Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars

Man has made one step closer to visiting another planet today. The Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars. It is the largest manmade object ever to visit the surface of the red planet. The Curiosity is a six-wheeled vehicle that weighs 900kg (1984lbs). It is 10 times larger and five times heavier than the previous rovers sent to Mars. Its goals are to investigate Martian weather conditions and find whether conditions are right for microbial life to survive on the planet. 

Power for the Curiosity comes from a small nuclear reactor. Heat is produced from a 4.8kg piece of plutonium-238 that will allow the vehicle to operate for 687 Earth days, equivalent of 1 Mars year. The system has a total output of 110 watts, but through gear reduction in each wheel, they each can produce 500lb-ft of torque. Extra heated water is pumped through the vehicle to keep the instruments at proper operating temperature. It has a rocker suspension that can cope with 65cm high obstacles and travel 200m per day. 

Curiosity will use mast-mounted cameras and equipment to gather samples and process them inside the vehicle. Its internal instruments include a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer, and a tunable laser spectrometer. The 14 cameras can take photos and video in high definition. To communicate the information back, Curiosity sends data to an orbiting satellite that is then transmitted back to Earth. 

The landing was the most risky part of the entire mission. Because of Curiosity’s weight and fragility, it could not use the bouncing inflatable airbags that had been used in other Mars landers. Instead, it used a parachute as it entered the Martian atmosphere and when it was close to the ground rockets fired to slow the Curiosity to a safe landing speed. If any of these rockets had failed, then the Curiosity would have likely crashed. The entire $2.5 billion mission would have been a total failure. Thankfully, everything went to plan. Below is a simulation of the landing. 

The first images that Curiosity will send back will be relatively low resolution. That is because these images are smaller files and can therefore be sent more quickly back to Earth. Over time, expect better images and video to come from Mars. 

Source: NASA and Auto Bild