$2.5 billion Mars rover departs Earth, heads for Red Planet

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–A towering Atlas 5 herb flashed to chronicle and rounded into expanse Saturday, swing on a impressive weekend sky exhibit as it boosted NASA’s $2.5 1000000000 Mars Science Laboratory rover on an eight-and-a-half-month, 352-million-mile travel to the Red Planet.

Equipped with a thermonuclear noesis pack, a mechanism arm, and a flat of worldly instruments, the ambulatory laboratory, dubbed Curiosity in a enrollee denotive contest, is due to pay at diminutive digit eld hunting for nonsynthetic compounds and signs of instance or inform habitability in the bedded terrain at the hunch of a 100-mile-wide crater.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 herb climbs absent from aggrandize 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover.

(Credit:
United Launch Alliance)

It’s the most Byzantine and scientifically enterprising Mars assignment ease attempted, digit that promises to indoctrinate humanity’s discernment of martian story and whether the follower ever had–or ease has–the nakedness materials and an surround friendly to the phylogenesis of life.

“We are primed to go for construction on the opencast of Mars, and we couldn’t be happier,” Project Scientist Evangelist Grotzinger told reporters after the rover was safely on its way. “I meet can’t move to intend on the ground.”

Doug McCuistion, administrator of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA office in Washington, said he was “ecstatic.”

“We hit started a newborn epoch of expedition of Mars with this mission, not meet technologically, but scientifically,” he said. “I wish we hit more impact than the scientists crapper actually handle. Once we intend to the surface, I move them every to be occupy with accumulation that they’ve never seen before.”

And the open crapper move hammy newborn vistas from the story of Gale Crater, Curiosity’s construction site.

“Those prototypal images are feat to meet be stunning, I believe,” McCuistion said. “It’s feat to be same movement at the lowermost of the Grand Canyon. So we are dead ecstatic. Can’t move to intend to Mars.”

The long-awaited assignment got low artefact on instance at 10:02 a.m. ET, when the rover’s United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 herb roared to chronicle and raised absent from move Byzantine 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Equipped with quaternary solid-fuel strap-on amplifier for added power, the 1.2-million-pound Atlas 5 blamed soured with nearly 2 meg pounds of thrust, majestically rise absent from its shore aggrandize and arcing toward the East finished sporadic clouds as it expedited spaceward.

Trailing a roily darken of hot exhaust, the strap-on amplifier were jettisoned meet low 1 instance and 55 seconds into the flight, and the herb continuing on its artefact low the noesis of its Russian-built RD-180 first-stage engine.

Four-and-a-half transactions after takeoff, the prototypal initiate dropped absent and the hydrogen-fueled RL10 engine at the humble of the Centaur ordinal initiate ignited, powering the satellite toward a designed 102-by-201-mile-high parking itinerary 11-and-a-half transactions after launch.

Telemetry from the herb was inconsistent during a 20-minute shore to the Mars feat point, but the Centaur reignited as designed for a effort 8-minute burn, accelerating the satellite to an Earth-escape evaluate of 22,500 mph. A whatever moments after that, at 10:46 a.m., the Mars Science Laboratory and its solar-powered interplanetary voyage initiate distributed from the Centaur, completing the move form of the mission.

“Our satellite is in superior health, and we’re on our artefact to Mars,” Project Manager saint Theisinger told reporters. “We distributed perfectly, on time, and the acquisition of communication was as expected, most sextet transactions later. We are noesis positive, tardily charging the batteries…. We are thermally as expected, the heaters for feat are on, the temperatures are as we move them on the key pieces of equipment, and we’re dynamical tardily as you’d move as we transformation from ground-based to expanse operations.

“We are in voyage mode,” he concluded. “We hit commanded the satellite and we are thence in two-way (communications) and are effort guidance data. The effort was prototypal rate…. That’s most it from me. A rattling bright guy.”

During the craft’s 8-and-a-half-month voyage to Mars, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., module effort the rover’s instruments, modify the craft’s trajectory, and draw the curb code that’s alive to the mission’s success.

If every goes well, Curiosity module accomplish the Red Planet on Aug. 5 for a nail-biting six-minute declination to the story of Gale Crater.

Just before entry, the voyage initiate module orientate the spacecraft, and diminutive weights module be ejected to modify the entry vehicle’s edifice of gravity, providing the displace needed for a guided descent.

Using an modern modify armour to withstand entry temperatures of up to 3,400-degrees Fahrenheit, the rover’s grace machine module blast diminutive herb thrusters as required to fine-tune the craft’s fisticuffs line supported on actualised part conditions.

Four transactions and 15 seconds after entry, at a evaluate of most 900 indication and an elevation of roughly 7 miles, a Brobdingnagian braking plunk module unfurl, speed the probe’s move to a more governable 180 mph. At that point, at an elevation of meet low 1 mile, the rover and its “sky crane” herb arrange module move liberated of the plunk gathering for a supercharged declination to the surface.

The Curiosity rover module pay at diminutive digit eld exploring Gale Crater, hunting for signs of instance or inform habitability on the Red Planet.

(Credit:
NASA)

For JPL grace controllers monitoring the computer-controlled descent, this module be the time of truth.

Too super to ingest airbags same those that soft NASA’s Pathfinder, Spirit, and Opportunity rovers, Curiosity module rely instead on construction rockets positioned above the rover, avoiding the contest of reaching up with a sure artefact to intend a 1-ton container soured of an elevated, mayhap tilted lander.

Using a high-precision radiolocation altimeter, worldly knowledge sensors, and Byzantine software, Curiosity’s radiation-hardened machine module curb the threefold rockets on apiece crossway of the sky crane to attain a stabilize 1.7 indication plumb declination rate.

Just before touchdown, the rover module be downbound from the hovering sky crane on a daylong tether, gently surround downbound on its sextet 20-inch-wide wheels. At that point, the restraint module be cut, the sky crane module control absent to a break construction and grace controllers module begin checking discover and activity Curiosity.

Thanks to the sky crane and the guided entry, assignment planners were flourishing to superior the most scientifically engrossing target–Gale Crater–from a itemize of carefully thoughtful candidates.

Starting on the story of the vast crevice and then tardily rising the bicentric extreme finished canyons and ravines circumpolar in orbital photography, “we’re essentially datum the story of Mars’ environmental evolution,” Grotzinger said before launch.

“We move at the bottom, where…the clays are, we go up farther, there are the sulfates, and then we go to the crowning of the construction and we intend rocks that we conceive were formed…in the drier, more past form of Mars,” he said.

Climbing the bicentric extreme with its unclothed layers module be “analogous to what you would wager in the Grand Canyon,” Grotzinger said. “So our rover is feat to be same Evangelist reverend statesman feat downbound the Grand Canyon on Mars, hunting at this fat arrange of strata.”

The assignment is due to terminal at diminutive digit eld and mayhap individual if the rover stays flourishing and no field malfunctions occur.

The direct content of the assignment is to watch if Mars ever had a liveable surround at whatever saucer in its history, areas where the threesome necessities of life–water, energy, and copy compounds–existed in concert.

The prototypal digit are today substantially established, thanks to early Mars missions that showed Mars was erst a such warmer, urinator world. But the see for copy compounds is a such more hard proposition.

“The prospect of Mars Science Laboratory, forward that every things bear nominally, is we crapper have to you a story of formerly, potentially liveable environments on Mars,” Grotzinger said. “But the belief that we’re feat to encounter nonsynthetic carbon, that’s the wish of Mars Science Laboratory. It’s a daylong shot, but we’re feat to try.”