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Updated August 6, 2012, 8:32 p.m. ET
Rover Probes Secrets of Mars
Perfect Landing Launches Search for Past Life, but Future of Missions Is Murky
By ROBERT LEE HOT Z
PASADENA, Calif.—NASA's
Curiosity rover began
transmitting photos to Earth even
before the red dust from its
flawless landing on Mars had
cleared Monday, a warm-up for
its two-year trek across a rugged
crater that could reveal whether
the planet ever was hospitable to
life.
NASA/Reuters
This video still shows one of the first images of the Curiosity rover's successfully landing on Mars.
Cheers erupted here in the
control room of Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, which is managing
the $2.5 billion mission. Elated
that the rover's daring and nevertested landing technique had
worked, ebullient engineers and
scientists pumped their fists in
the air and whooped. Several
wept.
Still, the celebrating couldn't
mask the new reality of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
which has been forced to scale back its once-vast ambitions in the face of
slimmer budgets and questions about its relevance.
NASA flight director Bobak Ferdowsi picked up more
than 16,000 Twitter followers this morning when people
noticed his star-spangled Mohawk. What makes the
young engineer geek out? Mr. Ferdowsi joins digits to
chat.
Next year, NASA plans to launch a probe to study the upper atmosphere of Mars,
but planners this month are debating what future Mars landings—if any—the
space agency can afford. Earlier this year, NASA pulled out of an ambitious,
joint U.S.-European effort to land a next-generation rover on Mars and
eventually return some samples to Earth.
While Curiosity's landing is bound to burnish NASA's image and improve its
employee morale, the mission may provide only a temporary political boost for
an agency that has struggled to chart a new course amid spending constraints,
persistent legislative fights and last year's retirement of the space shuttle fleet.
NASA chief Charles Bolden has said that NASA is determined to pursue
less-expensive unmanned exploration plans for Mars and the rest of the solar
system. He also has said that international cooperation is essential to any hope of
ultimately putting astronauts on the surface of the red planet.
Precisely on time and target, NASA's Curiosity rover
touched down safely on Mars Monday to begin an
ambitious two-year trek through the red planet. Richard
Rainen, Curiosity Rover mechanical team manager,
joins The News Hub with details. Photo: AP.
Dispatch
Despite the uncertainties, Monday was a day to savor for the hundreds of mission
engineers and scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Flying on automatic pilot, the one-ton Curiosity—the largest and most complex
mobile laboratory ever landed on another planet—touched down perfectly at
about 1:32 a.m. Eastern time Monday. Its first grainy, wide-angle images
showed its own left rear wheel parked on the surface of Gale Crater near the
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Live Coverage of the Mars Rover Landing
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equator of Mars, close to the foot of a three-mile-high mountain it aims to
explore in months to come.
Passing over the landing site early Monday, the space agency's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a dramatic image of Curiosity plunging toward
the surface, dangling from its fully deployed, 51-foot-wide parachute. But for
mission operations manager Michael Watkins, the most powerful image was
among the simplest: the shadow of Curiosity looming over the Martian soil.
The successful landing of NASA's Curiosity rover lays
the groundwork for a deeper understanding of Mars.
The WSJ's Deborah Kan speaks to NASA probe
designer Richard Rainen.
"It's beautiful to us because of what it means," Mr. Watkins said. "It is
representative of a new Mars we have never seen before."
In the months ahead, scientists expect to probe beneath the planet's surface
crust for evidence of chemistry favorable to microbial life, using the robot rover's
unique high-speed drill. In all,
Robotic Explorer
the plutonium-powered,
Explore some of the features of the Curiosity
six-wheeled Curiosity carries 10
rover.
scientific instruments, including
an analytical laboratory, to
process mineral and sediment
samples.
Precisely on time and target, NASA's Curiosity rover
touched down safely on Mars Monday to begin an
ambitious two-year trek through the mountainous red
planet. WSJ's Michael Kofsky explains why NASA
expects a scientific goldmine.
