Artist's conception of Mars Science Laboratory (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
While the landing site of MSL has been narrowed down to two, the final choice has yet to be made. Either Gale Crater, with its bulging shield volcano and fascinating sulfate deposits, or Eberswalde Crater, with its river delta and clay sediments, will be where MSL touches down. Those two sites were whittled down from thousands of potential landing places, and both promise to reveal much about the ancient past on Mars, and whether or not it was ever a planet that supported life.
Wherever MSL lands, it will have a host of scientific equipment to carry out its mission. The cameras aboard its mast will, for the first time, send back high definition color pictures and videos from the Martian surface. The rover is equipped with a ChemCam, that will vaporize rocks with a laser, then analyze the vapor with a spectrometer to identify chemical composition. And, like the Viking mission in the 1970s, MSL will have an onboard oven, where soil samples can be cooked and checked for possible organic signatures. All told, MSL will touchdown with 11 high-tech instruments - that's 84 kg of scientific equipment!
The launch window for the Mars Science Laboratory opens Thanksgiving day, this November. If all goes according to plan, MSL will land on the Martian surface in the summer of 2012, and will operate for a full Martian year. That's 687 Earth days. And if NASA's past rovers are any indication, hopefully it will be cruising around on Mars for even longer.
My thanks go out to Dr. Grotzinger for his illuminating lecture, and best of luck to the upcoming mission!
Read more about MSL here.
Let's just hope that Sammy Hagar doesn't write another crappy song about going to Mars like he did in the 90's.
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