SALON

Saturday, Aug 4, 2012 3:15 PM UTC

A peek at what NASA’s new rover packed for Mars

By

Topics: From the Wires,

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — If you were packing for Mars, what would you bring?

NASA’s latest tourist, the roving robot named Curiosity, will lug around a suite of gadgets to snap pictures, sniff, taste and even drill. It will study the environment to figure out whether the giant crater where it lands ever possessed a habitable environment for microbial life.

The six-wheel, nuclear-powered rover is far more tech-savvy than anything that has landed before on the red planet. Here’s a glimpse of some of the cool things Curiosity can do:

It carries a laser that can zap a hole in rocks up to about 25 feet away and identify the chemical elements inside. This point-and-shoot strategy saves time because if a rock looks boring, Curiosity can roll on.

Its 7-foot-long robotic arm has a power drill at the end that can bore into rocks and soil. Like a scientist in a laboratory, it can transfer the ground-up powder to its onboard workbench to tease out minerals and sniff for organics, considered the chemical building blocks of life.

What’s the point of an extraterrestrial trip if you can’t sight-see? Curiosity promises to be a shutterbug, toting around a set of 2-megapixel color cameras that can beam panoramas back to Earth. With YouTube fans in mind, it also packed a video camera that will record the last few minutes of its hairy descent to Mars.

Like Mars rovers before it, Curiosity carries a weather station to take daily temperature and pressure readings and record seasonal changes.

Even before landing, Curiosity has been doing experiments, tracking radiation during the 8 1/2-month cruise to Mars. That should help NASA gauge radiation risk to future distance-traveling astronauts.

As sophisticated as Curiosity is, it won’t be able to tell us whether primitive life existed on Mars once upon a time or if it’s there now. The one-ton rover isn’t equipped for that and its cameras are not powerful enough to see fossil relics — if they exist.

Smarts aside, engineers also outfitted Curiosity with a sense of style. It boasts 20-inch aluminum wheels — twice the size of the wheels on twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed in 2004 — with spokes made of titanium and cleats for traction.

Curiosity may be tricked out, but expect some slow going. Its top speed one-tenth of a mile per hour.

___

Follow Alicia Chang’s Mars coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

More Alicia Chang.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • A missing poster hangs on a tree outside the Cleveland home of Amanda Berry Wednesday. Berry and two other women, Michelle Knight and Gina DeJesus, made a daring escape this week after being held captive for more than a decade.
    Credit: AP/Tony Dejak

  • Elvis Rafael Rodriguez and Emir Yasser Yeje offer their best impression of  Eric B. & Rakim. On Thursday, New York prosecutors identified the pair as members of an international gang that robbed $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking into a database of prepaid debit cards and draining ATM machines around the world.
    Credit: AP

  • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie walks to a podium during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Technology Enhanced Accelerated Learning Center at Essex County Newark Tech in Newark, N.J., Tuesday. Christie made less flattering headlines this week after undergoing a secret stomach surgery to curb his weight.
    Credit: AP/Julio Cortez

  • Workers stand outside the Tung Hai Sweater Ltd. factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Thursday after a fire broke out in its 11-story building. Eight people were killed in the blaze.
    Credit: AP/Ismail Ferdous

  • Workers rescue a woman trapped for 17 days in the rubble of a garment factory building in Saver, Bangladesh, Friday. The building's collapse was the worst industrial disaster in the country's history, killing more than 1,000 people.
    Credit: AP

  • Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford gives his victory speech Tuesday in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., after winning back his old congressional seat in the state's first district.
    Credit: AP/Rainier Ehrhardt

  • Jodi Arias reacts in Maricopa Country Superior Court Wednesday after being found guilty of first-degree murder in the gruesome killing of her one-time boyfriend, Travis Alexander. Arias has subsequently said she wants the death penalty, claiming she'd "prefer to die sooner than later."
    Credit: AP/The Arizona Republic/Rob Schumacher

  • Ariel Castro stands for his mug shot Thursday at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, where he is being held on $8 million bail. The former bus driver is accused of imprisoning three young women and beating them repeatedly over a period of 10 years.
    Credit: AP/Cuyahoga County

  • Charles Ramsey addresses the media Monday after helping rescue three women held captive in Cleveland for more than a decade. Ramsey's hero portraiture has been complicated by revelations of his own domestic violence record.
    Credit: AP/The Plain Dealer/Scott Shaw

  • Michael B. Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, testifies during a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday. The military branch was rocked this week after its chief sexual assault prevention officer was charged with sexual battery.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations