NASA Mars Rover Begins Driving at Bradbury Landing

Aug. 22, 2012

Dwayne Brown / Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 / 202-358-0918
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

Guy Webster / D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-5011
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov / agle@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 12-292

NASA MARS ROVER BEGINS DRIVING AT BRADBURY LANDING

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has begun driving from
its landing site, which scientists announced today they have named
for the late author Ray Bradbury.

Making its first movement on the Martian surface, Curiosity's drive
combined forward, turn and reverse segments. This placed the rover
roughly 20 feet (6 meters) from the spot where it landed 16 days ago.


NASA has approved the Curiosity science team's choice to name the
landing ground for the influential author who was born 92 years ago
today and died this year. The location where Curiosity touched down
is now called Bradbury Landing.

"This was not a difficult choice for the science team," said Michael
Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. "Many of us and millions
of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury
wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars."

Today's drive confirmed the health of Curiosity's mobility system and
produced the rover's first wheel tracks on Mars, documented in images
taken after the drive. During a news conference today at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., the mission's lead
rover driver, Matt Heverly, showed an animation derived from
visualization software used for planning the first drive.

"We have a fully functioning mobility system with lots of amazing
exploration ahead," Heverly said.

Curiosity will spend several more days of working beside Bradbury
Landing, performing instrument checks and studying the surroundings,
before embarking toward its first driving destination approximately
1,300 feet (400 meters) to the east-southeast.

"Curiosity is a much more complex vehicle than earlier Mars rovers.
The testing and characterization activities during the initial weeks
of the mission lay important groundwork for operating our precious
national resource with appropriate care," said Curiosity Project
Manager Pete Theisinger of JPL. "Sixteen days in, we are making
excellent progress."

The science team has begun pointing instruments on the rover's mast
for investigating specific targets of interest near and far. The
Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument used a laser and
spectrometers this week to examine the composition of rocks exposed
when the spacecraft's landing engines blew away several inches of
overlying material.

The instrument's principal investigator, Roger Weins of Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico, reported that measurements made on
the rocks in this scoured-out feature called Goulburn suggest a
basaltic composition. "These may be pieces of basalt within a
sedimentary deposit," Weins said.

Curiosity began a two-year prime mission on Mars when the Mars Science
Laboratory spacecraft delivered the car-size rover to its landing
target inside Gale Crater on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The mission
will use 10 science instruments on the rover to assess whether the
area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for
microbial life.

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Ray Bradbury inspired
generations of readers to dream, think and create. A prolific author
of hundreds of short stories and nearly to 50 books, as well as
numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays,
Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

His groundbreaking works include "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian
Chronicles," "The Illustrated Man," "Dandelion Wine," and "Something
Wicked This Way Comes." He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's
classic film adaptation of "Moby Dick," and was nominated for an
Academy Award. He adapted 65 of his stories for television's "The Ray
Bradbury Theater," and won an Emmy for his teleplay of "The Halloween
Tree."

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed
and assembled at JPL.

More information about Curiosity is online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl


and


http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

Follow the mission on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity




and on Twitter at:


http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


-end-



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