Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Guy Webster / D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena,Calif.
818-354-5011
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov /
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars
Curiosity has debuted the first recorded human voice that traveled from Earth
to another planet and back.
In spoken words radioed to the rover on
Mars and back to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden noted the difficulty of landing a rover on Mars, congratulated
NASA employees and the agency's commercial and government partners on the
successful landing of Curiosity earlier this month, and said curiosity is what
drives humans to explore.
"The knowledge we hope to gain from
our observation and analysis of Gale Crater will tell us much about the
possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for
our own planet. Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new
generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human
mission in the not too distant future," Bolden said in the recorded
message.
The voice playback was released along
with new telephoto camera views of the varied Martian landscape during a news
conference today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.
"With this voice, another small
step is taken in extending human presence beyond Earth, and the experience of
exploring remote worlds is brought a little closer to us all," said Dave
Lavery, NASA Curiosity program executive. "As Curiosity continues its mission,
we hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who will
become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars. And like the great Neil
Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap in human
exploration."
The telephoto images beamed back to
Earth show a scene of eroded knobs and gulches on a mountainside, with
geological layering clearly exposed. The new views were taken by the
100-millimeter telephoto lens and the 34-milllimeter wide angle lens of the
Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument. Mastcam has photographed the lower slope of
the nearby mountain called Mount Sharp.
"This is an area on Mount Sharp
where Curiosity will go," said Mastcam principal investigator Michael
Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. "Those layers are our
ultimate objective. The dark dune field is between us and those layers. In
front of the dark sand you see redder sand, with a different composition
suggested by its different color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity --
some rounded, some angular, with different histories. This is a very rich
geological site to look at and eventually to drive through."
A drive early Monday placed Curiosity
directly over a patch where one of the spacecraft's landing engines scoured
away a few inches of gravelly soil and exposed underlying rock. Researchers
plan to use a neutron-shooting instrument on the rover to check for water
molecules bound into minerals at this partially excavated target.
During the news conference, the rover
team reported the results of a test on Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars
(SAM) instrument, which can measure the composition of samples of atmosphere,
powdered rock or soil. The amount of air from Earth's atmosphere remaining in
the instrument after Curiosity's launch was more than expected, so a difference
in pressure on either side of tiny pumps led SAM operators to stop pumping out
the remaining Earth air as a precaution. The pumps subsequently worked, and a
chemical analysis was completed on a sample of Earth air.
"As a test of the instrument, the
results are beautiful confirmation of the sensitivities for identifying the
gases present," said SAM principal investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We're happy with this test
and we're looking forward to the next run in a few days when we can get Mars
data."
Curiosity already is returning more data
from the Martian surface than have all of NASA's earlier rovers combined.
"We have an international network
of telecommunications relay orbiters bringing data back from Curiosity,"
said JPL's Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for NASA's Mars
Exploration Program. "Curiosity is boosting its data return by using a new
capability for adjusting its transmission rate."
Curiosity is 3 weeks into a two-year
prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the
selected study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for
microbial life.
JPL manages the mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed
and assembled at JPL. NASA's DSN is an international network of antennas that
supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy
observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The
network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.
The full text of the administrator's
message, as well as a video clip with his recorded voice, are available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/bolden20120827.html.
To view the new images, and for more
information about the Curiosity rover, visit http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
- end -
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment