Innovation
10 things you should know about NASA's Curiosity Cam
A webcam offers insights into one of the most challenging missions ever designed. Enter the Curiosity Cam, a look into the creation of the next Mars rover.
Space fans look out. You can watch the construction of the next Mars rover live through NASA's webcam. Dubbed the Curiosity Cam, the video footage will let you see the technicians construct and test the next Mars rover.
Here are 10 things you probably didn't know about NASA's Curiosity Cam:
- The Curiosity rover is the size of a car.
- Clean room technicians must wear bunny suits to avoid contaminating things.
- You can live chat on The Curiosity Cam. There are rules though!
- The video captures the unidentifiable technicians working in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- Watching the video can be boring, so one engineer performed a robotic dance.
- You can go to Mars (technically, only on a microchip though).
- The rover will go where no rover has gone before and carry 10 times as much stuff.
- It will take the rover nearly a year to reach Mars once it is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
- It will look for signs of life on Mars (and check to see if the far-away planet ever did support life).
- This time, it will land with a high-tech jet pack (not with airbags like the other rovers).
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com