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Mojave Desert Tests Prepare for NASA Mars Roving

Team members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California’s Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing.

The test rover that they put through paces on various sandy slopes has a full-scale version of Curiosity’s mobility system, but it is otherwise stripped down so that it weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will weigh in the lesser gravity of Mars. (more…)

‘Mount Sharp’ on Mars Links Geology’s Past and Future

By Guest PostApril 1, 2012Sciencearizona, bob sharp, curiosity, edward stolper, gale crater, geological sciences, grand canyon, john grotzinger, ken edgett, life magazine, liquid water, mars, michael malin, mount rainier, mount sharp, NASA, robert p sharp, san diego, seattle, spacecraft

One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado’s grandest, has been beckoning would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s. Scientists have ideas about how it took shape in the middle of ancient Gale Crater and hopes for what evidence it could yield about whether conditions on Mars have favored life.

No mission to Mars dared approach it, though, until NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which this August will attempt to place its one-ton rover, Curiosity, at the foot of the mountain. The moat of flatter ground between the mountain and the crater rim encircling it makes too small a touchdown target to have been considered safe without precision-landing innovations used by this mission. (more…)

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Mojave Desert Tests Prepare for NASA Mars Roving

‘Mount Sharp’ on Mars Links Geology’s Past and Future