Fast facts about Mars and NASA’s Curiosity rover
CURIOSITY FACTS
NASA’s new robot rover named Curiosity has spent 8 1/2 months hurtling through space toward its destination Sunday on Mars. It is set to land near the foot of a mountain rising from a giant crater. This marks NASA’s 19th mission and eighth landing attempt.
Why Mars again?
This artists rendering provided by NASA shows the Mars Rover, Curiosity. After traveling 8 1/2 months and 352 million miles, Curiosity will attempt a landing on Mars the night of Aug. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/NASA)
The big unknown remains. Scientists want to know if any form of life ever existed there, and that means microscopic organisms. Since the 1960s, spacecraft have zipped past, orbited or landed on Mars in this quest. Two small NASA rovers that arrived in 2004 explored different craters and one is still functioning today.
Curiosity is the most ambitious effort ever, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. During its two-year exploration, it will try to answer whether the giant crater where it lands had the right conditions to support microbes. But future missions would still be needed for more answers.
What will Curiosity do?
Curiosity carries a toolbox of 10 instruments, including a rock-zapping laser and a mobile organic chemistry lab. It also has a long robotic arm that can jackhammer into rocks and soil. It will hunt for basic ingredients of life including carbon-based compounds, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen, as well as minerals that might provide clues about possible energy sources.
How did Curiosity get its name?
The spacecraft is formally called the Mars Science Laboratory. In 2008, NASA held a naming contest open to students and selected Curiosity, proposed by a sixth-grader from Lenexa, Kan.
What does this mission cost?
$2.5 billion. That’s $1 billion over its original budget. Curiosity was supposed to launch in 2009 and land in 2010, but development took longer than expected. The delay gave engineers more time to debug problems and test the spacecraft, but also put the project over budget.
When will we send astronauts to Mars?
President Barack Obama has set a goal for astronauts to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s followed by a landing. Before that can happen, the plan is to send astronauts to an asteroid first.
MARS FACTS
Mars is set to get its latest visitor Sunday night when NASA’s new robotic rover, named Curiosity, attempts to land there. Mars has been a prime target for space exploration for decades, in part because its climate 3.5 billion years ago is believed to have been warm and wet, like early Earth. Here are five other key points:
—About the color: It’s called the red planet because the landscape is stained rusty-red by the iron-rich dust.
—Quick weight loss: Its gravity is only 38 percent that of Earth. So if you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 57 pounds on Mars.
—Hot and cold: Mars’ temperatures can range from 80 degrees at its equator to -199 degrees at its poles.
—The air is different: Mars’ atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide with traces of nitrogen and argon. Earth’s atmosphere is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases.
—Longer days: They last 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
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Reported by ALICIA CHANG of the Associated Press from PASADENA, Calif. Follow Alicia Chang’s Mars coverage at: http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
