Watch Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover launch live via NASA TV tomorrow morning
All going well, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover will launch at 1.02 am AEST tomorrow morning (Sunday) all going well from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (or 2.02 am Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time). You will be able to watch the launch live via the Internet on NASA TV. If all goes well, the rover will arrive at, and land safely on Mars sometime between 6 and 20 August 2012.
There is a vague Australian link to the mission. The mission’s target landing site is Gale crater. The crater was named after Walter Frederick Gale, a Sydney (Australia) amateur astronomer who observed Mars in the late 19th century and described the presence of canals. Gale crater is is 154 km in diameter and believed to be about 3.5 to 3.8 billion years old.
Further information about the ‘Curiosity’ Rover mission can be found on NASA’s website here. A direct link to a two page fact sheet on the Rover mission can be found here.
Above: This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Curiosity is being tested in preparation for launch in the fall of 2011. In this picture, the rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of the rover's arm, which extends about 2 meters (7 feet). Two instruments on the arm can study rocks up close. Also, a drill can collect sample material from inside of rocks and a scoop can pick up samples of soil. The arm can sieve the samples and deliver fine powder to instruments inside the rover for thorough analysis. The mast, or rover's "head," rises to about 2.1 meters (6.9 feet) above ground level, about as tall as a basketball player. This mast supports two remote-sensing instruments: the Mast Camera, or "eyes," for stereo color viewing of surrounding terrain and material collected by the arm; and, the ChemCam instrument, which is a laser that vaporizes material from rocks up to about 9 meters (30 feet) away and determines what elements the rocks are made of. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about Curiosity is at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. Image and text credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
