Posted on by Ken Kremer

Sweeping Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp and Gale Crater from Curiosity

Image Caption: Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp (at right) and Gale Crater from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Curiosity will eventually climb 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp in search of hydrated minerals. This colorized panoramic mosaic shows more than half of the landing site surrounding Curiosity in the distance to the visible peak of Mount Sharp and a portion of the stowed robotic arm (at left) and the shadow of the camera mast (center) in the foreground. The mosaic was assembled from new navigation camera (Navcam) images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 and Sol 12 and colorized based on Mastcam imagery from Curiosity. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. See black and white version below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

At last the Curiosity mega rover is beaming back the first higher resolution panoramic images that many of us have longed to see – a complete view to the visible summit of towering Mount Sharp, the mountain she will scale, surrounded by the sweeping vistas of the tall eroded rim of Gale Crater, her touchdown site barely 2 weeks ago.

See our panoramic mosaics above and below incorporating the best available raw images to date. Curiosity’s stowed robotic arm and the shadow cast by the camera mast are visible in the foreground.

The new images from Curiosity’s mast mounted navigation cameras (Navcam) show the huge mountains peak to as far up as the rover can see from her vantage point some 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the base of the 18,000 foot (5.5 km) high Mount Sharp which is taller than Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in the contiguous United States.

By stitching together the newly received full resolution Navcam images from Sols 2 and 12, we (Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo) have created a panoramic mosaic showing the breathtaking expanse to the top of Mount Sharp combined with the perspective of Gale Crater from the rover’s eye view on the crater’s gravelly surface.

Image Caption: Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp (at right) and Gale Crater from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Curiosity will eventually climb 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp in search of hydrated minerals. This panoramic mosaic shows more than half of the landing site surrounding Curiosity in the distance to the peak of Mount Sharp and a portion of the stowed robotic arm (at left) and the shadow of the camera mast (center) in the foreground. The mosaic was assembled from new navigation camera (Navcam) images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 and Sol 12. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo – www.kenkremer.com

In coming weeks, Curiosity will take aim at Mount Sharp with the pair of high resolution Mastcam cameras (34 mm and 100) mounted on the rover’s mast and eventually provide much clearer images to the peak resulting in the most spectacular pictures imaginable of the mysterious mountain that holds the mother lode of hydrated mineral deposits that the robot was sent to investigate by NASA. So far the Mastcam cameras have only imaged the lower reaches of Mount Sharp.

The nuclear powered, car sized Curiosity rover was specifically engineered to accomplish a pinpoint landing inside the 96 mile (154 km) wide Gale Crater beside Mount Sharp so she could scale the mountain and take soil and rock samples of the clays and hydrated sulfated minerals that scientists believe formed in liquid water that flowed billions of years ago.

Mount Sharp is a gigantic mound that covers the entire central portion of Gale Crater and learning how it formed is one of the many mysteries researchers seek to unveil with the highly sophisticated 1 ton robot.

John Grotzinger, the project scientist for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover, says that the hydrated minerals are all located in about the first 400 meters or so of Mount Sharp’s vertical elevation, based on spectral data collected by NASA and ESA spacecraft orbiting Mars. He says Curiosity will spend about a year traversing and investigating targets on the crater floor before reaching the foothills of Mount Sharp.

Curiosity will eventually spend years climbing Mount Sharp in the valleys between the 1 to 3 story tall mesas and buttes at the giant mountain’s base and lower elevations in search of sedimentary layers of the clay and hydrated sulfate mineral deposits.

The powerful ChemCam laser that Curiosity successfully test fired today will be absolutely key to finding the best targets for detailed analysis by her 10 state of the art science instruments.

The mission goal is to ascertain whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting microbial life, past or present and to search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Gale Crater and Mount Sharp from orbit with Curiosity landing site ellipse

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Blasts 1st Mars Rock with Powerful Laser Zapper

Image Caption: PewPew !! – First Laser Zapped rock on Mars. This composite image, with magnified insets, depicts the first laser test by the Chemistry and Camera, or ChemCam, instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. The composite incorporates a Navigation Camera image taken prior to the test, with insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the difference between images taken before and after the laser interrogation of the fist-sized rock, called “Coronation.” It is the first rock on any extraterrestrial planet to be investigated with such a laser test. ChemCam inaugurated use of its laser when it used the beam to investigate Coronation during Curiosity’s 13th day after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP

NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully blasted a Mars rock with a powerful laser beam, for the first time in history, today Aug. 19, inaugurating a revolutionary new era in planetary science with a new type of instrument that will deliver bountiful discoveries. The fist sized Martian rock zapped during the maiden laser target practice shots was appropriately dubbed “Coronation”.

