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Building on successes of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, NASA later this year will launch its most extensive mission to Mars to date. It plans to send up an array of 10 instruments for examining rocks, soil, and the atmosphere, including a powerful laser that will vaporize rocks from a distance and an instrument that analyzes samples for organic compounds.
At 2.8 meters long, the nuclear-powered Mini Cooper-sized rover Curiosity is twice as long and four times as heavy as its Spirit and Opportunity predecessors, NASA says.
Inside a 25-foot-diameter space simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., during one of the final phases of testing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover last month, Curiosity is put through operational sequences in realistic Martian conditions.
Sealed in a near-vacuum environment, the chamber is filled with liquid nitrogen and cooled to minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit, and giant light panels simulate Mars' sunshine.
Seen here on March 8, with all of its primary flight hardware and instruments, technicians use a wand to map the solar simulation intensities at different locations inside the chamber prior to the start of tests, NASA says.
Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech
Caption by James Martin
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At 2.8 meters long, the nuclear-powered Mini Cooper-sized rover Curiosity is twice as long and four times as heavy as its Spirit and Opportunity predecessors, NASA says.
Inside a 25-foot-diameter space simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., during one of the final phases of testing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover last month, Curiosity is put through operational sequences in realistic Martian conditions.
Sealed in a near-vacuum environment, the chamber is filled with liquid nitrogen and cooled to minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit, and giant light panels simulate Mars' sunshine.
Seen here on March 8, with all of its primary flight hardware and instruments, technicians use a wand to map the solar simulation intensities at different locations inside the chamber prior to the start of tests, NASA says.
Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech
Caption by James Martin
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