Cesar M. Salvan
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Jun 2008
Posts: 127
Location: Alcalá de Henares
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 Posted: Aug 06, 2012 05:15 Post subject: The Curiosity Rover arrived at Mars! |
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After a eigth month trip thorough the inner Solar System, the Curiosity Rover with the Mars Science Laboratory on board landed safely on Mars a few hours ago.
The Curiosity is the most ambitious and "scifi-esque" exploration mission performed in our Solar System to the date (apart of the lunar exploration). The rover is the biggest exploration robot ever designed, with 3 meters long and equipped with a complete laboratory for the study of the martian soil, mineralogy and petrology (XRD, XRF, alpha particle induced gamma spectrometry, Raman spectroscopy, and a new design of instrument based on the principles of ICP-MS and GCMS.
A car full of all instruments a mineralogist dream, and also in small, desktop and portable versions!
Also, the rover has 17 cameras, to obtain the better images of Mars surface and rocks ever...
The rover is equipped with a complete environmental and meteorological station whose data will be useful in the preparation of a future manned mission. This station, called REMS, was designed and developed in Spain, in my research institute "Centro de Astrobiologia", in Madrid, https://cab.inta-csic.es/es/inicio (although I am not directly involved in the project).
congrats to the mission teams!
If you have curiosity, follow the mission at
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
(link normalized by FMF)
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| The very first images dent by Curiosity, a minute after landing. I captured it directly from the mission control. After a few hours, the high resolution cameras begin to send data. |
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7386 Time(s) |
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| The Curiosity landing site, the Gale crater. A good site for rockhounding, due to its geological diversity. |
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7402 Time(s) |
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Jordi Fabre
Overall coordinator of the Forum
Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 5048
Location: Barcelona
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| Posted: Aug 06, 2012 06:21 Post subject: Re: The Curiosity Rover arrived at Mars! |
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Great topic, thank you to open it César!
For those who do not know, César is a researcher at the Spanish CSIC (the main spanish institution devoted to investigation) and he is astrobiologist, therefore it is ideally located to give us good info on this exciting topic. Although his lab is not directely related with the project, he works next door of the Spanish part of this project....
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Audaces fortuna iuvat |
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