The ChemCam instrument mounted at the top of Curiosity’s mast fired a total of 30 one-million watt pulses over a 10 second period at the 3 inch wide rock that vaporized a pinhead sized spot into an ionized, glowing plasma.

Each pulse lasted about five one-billionths of a second and was sufficient in energy to generate a spark of plasma to be observed with the ChemCam telescope and trio of spectrometers below deck in order to identify the elemental composition.

“Yes, I’ve got a laser beam attached to my head. I’m not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science. PewPew,” tweeted Curiosity.

The NASA composite image above shows Coronation before and after the laser shots – watch out little Martians !

“We got a great spectrum of Coronation — lots of signal,” said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. “Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it’s payoff time!”

Image caption: This mosaic shows the first target Curiosity zapped with the ChemCam laser, before being blasted on Aug. 19. The 3 inch wide rock was provisionally named N165 and is now called “Coronation”. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/LANL

ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark during all 30 pulses at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. The purpose of this test was target practice to make sure the laser could be precisely aimed and to characterize the instrument.

Ultimately the goal is use the laser to penetrate below the dusty surface and reveal the interior composition of the targeted rocks using the telescopic camera and spectrometers.

ChemCam, which stands for Chemistry and Camera, is a joint project between the US and France said Wiens at a news briefing on Aug. 17. “The science team is half French and half US.”

“It’s surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio,” said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. “It’s so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years.”

ChemCam is a remote sensing instrument and will get the most use of any of Curiosity’s instruments. It will be analyzing about 14,000 samples and help winnow down the targets and guide Curiosity to the most interesting samples for more detailed analysis, Wiens explained.

ChemCam uses a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy that has precedent in determining the composition of targets in other extreme environments such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, but is unprecedented in interplanetary exploration.

NASA’s 1 ton mega rover Curiosity is the biggest and most complex robot ever sent to the surface of another planet, sporting a payload of 10 state of the art science instruments weighing 15 times more than any prior roving vehicle. Curiosity’s goal is to determine if Mars was ever capable of supporting microbial life, past or present and to search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Posted on by Ken Kremer

1st Laser Firing and 1st Motion Imminent for Curiosity

Image Caption: This self-portrait shows the deck of NASA’s Curiosity rover from the rover’s Navigation camera. The image is distorted because of the wide field of view. The back of the rover can be seen at the top left of the image, and two of the rover’s right side wheels can be seen on the left. The undulating rim of Gale Crater forms the lighter color strip in the background. Bits of gravel, about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) in size, are visible on the deck of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The 1st firing of Curiosity’s rock zapping laser and 1st motion of her six wheels is imminent and likely to take place within the next 24 to 72 hours said mission scientists at Friday’s (Aug 17) media briefing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., home to mission control for the nuclear-powered, car-sized robot.

Furthermore the team has decided on the target of her 1st Martian Trek, a science hot spot dubbed Glenelg because it lies at the natural intersection of three different types of geologic formations (see graphic below), including layered bedrock and an alluvial fan through which liquid water flowed eons ago. Glenelg is about 400 meters (1300 feet) east of the rover’s landing site.

With each passing Sol, or Martian day, NASA biggest, best and most daring mobile lab becomes ever more capable, like a growing child, as engineers energize and successfully test more and more of her highly advanced systems to accomplish feats of exploration and discovery never before possible.

“Everything is going really well,” said John Grotzinger, project scientist for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover. “The excitement from the point of view of the science team is all the instruments continue to check out.”

Image Caption: Martian Treasure Map -This image shows the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate. Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT) at the green dot, within the Yellowknife quadrangle. The team has chosen for it to move toward the region marked by a blue dot that is nicknamed Glenelg. That area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain. The science team thought the name Glenelg was appropriate because, if Curiosity traveled there, it would visit it twice — both coming and going — and the word Glenelg is a palindrome. Then, the rover will aim to drive to the blue spot marked “Base of Mt. Sharp”, which is a natural break in the dunes that will allow Curiosity to begin scaling the lower reaches of Mount Sharp. At the base of Mt. Sharp are layered buttes and mesas that scientists hope will reveal the area’s geological history. The image was acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Curiosity will blast her first rock, dubbed N165, in the history of planetary science as early as Saturday night, Aug. 18, with the powerful mast-mounted laser and telescope on the Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam that includes spectrometers inside the rover.

