In the wee hours of Monday, Eastern Daylight Time, a NASA rover named Curiosity should, if all goes according to plan, land on Mars after a more than eight-month-journey.
While Curiosity is not the first Mars rover, it is much bigger than its predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity. That is mostly due to the fact that its scientific instruments are much bigger -- altogether they weigh 165 pounds, as opposed to 11 pounds on Spirit and Opportunity.
Its $2.5 billion mission is to study the environment of early Mars and assess whether the area it will explore has ever had conditions favorable for life (microbial life, not Martians, unfortunately) -- and whether conditions were favorable for preserving evidence of life.
With that information, NASA will be able to determine how best to shape future missions -- either ones that will bring samples back to Earth for life-detection tests, or for ones that bring life-detection experiments to Mars.
And now that I've piqued your curiosity (terrible pun intended), here are answers to all the questions you haven't thought to ask about Curiosity but should have:
Curiosity will be landing in Mars's Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide bowl just south of the planet's equator. It's one of the lowest points on Mars, and since we think water once flowed on Mars, we suspect there will be evidence for that in the rocks at the bottom of the crater.
NASA will spend the first several weeks checking the rover's condition: Curiosity's computers will get a software upgrade; NASA will test how well its robotic arm works; Curiosity will take its first drive.
Within a few months, the rover will start on its travels up Aeolis Mons, a three-mile-high mountain nicknamed Mount Sharp right in the middle of Gale Crater. From orbiting spacecraft, we know that Mount Sharp is made up of layered rocks. Scientists hope that these rocks will provide a history of Mars. For instance, the base of the mountain appears to have clays, which indicates a history of water. As the rover goes up the mountain, its findings would tell us more about Mars's recent history.
Curiosity has a number of sophisticated instruments, some of which seem to come straight from sci-fi films:
The rover has the ability to drive for 12.4 miles over one Martian year, which is a little more than a year and 10 months in Earth years. But previous rovers have lasted long beyond their three-month expiration date, with Spirit lasting six years and Opportunity, which landed in 2004, still roving.
Curiosity is powered by plutonium, so the heat of radioactive decay is producing its electricity. This is exactly what the two Voyager spacecraft, which have been traveling for the last 35 years out to the edges of the solar system, have been running on.
Check out this infographic outlining the landing:
The New York Times also has some beautiful graphics of the landing and Curiosity here.
Update, August 6, 2012:
via: NASA press kit and fact sheet, The New York Times
illustrations: Artist's concept of Mars Science Laboratory entry, descent and landing. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com