NASA’s next Mars rover – Curiosity – is undergoing rigorous testing by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, the six-wheeled machine will depart Florida in late 2011, headed for a landing on the red planet in August 2012.
Curiosity will study whether its landing region has ever had environmental conditions favorable for life and for preserving evidence of life if it once existed.
As part of an extensive testing program, NASA’s Curiosity has been exercising its robotic arm since last month, when the arm was first fastened to the rover.
The arm can extend about 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) from the front of the rover body. A turret on the end of the arm will hold a percussive drill and other tools weighing a total of about 33 kilograms (73 pounds).
Additionally, technicians have been putting the rover through an obstacle course to test its mobility system.
Mars rovers: past and present
Curiosity is much larger than its rover predecessors, Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner.
Curiosity is twice as long (about 2.8 meters, or 9 feet) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004. The Pathfinder Sojourner robot was about the size of a microwave oven and landed in 1997.
Another big difference: The rover’s landing system is similar to a sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. After a parachute slows the rover’s descent toward Mars, a rocket-powered backpack will lower the robot on a tether during the final moments before landing.
The sky crane idea allows landing a very large, heavy rover on Mars (instead of the airbag landing systems of previous Mars rovers).
Curiosity will use 10 science instruments to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere. A laser will vaporize patches of rock from a distance, and another instrument will search for organic compounds.
Other rover instruments include mast-mounted cameras to study targets from a distance, arm-mounted instruments to study targets they touch, and deck-mounted analytical instruments to determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with a powdering drill and a scoop.
As for Curiosity’s power, the rover will be energized by nuclear battery. That enables the Mars machinery to operate year-round and farther from the equator than would be possible with only solar power.
Curious about Curiosity?
If so, check out this video that spotlights one aspect of the rover’s extensive test program now underway:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=18416173
By LD/CSE