Going to Mars
See locations of past landings on the Red
Planet, details about the missions and photos
of the spacecraft.
Photos: Curiosity Touches Down
Curiosity is twice as long, five
times as heavy and vastly better
equipped than two previous
NASA Mars rovers that landed
in 2004. A rover named
Opportunity has been driving
along the rim of a crater called
Endeavor. Mired in sand, the
Spirit rover, meantime, stopped
sending communications in
March 2010. But both
discovered suggestive evidence
that water might have once
flowed on the surface of the
planet.
The initial images transmitted
Monday by Curiosity were taken
through the vehicle's hazardavoidance cameras, before their
transparent but dusty lens
covers had been removed. But
mission controllers soon expect
to be taking sharp, full-color
images in 3-D, panoramas and
high-definition videos of Gale
Crater.
The Mars landing was a
high-profile gamble by NASA on
a novel landing procedure. Too
Reuters
big to rely on air bags to cushion
its fall as with previous Mars
More photos and interactive graphics
landers, Curiosity landed
through an automated system of high-speed maneuvers, a supersonic parachute,
eight retro-rockets and a set of "sky-crane" tethers that lowered the vehicle
gently the last few feet to the ground.
"This is an amazing achievement," said Mr. Bolden, the NASA administrator.
Steady electronic "heartbeat" tones relayed from Curiosity across space to Earth
indicated a successful landing to the control room at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"That rocked," said deputy project manager Richard Cook, his face flushed with
emotion.
"If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of U.S. leadership in space, well, there's a one-ton, automobile-size piece
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of American ingenuity, and it's sitting on the surface of Mars right now," said
White House science adviser John P. Holdren at a news conference after the
landing.
More
Metropolis: 'Curious' Crowds Pack Times
Square for Mars Landing
Mr. Holdren called the landing "an unprecedented technological tour de force."
After its 352-million-mile voyage from Earth, the Curiosity craft touched down
in Gale Crater—about a mile from the center of the targeted landing zone—late in
the afternoon by Martian time, plunging through pink skies sprinkled with
high-altitude ice clouds. A dust storm earlier had threatened to buffet the craft
off course during its descent but by landing time it had dissipated.
"It was a beautiful clear day when we landed," said mission scientist John
Grotzinger.
The descent was so smooth, and required so few corrective bursts of its eight,
hydrazine-fueled retro rockets, that the rover touched down with almost
one-third of its fuel still in reserve, JPL flight controllers said.
NASA
Based on their preliminary analysis, mission managers believe Curiosity survived
the landing unscathed, coming to rest on a relatively flat part of the crater floor.
It will be a while, however, before mission operations engineers have tested all of
the rover's electronics and mechanical systems for possible damage during the
descent and are ready to begin steering the vehicle around the crater and the
nearby mountain, known as Mount Sharp.
"We have weeks, if not months, of check-out, before we are completely
confident," said Mr. Watkins.
USTREAM
This video still shows the staff in NASA's Jet
Propulsion Lab celebrating after Curiosity's landing.
In the next few days, JPL's mission operations team expects to deploy Curiosity's
antenna for high-speed transmissions to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth,
and its "Mastcam" flexible photo arm, which has side-by-side cameras for
stereoscopic, or three-dimension, imaging, as well as cameras for wide-angle
panoramas and video.
The rover may venture on its first test drive in early September, mission managers said. By October, it could be ready to analyze
its first scoop of Martian soil. In November, it likely will start to drill into the surface and extract mineral samples.
"We want to make sure we are running on all cylinders before blazing across the plain there," said Mr. Grotzinger. "The mission is
about patience."
—Andy Pasztor contributed to this article.
Write to Robert Lee Hotz at [email protected]
A version of this article appeared August 7, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline:
Rover Probes Secrets of Mars.
Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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