Saturday, NASA has the third Marsrover ‘Curiosity’ successfully launched. The relatively large vehicle with six wheels and a weight of 900 kg, on the red planet looking for traces of micro-organisms.
The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity rover to Mars, without problems with its Atlas V launcher of the United Launch Alliance departed from Cape Canaveral. In August 2012, with the spacecraft arriving. Curiosity has ten scientific instruments for soil testing on board.
A laser will be used for the inside of stone to be able to study and gases to show that by a spectrometer to be analyzed. Different cameras can by a mast of 2 metres is raised for better visibility and an arm of 2 metres ensures that other measuring instruments are close to their goal. Other devices to study the soil, climate, and the radiation on Mars.
Curiosity is larger than Spirit and Opportunity: the ‘trolley’ is as big as an average car. The new vehicle is twice as long and five times as heavy. The colossus will be in the Gale crater, which has a size of 20 by 25 kilometers, countries. There will be the Marsrover a two-year mission to perform. The landing will be on a smaller surface area and rougher terrain than during earlier Mars missions. NASA puts part of the reason that a special crane to put the vehicle on the mars surface to lift.