NASA Mars Rover Team Hears From President Obama

Aug. 13, 2012

Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
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: 12-279

NASA MARS ROVER TEAM HEARS FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA



PASADENA, Calif. -- President Barack Obama this morning told the
flight control team for NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, "You made us all
proud."

Obama telephoned the mission control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., to congratulate JPL Director
Charles Elachi and the Mars Science Laboratory team operating the
rover, which landed on Mars a week ago.

"What you've accomplished embodies the American spirit," the president
said. "Our expectation is that Curiosity is going to be telling us
things we did not know before and laying the groundwork for an even
more audacious undertaking in the future, and that's a human mission
to Mars."

Obama said Curiosity's landing advances his goals of improving
education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. "This
is the kind of thing that inspires kids across the country," he said.
"They're telling their moms and dads they want to be part of a Mars
mission, maybe even the first person to walk on Mars."

Elachi thanked Obama for the call and added, "Hopefully we inspire
some of the millions of young people who were watching the landing."

Obama noted, "You guys should be remarkably proud. Really what makes
us best as a species is this curiosity we have -- this yearning to
discover and know more and push the boundaries of knowledge."

The rover team has completed three of the four days of activities
needed for transitioning Curiosity's two main computers to a version
of software suited for the rover's work on the surface of Mars. The
surface work will include driving and using tools on a robotic arm.
During landing, and the first few days after landing, the
spacecraft's computers used a version of flight software loaded with
landing-day capabilities that no longer are needed.

"After the software transition, we go back to preparing the rover to
be fully functional for surface operations," Curiosity mission
manager Art Thompson said. "We are looking forward to a first drive
in about a week." The first short drive will be part of a few weeks
of initial checkouts and observations to assess equipment on the
rover and characteristics of the landing site.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as
large as the science payloads on NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and
Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars,
such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks' elemental
composition from a distance. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop
located at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered
samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples
into the rover's analytical laboratory instruments.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five
times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site
at 4.59 degrees south, 137.44 degrees east, places the rover within
driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain.
Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in
the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

and

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

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

and

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity


-end-



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