Aug. 27, 2012
Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@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: 12-297
NASA ROVER RETURNS VOICE AND TELEPHOTO VIEWS FROM MARTIAN SURFACE
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Curiosity has debuted the first
recorded human voice that traveled from Earth to another planet and
back.
In spoken words radioed to the rover on Mars and back to NASA's Deep
Space Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted
the difficulty of landing a rover on Mars, congratulated NASA
employees and the agency's commercial and government partners on the
successful landing of Curiosity earlier this month, and said
curiosity is what drives humans to explore.
"The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of
Gale Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars
as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet.
Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation
of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human
mission in the not too distant future," Bolden said in the recorded
message.
The voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera views
of the varied Martian landscape during a news conference today at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.
"With this voice, another small step is taken in extending human
presence beyond Earth, and the experience of exploring remote worlds
is brought a little closer to us all," said Dave Lavery, NASA
Curiosity program executive. "As Curiosity continues its mission, we
hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who
will become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars. And like the
great Neil Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap
in human exploration."
The telephoto images beamed back to Earth show a scene of eroded knobs
and gulches on a mountainside, with geological layering clearly
exposed. The new views were taken by the 100-millimeter telephoto
lens and the 34-milllimeter wide angle lens of the Mast Camera
(Mastcam) instrument. Mastcam has photographed the lower slope of the
nearby mountain called Mount Sharp.
"This is an area on Mount Sharp where Curiosity will go," said Mastcam
principal investigator Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems
in San Diego. "Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune
field is between us and those layers. In front of the dark sand you
see redder sand, with a different composition suggested by its
different color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity -- some
rounded, some angular, with different histories. This is a very rich
geological site to look at and eventually to drive through."
A drive early Monday placed Curiosity directly over a patch where one
of the spacecraft's landing engines scoured away a few inches of
gravelly soil and exposed underlying rock. Researchers plan to use a
neutron-shooting instrument on the rover to check for water molecules
bound into minerals at this partially excavated target.
During the news conference, the rover team reported the results of a
test on Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which
can measure the composition of samples of atmosphere, powdered rock
or soil. The amount of air from Earth's atmosphere remaining in the
instrument after Curiosity's launch was more than expected, so a
difference in pressure on either side of tiny pumps led SAM operators
to stop pumping out the remaining Earth air as a precaution. The
pumps subsequently worked, and a chemical analysis was completed on a
sample of Earth air.
"As a test of the instrument, the results are beautiful confirmation
of the sensitivities for identifying the gases present," said SAM
principal investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We're happy with this test and we're
looking forward to the next run in a few days when we can get Mars
data."
Curiosity already is returning more data from the Martian surface than
have all of NASA's earlier rovers combined.
"We have an international network of telecommunications relay orbiters
bringing data back from Curiosity," said JPL's Chad Edwards, chief
telecommunications engineer for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.
"Curiosity is boosting its data return by using a new capability for
adjusting its transmission rate."
Curiosity is 3 weeks into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will
use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected study area
ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial
life.
JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
NASA's DSN is an international network of antennas that supports
interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy
observations for the exploration of the solar system and the
universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.
The full text of the administrator's message, as well as a video clip
with his recorded voice, are available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/bolden20120827.html
To view the new images, and for more information about the Curiosity
rover, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/msl
and
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl
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