The Curiosity rover will land on the Martian crater on 2.012 in the Gale mission to study whether environmental conditions are, or were once, for life on the red ground, NASA announced at a ceremony at the National Air Museum and Space.
This is a crater of 154 kilometers in diameter named after the Australian astronomer Walter Gale and inside stands a great mountain.
The head of NASA, Charles Bolden, who after the end of the age of ferries has reiterated that NASA continue with space exploration, said in a statement that Mars is a goal that the agency has in its crosshairs.
"Curiosity not only provide us with abundant scientific data of importance, but will serve as a precursor to human exploration of Mars," Bolden said after the ad.
The choice was not casual.
In 2.006, hundred scientists from around the world began studying 30 potential landing sites and two years later became a "short list" with four possible destinations: Eberswalde, Holden, and Gale Mawrth.
Any points would have been interesting, the scientists said during the presentation, but after a thorough analysis of the images gathered by previous missions decided by Gale, which has an alluvial fan, as those that form when sediments are carried by water.
The lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Program at NASA, Michael Meyer, said that Gale "gives interesting possibilities to find organics, but this remains a remote possibility."
It is remote but not impossible, said Adriana Ocampo, Planetary Science Division of NASA.
Ocampo said that this place is also particularly interesting for the richness of the rocky area to be studied, which could have been printed traces of elements related to life "as we understand it," such as carbon.
He explained the processes of sedimentary layers that revealed the impact with an asteroid that caused the crater are like the leaves of a book that "tell the geological history of what happened on the planet."
"I know there is water on Mars, we know where we can find signs of past or present life, and where there was water, where there may be remnants of microbial life," he said.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), comprising a dozen analytical tools to examine soil, rocks and atmosphere of Mars has been assembled in a Rover robot with 6 wheels, measuring 2 meters high, 2.7 meters wide and 3 meters long and nearly a ton of weight.
The robot will be the biggest vehicle yet sent to Mars and unlike the first investigations by the Viking landers I and II and later the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which focused on the search for water, now you are seeking traces of life.
His name was suggested in 2.009 by a Kansas school, Clara Ma, in a competition held by NASA on the proposals which collected more than 9,000 students from around the country.
NASA plans to launch the vehicle from Cape Canaveral (Florida), between November 25 and December 18 this year and projected to reach Mars in mid-year 2.012 after traveling 200 million miles.
Spain is involved in this project and is responsible for the antenna system will be integrated into the robot and will serve to put the device in direct contact with Earth.
The robot is already at the Kennedy Space Center, where they finished setting up some of its parts.
Exploration in the soil of Mars began in 1.997 with the Pathfinder mission, which led to the Sojourner rover planet from which humanity was the first detailed images of that planet.
This is a crater of 154 kilometers in diameter named after the Australian astronomer Walter Gale and inside stands a great mountain.
The head of NASA, Charles Bolden, who after the end of the age of ferries has reiterated that NASA continue with space exploration, said in a statement that Mars is a goal that the agency has in its crosshairs.
"Curiosity not only provide us with abundant scientific data of importance, but will serve as a precursor to human exploration of Mars," Bolden said after the ad.
The choice was not casual.
In 2.006, hundred scientists from around the world began studying 30 potential landing sites and two years later became a "short list" with four possible destinations: Eberswalde, Holden, and Gale Mawrth.
Any points would have been interesting, the scientists said during the presentation, but after a thorough analysis of the images gathered by previous missions decided by Gale, which has an alluvial fan, as those that form when sediments are carried by water.
The lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Program at NASA, Michael Meyer, said that Gale "gives interesting possibilities to find organics, but this remains a remote possibility."
It is remote but not impossible, said Adriana Ocampo, Planetary Science Division of NASA.
Ocampo said that this place is also particularly interesting for the richness of the rocky area to be studied, which could have been printed traces of elements related to life "as we understand it," such as carbon.
He explained the processes of sedimentary layers that revealed the impact with an asteroid that caused the crater are like the leaves of a book that "tell the geological history of what happened on the planet."
"I know there is water on Mars, we know where we can find signs of past or present life, and where there was water, where there may be remnants of microbial life," he said.
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), comprising a dozen analytical tools to examine soil, rocks and atmosphere of Mars has been assembled in a Rover robot with 6 wheels, measuring 2 meters high, 2.7 meters wide and 3 meters long and nearly a ton of weight.
The robot will be the biggest vehicle yet sent to Mars and unlike the first investigations by the Viking landers I and II and later the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which focused on the search for water, now you are seeking traces of life.
His name was suggested in 2.009 by a Kansas school, Clara Ma, in a competition held by NASA on the proposals which collected more than 9,000 students from around the country.
NASA plans to launch the vehicle from Cape Canaveral (Florida), between November 25 and December 18 this year and projected to reach Mars in mid-year 2.012 after traveling 200 million miles.
Spain is involved in this project and is responsible for the antenna system will be integrated into the robot and will serve to put the device in direct contact with Earth.
The robot is already at the Kennedy Space Center, where they finished setting up some of its parts.
Exploration in the soil of Mars began in 1.997 with the Pathfinder mission, which led to the Sojourner rover planet from which humanity was the first detailed images of that planet.
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