Posted 12.14.2011 at 12:14 pm
6 Comments
MSL In Interplanetary Space
An artist's concept shows the Mars Science Laboratory in its cruise phase, en route to Mars for an August 2012 landing. The rover Curiosity is tucked inside the pot-pie-shaped aeroshell.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
With eight months to go before the Mars Science Laboratory reaches its destination, the spacecraft is already getting to work. All systems have checked out beautifully — so much so that NASA didn’t have to perform course-correction maneuvers as planned — and the spacecraft is already making measurements.
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Technology, Rebecca Boyle, curiosity, curiosity rover, mars exploration, mars science laboratory, msl, nasa, planetary exploration, planetary geologist, radiationDon Hassler, RAD’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said the instrument is serving as a proxy for an astronaut. “Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars,” he said in a statement.
The hope is to determine how much radiation reaches the spacecraft interior, which would be good to know when designing ships that will carry people. Previous interplanetary radiation monitoring has just installed detectors on a spacecraft’s exterior.
As of noon Eastern time today, Curiosity will already have traveled 31.9 million miles since its launch Nov. 26. The RAD data collection marks the official start of its science mission. Another nine science instruments on board make it the most complex interplanetary explorer ever built.
It's designed to look for signs of life in Mars' past, and to judge whether the environment could be hospitable for life right now. Helping determine how life will fare on the way to Mars is one part of that mission.
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NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology
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i love NASA.
Guns are cool,
I love my wife and you love NASA. You need to leave you home and see the sun, sir. ;)
NASA is sending a 'Curiosity Pot Pie' to MARS; that is so cool!
"— so much so that NASA didn’t have to perform course-correction maneuvers as planned"
yeah that is kinda like an "F You" ro russia who cant even leave earths orbit (fyi this last was the 17th out of 17th failed Russian Mars missions) sorry no love for Russia right now (as they are in Iran right now along side china trying to buy our drone so they can steal the secrets for themselves)
@inaka_rob
I know right =)
Totally agree inaka_rob and Eric18. Iran should give us back our plane before we tell mom. Not sure how I feel about us sending an even more advanced stealth drone (saw it on Fox News) ***Note to self, when I finally build a mars probe in my back yard, have NASA launch it.***