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Credit: NASA
The latest selfie from NASA rover Curiosity, taken on January 23, 2018.
After rolling past Martian rocks for five-and-a-half years, NASA’s Curiosity just hit a milestone.
2,000 days on Mars.
That’s nearly triple the rover’s life expectancy. The mission was originally scheduled to last 23 months, about 700 days.
Today—dinged, dented, drenched in dust, with worn wheels and a dicey drill, Curiosity continues its climb up a gargantuan Martian mountain.
It’s a slog. Curiosity, ever so slow, lumbers along in fits and starts, with lots of pauses and pit stops.
“Like watching paint dry,” says Ashwin Vasavada of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
For Curiosity, a good day of driving might cover the length of a football field. But usually it’s even less, no more than “10, 20 meters or so,” says Vasavada—about 30 to 60 feet.
All told, since landing in August 2012, Curiosity has traveled 11.2 miles.
“We deliberately go very slow to be careful," says Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission. But safety isn’t the only reason for the starts and stops.
Like a driver on the freeway who eases up to read a billboard, Curiosity’s checking out “the interesting rock outcrops,” he says.
It’s worth the look. Somewhere within those rocks are clues on whether or not life was ever on Mars.
Credit: NASA
Curiosity looking toward the base of Mount Sharp.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
The higher regions of Mount Sharp.
Right now, Curiosity is driving up Mount Sharp, 16,000 feet high and in the middle of Gale Crater, 96 miles wide. “It’s a place where we can actually unravel the story of Mars,” says Vasavada.
Sharp is a mountain whittled by wind, sculpted by erosion. Ancient geological features are exposed. Vertical layers of rock resemble a highway roadcut.
“Nature has done that for us,” says Vasavada. “There’s a continuous roadcut all around the mountain.”
The lowest layers are the oldest (three billion years). Go up the mountain, and layers get younger. Curiosity can park, take photographs with its 17 cameras, examine the rocks, and determine their chemistry.
By analyzing and comparing the layers, scientists can read Mars like a history book. Says Vasavada: “We can figure out what conditions were like on Mars, and how they changed.”
What they’ve already figured out—water, and lots of it, was once on Mars.
Those mysterious layers of rock, rich in clay minerals, are mud from the bottom of primeval Martian lakes that existed 3.5 billion years ago.
The lakes were sizable, covering where Mount Sharp sits today, and perhaps were as large as the entire crater floor.
More intriguing, the lakes endured—appearing, growing, shrinking, disappearing, then reappearing for millions of years. “Even tens of millions of years,” says Vasavada.
Which makes one wonder: Could something have been swimming in those lakes? Even if only Martian microbes?
No one knows. “But when you find a lake that’s lasted for millions of years,” says Vasavada, “that gives evolution time to operate.”
Now wonder about that, and what Curiosity might find over the next 2,000 days, as it putters up the pink mountain.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Wide view of Curiosity.
Credit: NASA
The latest selfie from NASA rover Curiosity, taken on January 23, 2018.
After rolling past Martian rocks for five-and-a-half years, NASA’s Curiosity just hit a milestone.
2,000 days on Mars.
That’s nearly triple the rover’s life expectancy. The mission was originally scheduled to last 23 months, about 700 days.
Today—dinged, dented, drenched in dust, with worn wheels and a dicey drill, Curiosity continues its climb up a gargantuan Martian mountain.
It’s a slog. Curiosity, ever so slow, lumbers along in fits and starts, with lots of pauses and pit stops.
“Like watching paint dry,” says Ashwin Vasavada of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
For Curiosity, a good day of driving might cover the length of a football field. But usually it’s even less, no more than “10, 20 meters or so,” says Vasavada—about 30 to 60 feet.
All told, since landing in August 2012, Curiosity has traveled 11.2 miles.
“We deliberately go very slow to be careful," says Vasavada, the project scientist for the mission. But safety isn’t the only reason for the starts and stops.
Like a driver on the freeway who eases up to read a billboard, Curiosity’s checking out “the interesting rock outcrops,” he says.
It’s worth the look. Somewhere within those rocks are clues on whether or not life was ever on Mars.
Credit: NASA
Curiosity looking toward the base of Mount Sharp.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
The higher regions of Mount Sharp.
Right now, Curiosity is driving up Mount Sharp, 16,000 feet high and in the middle of Gale Crater, 96 miles wide. “It’s a place where we can actually unravel the story of Mars,” says Vasavada.
Sharp is a mountain whittled by wind, sculpted by erosion. Ancient geological features are exposed. Vertical layers of rock resemble a highway roadcut.
“Nature has done that for us,” says Vasavada. “There’s a continuous roadcut all around the mountain.”
The lowest layers are the oldest (three billion years). Go up the mountain, and layers get younger. Curiosity can park, take photographs with its 17 cameras, examine the rocks, and determine their chemistry.
By analyzing and comparing the layers, scientists can read Mars like a history book. Says Vasavada: “We can figure out what conditions were like on Mars, and how they changed.”
What they’ve already figured out—water, and lots of it, was once on Mars.
Those mysterious layers of rock, rich in clay minerals, are mud from the bottom of primeval Martian lakes that existed 3.5 billion years ago.
The lakes were sizable, covering where Mount Sharp sits today, and perhaps were as large as the entire crater floor.
More intriguing, the lakes endured—appearing, growing, shrinking, disappearing, then reappearing for millions of years. “Even tens of millions of years,” says Vasavada.
Which makes one wonder: Could something have been swimming in those lakes? Even if only Martian microbes?
No one knows. “But when you find a lake that’s lasted for millions of years,” says Vasavada, “that gives evolution time to operate.”
Now wonder about that, and what Curiosity might find over the next 2,000 days, as it putters up the pink mountain.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Wide view of Curiosity.
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