Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Guy Webster / D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif.
818-354-6278, 818-393-9011
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov / agle@jpl.nasa.gov
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced
Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging
by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week
flight and begin a two-year investigation.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)
spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex
landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle
cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.
"Today, the wheels of Curiosity
have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars. Curiosity, the most
sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where
it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on
Mars -- or if the planet can sustain life in the future," said NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden. "This is an amazing achievement, made
possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by
the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the
mid-2030's, and today's landing marks a significant step toward achieving this
goal."
Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT Aug.
5, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96
miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission,
the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable
for microbial life.
"The Seven Minutes of Terror has
turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph," said NASA Associate
Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. "My immense joy in the success
of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and
men of the mission's team."
Curiosity returned its first view of
Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More
images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends
observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for
work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.
"Our Curiosity is talking to us
from the surface of Mars," said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The landing
takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and
exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives."
Confirmation of Curiosity's successful
landing came in communications relayed by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and
received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA's Deep Space
Network.
Curiosity carries 10 science instruments
with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers
Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars,
such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks
from a distance. The rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic
arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and
parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory instruments inside the
rover.
To handle this science toolkit,
Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity.
The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers
of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay
and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.
The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed
and assembled at JPL.
For more information on the mission,
visit http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
Follow the mission on Facebook and
Twitter at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.
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