I watched it live on NASA TV and was truly salute all these scientists and engineers who achieved this great feet for human kind. The kind of system they are putting in place is remarkably powerful and hopefully pave way for many more discoveries about past life and more importantly future human life on our dear red planet.
Moreover, the technologies put in place to achieve this feet are remarkable and hopefully lead to more greater achievements in future both for US and humankind in general.
Despite what many people say about spending billions of dollars on such missions as waste when more than three fourth population on earth won't even understand what has been achieved.. forget about caring about such things as they are still worried about clean water and decent food for themselves.
My rationale is.. this money is million or zillion times better spend than other inefficiencies in the systems. For US and developed countries.. Wars are biggest example of wasteful expenditure.. for developing countries, before they ask anything morale about spending so much, they should ask their politician's swiss bank account balance.. I only wish, we could spend more on such scientific achievements.. Hopefully, NASA has bootstrapped this field enough that capitalism will take care of next steps and even greater achievements.
check it out..
mercurynews.com/science
To satisfy Curiosity, signs of life are sought
Rover will check systems for 10 days before rolling out
By Lisa M. Krieger
lkrieger@mercurynews.com
The whole purpose of the Mars rover is to explore the possibility of life.
So why is it so obsessed with rocks?
Only moments after Curiosity’s safe landing — decelerating from mind bending speeds to a gentle and accurate touchdown — it began sending home photos: Dust. Shadows. Rock.
For a public raised on pulp sci-fi films and literary thrillers, the images fell short of the hopedfor glimpse of dramatic vistas, green goblins or aliens. Now that Curiosity has landed safely, the thrill is gone. We can return our attention to the Olympics.
But for 200 to 300 scientists, turning toward many 16-hour days in Curiosity’s two-year search for signs of life, the excitement is just starting.
“You can see a gravel field,” said an elated John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA’s
NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
NASA took a picture of the gravel on the surface of Mars’ Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover landed late Sunday. On the horizon is the rim of the crater. Part of the lens cover can be seen on the bottom right.
Moreover, the technologies put in place to achieve this feet are remarkable and hopefully lead to more greater achievements in future both for US and humankind in general.
Despite what many people say about spending billions of dollars on such missions as waste when more than three fourth population on earth won't even understand what has been achieved.. forget about caring about such things as they are still worried about clean water and decent food for themselves.
My rationale is.. this money is million or zillion times better spend than other inefficiencies in the systems. For US and developed countries.. Wars are biggest example of wasteful expenditure.. for developing countries, before they ask anything morale about spending so much, they should ask their politician's swiss bank account balance.. I only wish, we could spend more on such scientific achievements.. Hopefully, NASA has bootstrapped this field enough that capitalism will take care of next steps and even greater achievements.
check it out..
mercurynews.com/science
To satisfy Curiosity, signs of life are sought
Rover will check systems for 10 days before rolling out
By Lisa M. Krieger
lkrieger@mercurynews.com
The whole purpose of the Mars rover is to explore the possibility of life.
So why is it so obsessed with rocks?
Only moments after Curiosity’s safe landing — decelerating from mind bending speeds to a gentle and accurate touchdown — it began sending home photos: Dust. Shadows. Rock.
For a public raised on pulp sci-fi films and literary thrillers, the images fell short of the hopedfor glimpse of dramatic vistas, green goblins or aliens. Now that Curiosity has landed safely, the thrill is gone. We can return our attention to the Olympics.
But for 200 to 300 scientists, turning toward many 16-hour days in Curiosity’s two-year search for signs of life, the excitement is just starting.
“You can see a gravel field,” said an elated John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA’s
Mars Science Laboratory mission, describing a grainy black-and-white photo at a Monday briefing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The rocks, say scientists, will reveal if Mars ever supported germ-sized life. If so, what did it look like? Where did it go? And is it still there, hiding?
Curiosity will look for carbon-based building blocks of life. It will look for habitats that could have once supported life. And it will look for chemical “biosignatures” in rocks that will suggest that Mars may once have sustained life.
On Sunday night, Curiosity landed in a swirl of fine-grained soil in a crater, thought to have once been one of the planet’s wettest places. It’s just north of the sand dunes that fringe “Mount Sharp,” a mountain higher than Mount Whitney.
For the next several days, the rover will start a gradual rev-up of the 10 science instruments and cameras it carries to make sure nothing was damaged during the long journey and dramatic landing.
One of the early tasks will be to check the health of a small nuclear battery. Then the rover will unpack, raising a mast and weather monitoring instruments. By “sol 10” — the10th of the planet’s 24.66-hour days — it will begin wheeling and working.
On Earth, researchers will be living on the slightly longer Mars day, incrementally pushing downloaded data and uploaded instructions 40 minutes later every day. Eventually, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team in Pasadena will be attending 3 a.m. science and planning meetings.
One of their main interests will be in Martian soil. A robotic arm will scoop and dig the iron-laden sands to test in the rover’s mini laboratories. It is not looking for signs of life — but signs that life may be or have been possible.
Life needs energy and water and certain elements. Energy? Check. It’s there. Water? Check, though not liquid.
Chemical elements that serve as the building blocks of life? That’s the $64,000 question. No one knows.