ChemCam is a remote sensing instrument. It will get the most use by analyzing about 14,000 samples and help winnow down the targets and guide Curiosity to the most interesting samples for detailed analysis, Wiens explained.

“Rock N165 looks like your typical Mars rock, about three inches wide. It’s about 10 feet away,” said Roger Wiens, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “We are going to hit it with 14 millijoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds. It is not only going to be an excellent test of our system, it should be pretty cool too.”

ChemCam has a range of about 23 feet (7 meters). It fires with a million watts of power for 5 billionths of a second, sufficient energy to excite a pinhead sized spot to a glowing plasma that the instrument observes with the spectrometer below deck to identify the chemical composition.

Image caption: This mosaic image shows the first target NASA’s Curiosity rover aims to zap with a laser on its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, a rock provisionally named N165. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/LANL

“We are very excited. Our team has waited eight long years to get to this date and we’re happy that everything is looking good so far,” said Wiens. “Hopefully we’ll be back early next week and be able to talk about how Curiosity’s first laser shots went.”

We will take images of Rock N165 before and after the laser firing. The camera has the same resolution as the Mastcam and can take images that resolve to the width of a human hair from 7 feet away.

Engineers plan to turn the rover’s wheels over the next few days and execute a short test drive and turns of about 10 feet (3 meters).

Grotzinger indicated the drive to Glenelg could take a month or more.

“We will drive efficiently to Glenelg and it will take about 3 to 4 weeks. Along the way we may do scooping to take some soil samples if we find fine grained materials”

Glenelg, a palindrome, is also the 1st location where Curiosity will actually drill into rocks. Then it will deliver sifted samples into the two analytical chemistry instruments, SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) and CheMin (Chemistry and Minerology), which will determine the chemical and mineralogical composition and search for signs of organic molecules – the carbon based molecules that are the building blocks of life.

“We’ll stay and do about a month or more of science at Glenelg”

“With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive,” Grotzinger said. “We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration.”

After thoroughly investigating Glenelg until around the end of this calendar year, then it’s off to Mount Sharp, an 18,000 foot tall mound (5.5 km) that’s the missions ultimate destination because it preserves millions to billions of years of Martian history, stretching from the wet water era of billions of years ago to the more recent desiccated era. It could take a year or so to reach the base.
Mount Sharp is about 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) distant from the current location of Curiosity.

“What’s really cool about this topography is that the crater rim kind of looks like the Mojave Desert and now what you see here kind of looks like the Four Corners area of the western U.S., or maybe around Sedona, Ariz., where you’ve got these buttes and mesas made out of these layered, kind of light-toned reddish-colored outcrops. There’s just a rich diversity over there,” Grotzinger said at the briefing.

Curiosity will spend years climbing Mount Sharp in search of sedimentary layers of clays and sulfates, the hydrated minerals that form in flowing liquid water and could hold the ingredients of life.

New high resolution images of the foothills of Mount Sharp from Curiosity show the giant mountain’s base is littered with mesas and buttes ranging in height from 1 to 3 story tall buildings, with valleys in between.

Curiosity’s goal is to search for signs of Martian microbial habitats, past or present, with the most sophisticated suite of 10 state of the art science instruments ever sent to the surface of another planet.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Curiosity’s Wheels on Mars set to Rove soon inside Gale Crater. This colorized mosaic shows Curiosity wheels, UHF antenna, nuclear power source and pointy low gain antenna (LGA) in the foreground looking to the eroded northern rim of Gale Crater in the background. The mosaic was assembled from full resolution Navcam images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 on Aug. 8. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

First Full (Raw) View of Mt. Sharp from Curiosity

The latest raw images downloaded from the Curiosity rover provides the first full view of Mt. Sharp (Aeolis Mons). Stuart Atkinson has stitched together images from the Navigation Camera to give us the first full look at Gale Crater’s central mound.

Another image wizard, Damien Bouic has created a truly spectacular view of Mt. Sharp, which includes parts of the rover itself and the blazing Sun. This image comes from forward Hazard Avoidance camera on the day of the landing. It’s a wide-angle, fisheye camera, according to Emily Lakdawalla, and while it is a low-resolution image, the “poster” Bouic created is truly stunning.

But as Stu points out on his new and wonderful blog “The Gale Gazette,” while we can now see the full northern face of the mountain, we’re not actually seeing all of Mt. Sharp nor the highest peak. “This isn’t the summit at all. Far from it,” Stu writes.

