NASA announced Tuesday that it will launch its latest mission to Mars, sending a small rover to the planet next week.
NASA will launch the rover — nicknamed Curiosity — using an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on November 25, space agency officials said.
“Preparations are on track for launching at our first opportunity,” said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA ‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “If weather or other factors prevent launching then, we have more opportunities through December 18.”
The mission to Mars will take over eight months, NASA officials say. The rover is expected to arrive on the planet on August 6, 2012. The rover is reportedly nearly seven foot tall and is twice as big as previous Mars’ rovers. Officials say it weighs over a ton, and it is expected to carry more than ten times the amount of scientific equipment sent with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers launched in 2004. The mission cost: $2.5 billion.
The rover will travel to Mars, where it will land in Gale crater, which is thought to be about three and a half billion years old and more than 95 miles in diameter. The crater has a combined size of Connecticut and Rhode Island with a three-mile-high mountain of layered sedimentary rock at its bottom — an enticing area of exploration for scientists. Curiosity will survey the area, using equipment in Mars Science Laboratory, which is stored within the confines of the rover.
The robot will provide NASA with an astrobiologist — which is expected to last at least two years — using a battery of scientific instruments to analyze Mars’ geology and atmosphere, looking for the elements and chemical compounds that are the building blocks of life. Previous rovers simply searched for evidence of water on the Red Planet.
Scientists will use the rover Read more:
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