Curiosity recently got some curious new researchers! Twenty-eight researchers have been chosen as participating scientists to work on projects with the Curiosity Mars rover.
These researchers will be actively involved with day-to-day science operations and rover engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The selected researchers include scientists that are new to the mission, those who have participated previously in Curiosity’s mission in other roles and researchers who were previously selected as participating scientists before Curiosity’s 2012 landing.
Launched in 2011, Curiosity’s prime mission was to study the habitability of Mars. Curiosity achieved its goal within the first 8 months of its primary mission by finding evidence that Mars’ ancient environment had all the requirements to support microbial life. The rover gathers and processes rock and soil samples in onboard test chambers and uses the biggest and most advanced suite of instruments ever sent to the surface of Mars.
To learn more about Curiosity, check out the fact sheet at http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSL_Fact_Sheet.pdf