Both trips put the rover on a course heading to Mount Sharp, which sits about 5 miles away, NASA reported. The vehicle travels very slowly, initially traveling 59 feet away from Shaler that day, then adding another 131-foot excursion away from the site on 7 July.
#Nasa mars rover marks its year software
Since landing on Mars on 6 August, 2012, the rover has been undergoing testing, software updates and initial experiments on soil samples on the surface of the planet.Īt the end of June, it conducted a close-up investigation of a target sedimentary outcrop of rock called Shaler, according to NASA, then began heading away from Shaler on 4 July. The rover is expected to take nine months to a year to reach Mount Sharp, due to the care that must be used in crossing the unknown terrain. The Mount Sharp destination, which is in the middle of what’s known as Gale Crater, is important to scientists working on the mission because it exposes many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved, according to the JPL. In July, the Curiosity rover began a long-awaited, 5-mile-long journey across the terrain of the red planet to begin exploring a rocky area known as Mount Sharp, 11 months after the rover arrived on the planet’s surface.
The equipment on board the rover has also fired more than 75,000 laser shots to investigate the composition of targets, collected and analysed sample material from two rocks, and driven more than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers), according to the space agency.
#Nasa mars rover marks its year full
Since landing, Curiosity has so far sent more than 190 gigabits of data back to Earth, and has sent back more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, according to NASA. The JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover. The JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., according to NASA. The one-year landing anniversary for the rover occurs early in the morning on 6 August, which officially will mark the halfway point for the planned activities of the two-year mission. Read also : Boeing Starliner Test Flight Readied For Tonight “The systems have been working well as a whole, meeting expectations. So far, the rover is doing very well on the Martian surface, said Welch, who is a 20-year veteran of rover missions. “It really gives us good evidence of a habitable environment, and that’s what this mission is all about,” he said. That discovery was important, said Welch. There, the rover found the remnants of a former river, which spread out across the crater floor like a fan, where conditions could have existed for life on Mars. That resulted in a six- to seven-month detour to explore an area around an ancient river system, which is now dry, in a valley that’s called Peace Vallis. We spent the better part of the year exploring that area.”
“When we saw where we actually landed, at this conjunction of three different terrain types just east of the planned landing site, it made sense to look at this area first. Once landed, the scientists initially took a bit of a detour with the rover because it landed in an area with geology they wanted to explore, said Welch. To accomplish this, the latest rover is the size of an SUV back on Earth, so it had to be brought to the Martian surface gingerly so it wasn’t destroyed on impact last August. “To actually scoop up the soil and get samples, it has been an incredible invention and adventure,” he said. Other rovers have visited Mars in the past, but none before have had the capabilities to dig into the Martian soil and them analyse the soil and rock using an on-board laboratory. “Looking back to a year ago, I don’t think that anybody could have predicted how well the mission would go,” Rick Welch, the mission manager at the JPL, told eWEEK. So far, the rover and its two-year planned mission have brought back several finds to scientists back on Earth, including the discovery of evidence that ancient Mars could have supported life, according to NASA. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is celebrating its one-year anniversary on the Martian surface, with the space agency looking forward to more discoveries as the rover begins its second year of exploration.
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