It is the last 78 miles of a NASA rover's 154 million-mile journey to Mars that concerns Ravi Prakash the most. <\/p>\n
That's because this is the first time that NASA - or anyone else - has ever tried to land something nearly so big as the 1-ton Curiosity rover on Mars, and because so much is riding on this particular mission. <\/p>\n
\"We've got to go from five times as fast as a speeding bullet - 13,000 mph - all the way to a screeching halt in seven minutes,\" said Prakash, a Texas City native who now works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the rover's lander team. <\/p>\n
Five times the size of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers already on Mars, Curiosity is packed with scientific equipment: HD-resolution cameras that can also capture video; a laser than can ignite a spark on rocks 20 feet away to determine what they're made of; and other high-tech tools including an X-ray diffraction setup, a mass spectrometer, and a gas chromatograph. <\/p>\n
With these devices the six-wheeled rover will be able to sample hundreds of layers of sedimentary rock, allowing scientists to understand how the surface of Mars changed over time, and providing a detailed history of the Red Planet and clues to whether life could have flourished there. <\/p>\n
But it's got to get there safely at first. <\/p>\n
Adding to the pressure is that NASA is not currently planning or building a next generation rover to go to Mars. More than 200 scientists attended a NASA meeting earlier this year in Houston to discuss plans for follow-up missions, but none has been chosen. <\/p>\n
Nail-biting time <\/p>\n
So Curiosity, itself a decade in the works, is it for a long time. <\/p>\n
\"With no sense of how or when we will follow this up, and without knowing which direction our tools and techniques are evolving - yes, landing successfully is a big deal,\" said Mark Lemmon, a Texas A&M University planetary scientist who will help operate the rover on Mars. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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NASA hopes are riding on Mars rover's tricky descent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is the last 78 miles of a NASA rover's 154 million-mile journey to Mars that concerns Ravi Prakash the most. Continue reading