This is pretty awesome. Mars Rover “Curiosity” is about to land on Mars Aug 5th. Been “on the road” since Nov last year. Complete robotic lab on-board for soil analysis, including a mass spectrometer, X-ray diffraction instrument, radiation detectors, cameras…basically everything that’s needed to profile substances in the soil, both inorganic and maybe even organic.
Here’s a 10 minute silent animation of the landing and surface operations that’s fascinating (watch full screen). Very realistic. Here’s NASA’s “Seven Minutes of Terror” video with narration.
Sad to say, the real “terror” is here on Earth. Obama’s budget includes a 20% reduction in NASA’s funds for planetary science, which eliminates scheduled missions to Mars in 2016 and 2018.
This may well be the last mission for the foreseeable future. “Dare Mighty Things”? Apparently no longer.
Related: “Opportunity” is still roving 8 years later. It contains the thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS) responsible for all those awesome panoramic shots from Mars and is controlled and operated from ASU’s campus.