Hasta La Gadget!

With the excitement surrounding Curiosity starting to recede a little, NASA has announced that it has selected a new Discovery mission for 2016. Named InSight, this new mission will look to give us a better understanding of the formation of terrestrial planets by cracking the surface of Mars. Two of the things NASA scientists hope to discover through InSight is whether Mars has a solid or liquid core, and why it doesn’t have tectonic plates like we have here on Earth.

Finding the answers to these questions will help scientists better understand the differences between Earth and Mars, which in turn will provide a better understanding of how terrestrial planets evolve. In order to be selected at the 12th mission in the Discovery Program, InSight had to beat out 27 other proposed missions. After asking for proposals in June 2010, NASA had narrowed it down to just three by May 2011: InSight, a mission to a comet in our solar system, and a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. These three missions were given funding for “preliminary design studies and analyses” with InSight eventually coming out on top.

The mission will be led by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s W. Bruce Banerdt, but the US isn’t going it alone on this mission to Mars. The international community will play an integral role in the success of InSight, with the German Aerospace Center and France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) each providing special instruments for the mission. CNES is working with an international consortium to contruct a tool for measuring seismic waves under the planet’s surface, while the German Aerospace Center will be including a tool for measuring heat flow from the interior of the planet. An “onboard geodetic instrument” is coming from JPL, which will determine the planet’s rotation axis, as are two cameras and a robotic arm used for monitoring and deploying the instruments InSight will use.

InSight has a budget that’s capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars, but those who proposed InSight have already proven that the mission can stay under its budget cap. InSight is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars in September 2016, carrying out its two-year mission afterward. This all leads up to an eventual manned mission to the red planet, so it’s easy to see why NASA scientists are so interested in Mars when we’ve got an entire solar system to explore. Stay tuned for more information on InSight, and be sure to check out our story timeline below for a line-up of posts on NASA’s Curiosity!

NASA’s InSight Mars mission kicks off in 2016 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A new video has been compiled by Spaceflight101.com showing Curiosity’s final minutes of terror in glorious HD (though a dearth of frames and lack of stabilization make it a bit herky-jerky). It’s an assembly of all the high-res photos taken by the buggy on the way down to its now familiar perch, rolling at the not-exactly-HFR speed of 4 fps, but still trumping a previous low-res thumbnail version. It gives a much clearer, rover’s-eye-view of the journey, starting with the heat shield ejection and finishing with the dusty, butterfly-like touchdown. Check it out below the break to see the precarious descent — and don’t forget your Dramamine.

Continue reading Curiosity landing video assembled from high-res images (video)

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Curiosity landing video assembled from high-res images (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NASA’s Curiosity Rover got its first chance to fire its ChemCam laser at a rock laying about 2.5 m away from the rover. The rock Curiosity used it to laser on is about 7 cm wide, roughly the size of a tennis ball and has been dubbed Coronation rock. The powerful laser burst from Curiosity vaporized the surface of the rock revealing details of the rocks basic chemistry.

The laser blast was target practice for ChemCam helping operators to ensure that Curiosity and its frickin’ laser beam is ready for the real work of investigating the geology of Mars. The main goal of Curiosity as it roams around the red planet on its year-long main mission will be to help determine if Mars could’ve ever harbored life. The ChemCam laser was developed in cooperation between the US and France and is a very critical part for Curiosity’s investigation.

The Coronation rock was previously called N165. This rock was chosen seemingly for no other reason that it was large and nearby. This rock has no particular science value and is a simple chunk of Martian basalt volcanic rock. Curiosity shot the rock with 30 pulses of infrared laser light during a 10 second span.

Each laser burst blasted a tiny spot on the surface of the rock with over 1,000,000 W of power for five billionths of a second. The ChemCam laser used its telescopic lens to view the component colors released by the laser bursts to determine the atomic elements present in the rock. The scientists report, “We got a great spectrum of Coronation – lots of signal.” The first scientific target for Curiosity and its laser will be exposed bedrock on the ground next to Curiosity that was uncovered by the rover’s rocket-powered landing crane that help it land safely on the surface of the red planet.

[via BBC News]

Curiosity shoots laser at Coronation rock on Mars is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As the vista on Mars gradually gets ever clearer, and the system checks continue to show that the rover is in good stead, the team behind Curiosity will be increasingly eager to stretch its legs wheels. The first trip might be just a cautious few meters, but plans for a more adventurous jaunt have just been revealed. The first location in Curiosity’s sights is an area referred to as Glenelg, which, based on initial pictures, offers three different geological characteristics, as well as potentially being an area where water used to be present. The site is only 1,300 feet (400 meters) from where the rover landed, but it could still take several weeks to get there. This is merely a quick dash compared to the next leg of its journey, which sees Curiosity heading out to an area called Mount Sharp — a large mound of layered rock which is hoped to contain visible geology potentially dating back millions of years. With seven kilometers (4.4 miles) lying between the rover and the mountain’s foothills, it’ll be a much longer journey, but one that could provide the first real evidence of the planet’s ability to host, or have hosted, life.

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NASA maps out proposed travel plans for Curiosity, decides to head for the hills originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you thought your OTA update took too long, how about four days? That’s how long the Curiosity “brain transplant” took, and is now finally complete. This now means that the main computers have switched over from landing mode, to surface mode — and thus we hope — meaning the rover’s good to go. That said, it’s still a painfully slow process, with Curiosity’s wheels likely remaining steadfastly motionless for at least another week — and even then we’re looking at a trip of just a few meters. When it comes to interplanetary travel, though, slow and steady definitely wins the race — in the meantime, you can soak up the view.

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Curiosity survives brain transplant, prepares for first drive originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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