“So we’re searching for things like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur and nitrogen,” said Bruce Barraclough, designer of the ChemCam instrument, in a Monday radio interview.
“We are not designed to find microbes or fossils but find the elements that life could have evolved from, in specific environments that are hospitable to life,” he said.
Another tool, known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, can detect methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane breaks down quickly, so there must be some ongoing source. On Earth, it comes from biological creatures like cows. What creates it on Mars?
SAM can break down the distribution of carbon isotopes to determine whether the gas was created biologically or geochemically, perhaps by volcanos.
In the South Bay, NASA Ames senior scientist David Blake designed CheMin, short for chemistry and mineralogy, which uses Xray diffraction to analyze soil and rock samples.
The Red Planet has been a source of legends since early human history. In the 1950s, some scientists concluded that some of its colors that mimicked those of chlorophyll that gives a green color to plants.
But we lost interest in the 1960s, when early Mariner missions sent home photos of a rocky, barren and apparently dead planet.
Hopes were raised — prematurely — in 1976, when Mars Viking mission scientists asserted that they saw evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. It happened again in 1996, when researchers at Johnson Space Center said they had found nanofossils inside a meteorite from Mars.
In 2004, other researchers suggested that methane gases detected on Mars hinted at the presence of life.
So NASA is very cautious, and uses the “L word” — life — very carefully.
No one expects to find living bacteria or fossils in this rock.
But if Mars ever bore life, once wet sediments from 4 billion years ago preserved in neatly layered years would be the perfect place to find its record.
“Things may seem slow,” said NASA Ames’ Blake. “But we have a precious resource up there. It’s worth much, much more than the $2.5 billion that has been invested.
“We want to preserve it, and keep it doing things for years. We will not hazard this rover. We’re here for the long haul.”
Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098.
The rocks, say scientists, will reveal if Mars ever supported germ-sized life. If so, what did it look like? Where did it go? And is it still there, hiding?
Curiosity will look for carbon-based building blocks of life. It will look for habitats that could have once supported life. And it will look for chemical “biosignatures” in rocks that will suggest that Mars may once have sustained life.
On Sunday night, Curiosity landed in a swirl of fine-grained soil in a crater, thought to have once been one of the planet’s wettest places. It’s just north of the sand dunes that fringe “Mount Sharp,” a mountain higher than Mount Whitney.
For the next several days, the rover will start a gradual rev-up of the 10 science instruments and cameras it carries to make sure nothing was damaged during the long journey and dramatic landing.
One of the early tasks will be to check the health of a small nuclear battery. Then the rover will unpack, raising a mast and weather monitoring instruments. By “sol 10” — the10th of the planet’s 24.66-hour days — it will begin wheeling and working.
On Earth, researchers will be living on the slightly longer Mars day, incrementally pushing downloaded data and uploaded instructions 40 minutes later every day. Eventually, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team in Pasadena will be attending 3 a.m. science and planning meetings.
One of their main interests will be in Martian soil. A robotic arm will scoop and dig the iron-laden sands to test in the rover’s mini laboratories. It is not looking for signs of life — but signs that life may be or have been possible.
Life needs energy and water and certain elements. Energy? Check. It’s there. Water? Check, though not liquid.
Chemical elements that serve as the building blocks of life? That’s the $64,000 question. No one knows.
“So we’re searching for things like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur and nitrogen,” said Bruce Barraclough, designer of the ChemCam instrument, in a Monday radio interview.
“We are not designed to find microbes or fossils but find the elements that life could have evolved from, in specific environments that are hospitable to life,” he said.
Another tool, known as Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, can detect methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane breaks down quickly, so there must be some ongoing source. On Earth, it comes from biological creatures like cows. What creates it on Mars?
SAM can break down the distribution of carbon isotopes to determine whether the gas was created biologically or geochemically, perhaps by volcanos.
In the South Bay, NASA Ames senior scientist David Blake designed CheMin, short for chemistry and mineralogy, which uses Xray diffraction to analyze soil and rock samples.
The Red Planet has been a source of legends since early human history. In the 1950s, some scientists concluded that some of its colors that mimicked those of chlorophyll that gives a green color to plants.
But we lost interest in the 1960s, when early Mariner missions sent home photos of a rocky, barren and apparently dead planet.
Hopes were raised — prematurely — in 1976, when Mars Viking mission scientists asserted that they saw evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. It happened again in 1996, when researchers at Johnson Space Center said they had found nanofossils inside a meteorite from Mars.
In 2004, other researchers suggested that methane gases detected on Mars hinted at the presence of life.
So NASA is very cautious, and uses the “L word” — life — very carefully.
No one expects to find living bacteria or fossils in this rock.
But if Mars ever bore life, once wet sediments from 4 billion years ago preserved in neatly layered years would be the perfect place to find its record.
“Things may seem slow,” said NASA Ames’ Blake. “But we have a precious resource up there. It’s worth much, much more than the $2.5 billion that has been invested.
“We want to preserve it, and keep it doing things for years. We will not hazard this rover. We’re here for the long haul.”
Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098.
NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
NASA took a picture of the gravel on the surface of Mars’ Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover landed late Sunday. On the horizon is the rim of the crater. Part of the lens cover can be seen on the bottom right.
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