wpostServer: http://css.washingtonpost.com/wpost
NASA Curiosity’s ambitious Mars mission NASA’s sedan-size Mars rover landed safely Monday on the Red Planet and will begin its search for the building blocks of life.
Aug. 6, 2012
This is one of the first images from the Curiosity rover: its wheel after it landed safely on the surface of Mars.
/
AP
Related Content
Aug. 6, 2012
One of the first views from NASA's Curiosity rover after it touched down on Mars. The image was taken through a fisheye wide-angle lens on one of the rover's hazard-avoidance cameras on the rover's base.
/
NASA
This photo taken by the NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows Mars.
/
NASA via AP
Nov. 26, 2011
The unmanned Atlas V rocket carrying the rover blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Terry Renna
/
AP
Nov. 3, 2011
Employees at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station watch the payload fairing containing NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft being loaded onto the Atlas V rocket.
Kim Shiflett
/
NASA
Nov. 25, 2011
An Atlas V rocket coupled with Curiosity rolls out to the launchpad in Cape Canaveral.
Scott Andrews
/
AP
July 15, 2011
Technicians work on the backshell of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft's backshell carries the parachute and several components used during later stages of entry, descent and landing of the lab and its Curiosity rover.
Jim Grossmann
/
NASA
This instrument, shown prior to its September 2010 installation onto NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, will aid future manned missions by providing information about radiation on the way to Mars and at the planet’s surface. The Radiation Assessment Detector will monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, from distant supernovas and from other natural sources. These particles could be harmful to astronauts on a Mars mission or to any microbes near the surface of Mars.
/
California Institute of Technology/NASA
June 14, 2011
Technicians use an overhead crane to separate the two components of the aeroshell, an element of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, after testing. The aeroshell consists of the spacecraft’s heat shield and the backshell.
Kim Shiflett
/
NASA
October 2008
The major components of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft are connected together for system testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The testing included simulation of launch vibrations and deep-space environmental conditions.
/
California Institute of Technology/NASA
The rover Curiosity will carry 10 major science instruments, some of which can conduct scores of different experiments. In addition to its greater size and bigger instrument payload, Curiosity has the ability to drill holes in the surface of the planet, shoot lasers at rocks and analyze the chemical content in the resulting spark, and drive as far as 12 miles in its almost two-year scheduled lifetime.
/
NASA
An artist’s rendering shows how the rover Curiosity will be lowered to the Martian surface using a “sky crane” — the first time this has been done. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and rover will have to slow from 12,000 mph to zero in only six minutes as they pass through the thin Martian atmosphere.
/
NASA
May 2012
Michael Malin, left, principal investigator for three science cameras on the Curiosity rover, comments to a news reporter during tests with Curiosity's mobility-test stand-in, Scarecrow, on Dumont Dunes in California’s Mojave Desert. Scarecrow is so-named because it doesn't have an onboard computer “brain” as Curiosity does. While it has a full-scale version of Curiosity's mobility system, but it is otherwise stripped down so that it weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will weigh in the lesser gravity of Mars.
/
California Institute of Technology/NASA
July 25, 2012
An engineering model of the Curiosity Mars rover rolls over sandy, Mars-like terrain at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Danny Moloshok
/
Reuters
July 25, 2012
A high-gain antenna, like this one atop an engineering model of the Curiosity Mars rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will beam back information from the Red Planet.
Danny Moloshok
/
Reuters
This view of the head of the remote sensing mast on Curiosity shows seven of the 17 cameras on the rover. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Science Laboratory project for NASA.
/
NASA
The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument on Curiosity uses a telescope for spectroscopic analysis of rocks and soil. The same telescope serves the instrument's camera, which in this image photographed a dollar bill from 10 feet away. Researchers will use the tools on the rover to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable to microbial life and the preservation of clues about whether life existed.
/
NASA
This oblique view of the lower mound in Gale Crater shows layers of rock that preserve a record of environments on Mars. Here, orbiting instruments have detected signatures of both clay minerals and sulfate salts, with more clay minerals apparent in the foreground of this image and fewer in higher layers. This change in mineralogy may reflect a change in the ancient environment in Gale Crater.
/
NASA
Gale Crater is 96 miles in diameter. Mount Sharp rises about 3.4 miles above the floor of the crater. Stratification on Mount Sharp suggests the mountain is a remnant of deposits that were laid down after a massive impact that excavated the crater more than 3 billion years ago.
/
NASA
This image shows changes in the target landing area for Curiosity. The larger ellipse was the target area prior to early June 2012, when the project revised it to the smaller ellipse centered nearer to the foot of Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater.
/
NASA
A map shows the sites on Mars where NASA landers and rovers have touched down, in yellow, and the locations of the four finalist landing sites for the mission, in white. Gale Crater was eventually selected to be the Curiosity’s landing site.
/
NASA
FEATURED PHOTO GALLERIES
Photos of the day
Royal Ascot, protests in Brazil, Lego exhibition, flooding in India, Cheetah-Cub robot and more.
Animal views
Rodent exhibition, swimming with elephants, Mexico’s feline mayoral candidate and more.
Johnathon’s journey
Johnathon Carrington graduated Friday as the valedictorian of his neighborhood school, Dunbar High, and is headed to Georgetown University. But Carrington, 17, is nervous, and so are...
Eye on entertainment
Madonna, Michael Buble, Barbara Streisand, Jackie Chan, Jerry Seinfeld, Estelle and other celebrities.
Brazil’s other soccer fields
With the Confederations Cup opening this week and the World Cup one year away, all eyes are on Brazil, where soccer is arguably played with more passion and art than anywhere else....
Father’s Day picnic in Northeast D.C.
A decades-old backyard barbecue in Northeast Washington draws hundreds in honor of dads everywhere. “It’s off-the-chain fun,” says Butch McNair, who has worked one...
???initialComments:true! pubdate:07/03/2012 13:11 EDT! commentPeriod:14! commentEndDate:7/17/12 1:11 EDT! currentDate:6/18/13 8:0 EDT! allowComments:false! displayComments:true!
Section:/national/health-science
Loading...
Comments