Curiosity Mars rover - the next big thing for exploration of the red planet. Credit: NASA/JPL
NASA is readying the Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover for its sendoff to the red planet – but first things first.
A new video has captured the crating up of the huge robot at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for shipment to Florida.
Check out this fast-paced video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reK2wZ6_ArM
Curiosity, arrived late Wednesday night at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard an Air Force C-17 transport plane. It was accompanied by the rocket-powered descent stage that will fly the rover during the final moments before landing on Mars. The C-17 flight began at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif., where the boxed hardware had been trucked from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Meanwhile, a recent series of flights by an F/A-18 aircraft at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in California have been used to test the landing radar for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission.
Over the Southern California’s high desert, the flight profile of the jet is designed to simulate what MSL’s radar will see while the spacecraft is on a parachute descending through the Martian atmosphere.
Data collected by these flights are used to finesse the Mars landing radar software, to help ensure that it is calibrated as accurately as possible.
The MSL Curiosity rover is being readied for launch between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011.
The spacecraft will arrive at Mars in August 2012.
After Curiosity lands on Mars, researchers will use the rover’s 10 science instruments during the following two years to investigate whether the landing area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
By Leonard David