MillenniumPost
World

NASA’s Curiosity lands on Mars

The US space agency's nuclear-powered one-tonne rover Curiosity, packed with sophisticated instruments, touched down on Mars on Sunday on a quest for signs of whether the Earth's neighbour has evidence of past and present habitable environments.

It was a tense and daring scientific mission to land the rover on the surface of Mars. And it succeeded. 'Touchdown confirmed for @MarsCuriosity,' said a NASA tweet as ecstatic scientists celebrated.

The six-wheeled rover, weighing about one tonne, dwarfs all previous robots sent to the surface of Mars. It is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover.

It has been equipped with 10 scientific instruments, including two for ingesting and analysing samples of powdered rock delivered by the rover's robotic arm.

The rover was on a precise course for a landing beside a Martian mountain to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work, according to NASA.

During a prime mission lasting one Martian year – nearly two Earth years – researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favourable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

 
‘WE ARE WHEELS DOWN ON MARS. OH, MY GOD.’


The day the history was made,  NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the room – Mars rover made a dramatic touchdown on Monday marking a successful end to the most sophisticated Mars attempt in history –NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers.‘We are wheels down on Mars. Oh, my God.’

In an ecstatic moment of triumph for outer space exploration, the NASA’s robotic ‘Curiosity’ spacecraft successfully landed on Mars to begin its pioneering two-year hunt to find out if the red planet once hosted conditions suitable for life.

‘Touchdown confirmed,’ the triumphant NASA engineer Allen Chen claimed in the control room as America’s most high-tech interplanetary rover survived a harrowing plunge throught the Mars’ thin atmosphere to touch down on the red planet at 05:30 GMT (11:00 IST).

‘We are safe on Mars,’ the NASA engineers said as the Curiosity started beaming live images from inside the crater where it had landed.

The USD 2.5 billion spacecraft is the largest and most advanced ever sent to another planet. The car-size, one-tonne rover’s descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it in a ‘sky crane’ manoeuvre to the surface of the Mars.

Applause erupted across the campus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge and engineers inside mission control could be seen hugging and weeping with joy as it received the first photos from its Curiosity rover.

Just minutes after the signal arrived that the landing had gone off successfully, Curiosity beamed back its first black-and-white thumbnail image of Mars. Soon after, a bigger image – 256 by 256 pixels large – showed up onscreen at the laboratory.

Curiosity is expected to revolutionise the understanding of Mars, gathering evidence that Mars is or was capable of fostering life, probably in microbial form.

The spacecraft is also expected to pave the way for important leaps in deep-space exploration, including bringing Martian rock or soil back to Earth for detailed analysis and, eventually, human exploration.  


INDIAN SCIENTIST IN NASA TEAM

An Indian scientist who was a part of the NASA team, which had identified the landing site of the ‘Curiosity’ rover on the red planet, described on Monday the spot as ‘very exciting’ and held  ‘great promise’.

The scientist Amitabh Ghosh, chair of the science operations working group at NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission, was a member of the team that zeroed in on the Gale crater location where the car-sized rover successfully landed today at 5.30 GMT (11:00 IST).

‘We were very, very concerned. This is a very tough sequence to do. Imagine you are trying to land on the earth and you are testing a bunch of technologies which together you have never tested and you know very little about the atmosphere,’  an overwhelmed Ghosh explained the challenges faced by the mission. ‘This is a very big deal. This is the moment which comes down to thousands of people working over five to six years. If this crashes, there is nothing after that,’ he added.

Gale crater location, 24,78,38,976 kilometres from home was chosen after observations from orbit identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history. ‘Clay minerals occur in water related environment, and also we see layering in this crater. On earth, sedimentary rocks show layering and that is again an evidence of water rich environment,’ he said. ‘And the other thing is you have a central uplift in the crater, which is like a mountain, again you see layering on top of that. So scientifically it is very interesting once you have something like layering, each layer can potentially be a window into the martial environment at a specific point of time and that is what we want,’ Ghosh added.

Curiosity which has traveled nearly 570 million kilometres since it was launched in November will gather evidence whether Mars is or was capable of hosting life, probably in microbial form.

 ‘Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars- or if the planet can sustain life in the future,’ said an ecstatic NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
Next Story
Share it