The actual summit is hidden by the highest point visible to Curiosity, and is just the ‘front’ of Mt Sharp as seen from Curiosity’s landing site.

See Stu’s image below for analysis:

Caption: Google Mars view of Curiosity’s landing site and Aeolis Mons. Annotations by Stuart Atkinson.

What this means is that Curiosity probably won’t ever really see the the highest point on Aeolis Mons… unless she’s a really great mountain climber and has a really long extended mission, making it to the highest point now visible from the landing site.

“I’m a bit worried that we won’t get to see that summit at all,” Stu wrote. “The closer we get to Mt. Sharp’s base, the more mountain will be between us and the summit. And once Curiosity reaches the foothills of the mountain, the viewing angle will just be completely wrong, the summit will be hidden by the rising terrain.”

There’s also a wonderful color image put out by JPL and Malin Space Science Systems yesterday:

Caption: Curiosity’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera acquired this high-resolution image on Aug. 8, 2012 PDT showing layered deposits. A scale bar indicates a distance of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This image is taken from a mosaic and shows the view from the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover toward the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, where Curiosity is likely to begin its ascent through hundreds of meters of layered deposits. The lower several hundred meters show evidence of bearing hydrated minerals, based on orbiter observations. The terrain Curiosity will explore is marked by hills, buttes, mesas and canyons on the scale of one-to-three story buildings, and as MSL’s John Grotzinger said yesterday at the Curiosity press conference, the view looks very much like the Four Corners region of the western United States.

JPL did do a little processing of this image however, and shows the colors modified as if the scene were transported to Earth and illuminated by terrestrial sunlight. This processing, called “white balancing,” is useful to scientists for recognizing and distinguishing rocks by color in more familiar lighting.

You can see more images from Curiosity at the JPL Photojournal, and also see the latest raw views here. The wonderful photo-magicians at UnmannedSpaceflight.com are having a marvelous time with all the new images from Curiosity, and you can always see what they’ve come up with — which includes multiple mosaics and color versions hot off the photons of the latest raw images from MSL. Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Blog is also working her imaging processing software to the max, so check out her latest posts, too!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Two New Videos Show Curiosity’s Touchdown and Heat Shield Hitting Mars

Wow, this is better than any theatrical movies of fictional ships landing on Mars, because this is REAL! The images and videos from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera on the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft keep getting more amazing as the science team goes through their data and refines all the awesome action events from landing that the camera was able to capture. The video above is from a sequence of images which shows Curiosity’s heat shield slamming into the surface and raising a cloud of dust!! MARDI took the images while the rover was still suspended on a parachute and, of course, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield.

We also have a full resolution color MARDI image below which was sent to us by Rolf Wahl Olsen, pointing out where the heat shield is sitting on the surface.

And another great video below is of Curiosity gently touching down on Mars. This was also taken by MARDI and is a higher resolution version that what was previously available. MARDI is on the bottom of the rover, so you see the surface of Mars coming up at you, and then see the dust swirling as the sky crane’s rocket thrusters blasted the Mars regolith. Additionally, on the descent, one of the rover’s wheel’s comes into view as it unfolds in preparation for landing! Awesome!

UPDATE: (Aug. 19)

This video was put together by Doug Ellison of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, which shows Curiosity’s entire descent, starting with the heat shield jettison until touchdown and provides a “smoother” view of the entire landing:

Caption: High resolution image from MARDI of Curiosity’s descent. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

Click on the image for a larger version, or see the original raw version here. “It’s the little back irregular spot in the middle near the bottom edge,” Olsen said. “It’s not in the image before that, and it fits perfectly with the ‘crime scene’ photo released earlier,” which you can see here. If you look closely, the impact crater is even visible in this image!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Mohawk Guy Provides Update on Curiosity Rover

JPL’s Bobak Ferdowsi — famous for the star-spangled Mohawk hairdo he sported on Curiosity’s landing night — provides an update on what the newest Mars rover has been up to (checking out instruments) and how next week should include big moments like the first test drive and firing up that laser.

In addition to great hair, Ferdowsi is a Flight Director for the Curiosity rover team.

Ferdowsi in JPL’s Mission Control during Curiosity’s landing.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spectacular ‘Sideways Glance’ of Mt. Sharp in Gale Crater

Yep, you really want to click on this link to see the full color version of this great oblique view of Mt. Sharp (a.k.a. Aeolis Mons) in Gale Crater, taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Or you can click here to see the full “raw” strip from the spacecraft.

