By the end of this year, a bigger and smarter rover will be on its way to Mars. Called Curiosity, NASA‘s six-wheel-drive, 9-foot-long robotic research vehicle will be delivered to the planet’s surface using the most unusual method yet, which you can see in the video above.
Unlike its predecessors that landed on Mars inside huge balloons that bounced along the surface until they came to a halt, the heavier Curiosity will be suspended by a tether from a crane-like rocket platform that gently lowers the robot to the surface. Then that platform will fly away and crash elsewhere into the surface of the Red Planet while Curiosity gets its 687-Earth-day (1 Mars year) mission underway.
This Mars buggy, officially called the Mars Science Laboratory, will have 10 scientific instruments on board, and one of those instruments is a laser that can vaporize rock, analyzing its composition. According to Space .com, instead of the solar power of the other rovers, this one will be powered by plutonium, letting it roam any time of the Martian day or night.
Personnel at NASA must be breathing easy after they found out the U.S. Government’s 2011 budget compromise included $18.485 billion for the space agency, just 1.3% less than the amount NASA received in 2010. While this Mars project was already built using funding from years past, the program will still need money to pay scientists to monitor and study the data Curiosity sends back to us.
Take a look at the gallery below, and you’ll see close-ups of the rover, which is now almost completely assembled:
NASA Mars Rover Curiosity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Arm and mast
Front 3/4 View
Those tires are made out of thin aluminum.
Remote Sensing Mast
9 Feet Long
I t's bigger than it looks...
