph," said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John 
Grunsfeld. "My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched 
only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the 
mission's team." 

Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky 
ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in 
the next several days as the mission blends observations of the 
landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and 
check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms. 

"Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars," said MSL 
Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
(JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The landing takes us past the most 
hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting 
mission to pursue its scientific objectives." 

Confirmation of Curiosity's successful landing came in communications 
relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, 
Australia, antenna station of NASA's Deep Space Network. 

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as 
large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and 
Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, 
such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition 
of rocks from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the 
end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock 
interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical 
laboratory instruments inside the rover. 

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five 
times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site 
places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's 
interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and 
sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history. 

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at 
JPL. 

For more information on the mission, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/mars 

and 

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl 

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: 

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity 

and 

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity 
	
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