“The viewing angle is 45 degrees, like looking out an airplane window,” wrote HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen on the HiRISE website. McEwen noted that this color version doesn’t show the Curiosity rover or the hardware left over from the landing on Mars, but it does provide a great view of Gale Crater’s central mound.

So how “true” is the color in this image?

“It may be close, but not true,” Christian Schaller from the HiRISE team told Universe Today. Schaller pointed out the description (pdf) of color in HiRISE images from the HiRISE team:

It isn’t natural color, as seen by normal human eyes, because the IR, RED, and BG channels are displayed in red, green, and blue colors. For the Extras products, each color band is individually stretched to maximize contrast, so the colors are enhanced differently for each image based on the color and brightness of each scene. Scenes with dark shadows and bright sunlit slopes or with both bright and dark materials are stretched less, so the colors are less enhanced than is the case over bland scenes.

Jim Bell, the lead scientist for the Pancam color imaging system on the Mars Exploration Rovers, said he likes to use the term “approximate true color” because the MER panoramic camera images are estimates of what humans would see if they were on Mars. Other colleagues, Bell said, use “natural color.”

“We actually try to avoid the term ‘true color’ because nobody really knows precisely what the ‘truth’ is on Mars,” Bell told Universe Today in 2007 for an article about the art of extraterrestrial photography. In fact, Bell pointed out, on Mars, as well as Earth, color changes all the time: whether it’s cloudy or clear, the Sun is high or low, or if there are variations in how much dust is in the atmosphere. “Colors change from moment to moment. It’s a dynamic thing. We try not to draw the line that hard by saying ‘this is the truth!’”

For more great shots from HiRISE, check out their website.

Source: HiRISE

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

More Entertaining Curiosity Landing Videos

Where were you when Curiosity landed on Mars? If you were part of one the many “landing parties” held in various places around the world, you know what a thrilling experience it was to share the event with others. This video show the reactions from not only JPL’s mission control, but of other places where people had gathered to witness this historic event.

Below is a more light-hearted look at Curiosity and the landing, a parody of LMFAO’s “Sexy And I know It”, except this is “We’re NASA and We Know It:”
Continue reading “More Entertaining Curiosity Landing Videos”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity’s Landing Through the Eyes of One of Her 3,000 Builders

We all have seminal moments that mark our lives; some just are way more cool than others. Mark Rober designs spacecraft at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is just one of over 3,000 people who helped design, build, tweak, launch, navigate and land the Curiosity Rover on Mars. “I spent 7 years working NASA’s Curiosity Rover,” Rober said via Twitter. “I made this video to try to capture what it felt like to see her land.”

Seven years of his life came down to seven minutes of terror… or in Mark’s case, seven minutes of shivering.

Congrats, Mark, and to all your thousands of compatriots. Thanks for sharing the journey with the rest of us.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Wheels Initial Rove in a Week on Heels of Science and Surgery Success

Image Caption: Curiosity’s Wheels Set to Rove soon Mars inside Gale Crater after ‘brain transplant’. This colorized mosaic shows Curiosity wheels, nuclear power source and pointy low gain antennea (LGA) in the foreground looking to the eroded northern rim of Gale Crater in the background. The mosaic was assembled from full resolution Navcam images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 on Aug. 8. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. see black & white version below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Curiosity’s weekend “Brain transplant” proceeded perfectly and she’ll be ready to drive across the floor of Gale Crater in about a week, said the projects mission managers at a NASA news briefing on Tuesday, Aug. 14. And the team can’t wait to get Curiosity’s 6 wheels mobile on the heels of a plethora of science successes after just a week on Mars.

Over the past 4 sols, or Martian days, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) successfully uploaded the new “R10” flight software that is required to carry out science operations on the Red Planet’s surface and transform the car-sized Curiosity from a landing vehicle into a fully fledged rover.

The step by step flight software transition onto both the primary and backup computers “went off without a hitch”, said mission manager Mike Watkins of JPL at the news briefing. “We are ‘Go’ to continue our checkout activities on Sol 9 (today).”
Watkins added that the electronic checkouts of all the additional science instruments tested so far, including the APXS, DAN and Chemin, has gone well. Actual use tests are still upcoming.

“With the new flight software, we’re now going to test the steering actuators on Sol 13, and then we are going to take it out for a test drive here probably around Sol 15,” said Watkins . “We’re going to do a short drive of a couple of meters and then maybe turn and back up.”

