{"id":1049733,"date":"2013-08-07T06:46:53","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T10:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.immortalitymedicine.tv\/chemistry\/happy-birthday-curiosity.php"},"modified":"2024-08-17T18:08:29","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T22:08:29","slug":"happy-birthday-curiosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/chemistry\/happy-birthday-curiosity.php","title":{"rendered":"Happy birthday Curiosity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This time last year, millions of us watched live (online and late at night, in my case) as a portable science lab the size of a family car landed on the surface of Mars.  Now Curiosity<\/em>, the Mars science laboratory, is celebrating its first birthday and a year of successful science.<\/p>

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— <\/span>A self-portrait composite image of Curiosity. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS<\/p><\/div><\/div>

I hope that the event of the landing itself will go down in scientific history. Although not as iconic as the Moon landing, Curiosity’s touchdown was extremely ambitious – Nasa’s engineers devised a controlled descent system that involved lowering the rover from a rocket powered ‘sky crane’, so that it could be placed with its wheels on the ground, ready to rove. The entire process took just a few minutes, now dubbed the ‘7 minutes of terror’. Watch a video of the event and you’ll see that this isn’t a bad description – there’s more tension packed into those 420 seconds than in any feature-length Hollywood thriller.<\/span><\/p>

It’s apt that the landing should be something out of the ordinary, as the rover itself is also unique.  At almost twice the length and five times the weight of the largest previous rovers (Nasa’s own Spirit<\/em> and Opportunity<\/em>), it is packed with scientific instruments for imaging, sampling and studying the soil and atmosphere. Crammed into the rover are several types of equipment that would not look out of place in a university lab, including a gas chromatograph, a quadrupole mass spectrometer and a tuneable laser spectrometer as well as high-definition cameras. Other, more exotic kit includes a neutron source and detector for measuring hydrogen near the surface and a robotic arm complete with scoops, cameras and a heavily modified drill.<\/p>

In the past 12 months, Curiosity<\/em> has made some headway in achieving its scientific goals. Among the objectives were:<\/p>