Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars’ Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years.
This interpretation of Curiosity’s finds in Gale Crater suggests ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes at many locations on the Red Planet. (more…)
Images taken by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on April 2 and April 3 include bright spots, which might be due to the sun glinting off a rock or cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector.
The image from April 3, from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera, is online at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18077 (more…)
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has reached an area where orbital images had piqued researchers’ interest in patches of ground with striations all oriented in a similar direction.
A close-up look at some of the striations from the rover’s Navigation Camera gains extra drama by including Mount Sharp in the background. The lower slopes of that layered mountain are the mission’s long-term science destination. The image is online at: (more…)
The team operating NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is considering a path across a small sand dune to reach a favorable route to science destinations.
A favorable route would skirt some terrain with sharp rocks considered more likely to poke holes in the rover’s aluminum wheels.
While the team has been assessing ways to reduce wear and tear to the wheels, Curiosity has made progress toward a next site for drilling a rock sample and also toward its long-term destination: geological layers exposed on slopes of Mount Sharp. The rover has driven into a mapping quadrant that includes a candidate site for drilling. Meanwhile, testing on Earth is validating capabilities for drilling into rocks on slopes the rover will likely encounter on Mount Sharp. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity now has a view of a patch of exposed bedrock scientists selected for a few days of close-up study, the first such study since the rover began its long trek to Mount Sharp two months ago. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has used autonomous navigation for the first time, a capability that lets the rover decide for itself how to drive safely on Mars.
This latest addition to Curiosity’s array of capabilities will help the rover cover the remaining ground en route to Mount Sharp, where geological layers hold information about environmental changes on ancient Mars. The capability uses software that engineers adapted to this larger and more complex vehicle from a similar capability used by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which is also currently active on Mars. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — Rising above the present location of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, higher than any mountain in the 48 contiguous states of the United States, Mount Sharp is featured in new imagery from the rover.
A pair of mosaics assembled from dozens of telephoto images shows Mount Sharp in dramatic detail. The component images were taken by the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of Curiosity’s remote sensing mast, during the 45th Martian day of the rover’s mission on Mars (Sept. 20, 2012). (more…)
Mars Science Laboratory Mission Status Report
PASADENA, Calif. –– The NASA Mars rover Curiosity drove 63 feet (19 meters) northeastward early Monday, Dec. 10, approaching a step down into a slightly lower area called “Yellowknife Bay,” where researchers intend to choose a rock to drill.
The drive was Curiosity’s fourth consecutive driving day since leaving a site near an outcrop called “Point Lake,” where it arrived last month. These drives totaled 260 feet (79 meters) and brought the mission’s total odometry to 0.37 mile (598 meters). (more…)