See our rover wheel mosaic above, backdropped by the rim of Gale Crater some 15 miles away.

Image Caption: Curiosity landed within Gale Crater near the center of the landing ellipse. The crater is approximately the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. This oblique view of Gale, and Mount Sharp in the center, is derived from a combination of elevation and imaging data from three Mars orbiters. The view is looking toward the southeast. Mount Sharp rises about 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

Curiosity made an unprecedented pinpoint landing inside Gale Crater using the rocket powered “Sky Crane” descent stage just a week ago on Aug. 5/6 and the team is now eager to get the huge rover rolling across the Martian plains towards the foothills of Mount Sharp, about 6 miles (10 km) away as the Martian crow flies.

“We have a fully healthy rover and payload,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) deputy project scientist. “We couldn’t be happier with the success of the mission so far. We’ve never had a vista like this on another planet before.”

“In just a week we’ve done a lot. We’ve taken our 1st stunning panorama of Gale crater with focusable cameras, 1st ever high energy radiation measurement from the surface, the 1st ever movie of a spacecraft landing on another planet and the 1st ground images of an ancient Martian river channel.”

A high priority is to snap high resolution images of all of Mount Sharp, beyond just the base of the 3.4 mile (5.5 km) tall mountain photographed so far and to decide on the best traverse route to get there.

“We will target Mount Sharp directly with the mastcam cameras in the next few days,” said Watkins.

Climbing the layered mountain and exploring the embedded water related clays and sulfate minerals is the ultimate goal of Curiosity’s mission. Scientists are searching for evidence of habitats that could have supported microbial life.

Curiosity will search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules by scooping up soil and rock samples and sifting them into analytical chemistry labs on the mobile rovers’ deck.

Vasavada said the team is exhaustively discussing which terrain to visit and analyze along the way that will deliver key science results. He expects it will take about a year or so before Curiosity arrives at the base of Mount Sharp and begins the ascent in between the breathtaking mesas and buttes lining the path upwards to the sedimentary materials.

Watkins and Vasavada told me they are confident they will find a safe path though the dunes and multistory tall buttes and mesas that line the approach to and base of Mount Sharp.

“Curiosity can traverse slopes of 20 degrees and drive over 1 meter sized rocks. The team has already mapped out 6 potential paths uphill from orbital imagery.”

“The science team and our rover drivers and really everybody are kind of itching to move at this point,” said Vasavada. “The science and operations teams are working together to evaluate a few different routes that will take us eventually to Mount Sharp, maybe with a few waypoints in between to look at some of this diversity that we see in these images. We’ll take 2 or 3 samples along the way. That’s a few weeks work each time.”

Caption: Destination Mount Sharp. This image from NASA’s Curiosity rover looks south of the rover’s landing site on Mars towards Mount Sharp. Colors have been modified as if the scene were transported to Earth and illuminated by terrestrial sunlight. This processing, called “white balancing,” is useful for scientists to be able to recognize and distinguish rocks by color in more familiar lighting. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“We estimate we can drive something like a football field a day once we get going and test out all our driving capabilities. And if we’re talking about a hundred football fields away, in terms of 10 kilometers or so, to those lower slopes of Mount Sharp, that already is a hundred days plus.”

“It’s going to take a good part of a year to finally make it to these sediments on Mount Sharp and do science along the way,” Vasavada estimated.

The 1 ton mega rover Curiosity is the biggest and most complex robot ever dispatched to the surface of another planet and is outfitted with a payload of 10 state of the art science instruments weighing 15 times more than any prior roving vehicle.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Curiosity’s Wheels Set to Rove soon Mars inside Gale Crater. This mosaic shows Curiosity wheels, nuclear power source and pointy low gain antennea (LGA) in the foreground looking to the eroded northern rim of Gale Crater in the background. The mosaic was assembled from full resolution Navcam images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 on Aug. 8. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo – www.kenkremer.com

Image Caption: Mosaic of Mount Sharp inside Curiosity’s Gale Crater landing site. Gravelly rocks are strewn in the foreground, dark dune field lies beyond and then the first detailed view of the layered buttes and mesas of the sedimentary rock of Mount Sharp. Topsoil at right was excavated by the ‘sky crane’ landing thrusters. Gale Crater in the hazy distance. This mosaic was stitched from three full resolution Navcam images returned by Curiosity on Sol 2 (Aug 8) and colorized based on Mastcam images from the 34 millimeter camera. Processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo