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NASA’s Mars Curiosity has debuted the first recorded human voice that traveled from Earth to another planet and back.
In
spoken words radioed to the rover on Mars and back to NASA’s Deep Space
Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted the
difficulty of landing a rover on Mars, congratulated NASA employees and
the agency’s commercial and government partners on the successful
landing of Curiosity earlier this month, and said curiosity is what
drives humans to explore.
“The
knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale
Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well
as the past and future possibilities for our own planet. Curiosity will
bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and
explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not too
distant future,” Bolden said in the recorded message.
The
voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera views of
the varied Martian landscape during a news conference today at NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
“With
this voice, another small step is taken in extending human presence
beyond Earth, and the experience of exploring remote worlds is brought a
little closer to us all,” said Dave Lavery, NASA Curiosity program
executive. “As Curiosity continues its mission, we hope these words will
be an inspiration to someone alive today who will become the first to
stand upon the surface of Mars. And like the great Neil Armstrong, they
will speak aloud of that next giant leap in human exploration.”
The
telephoto images beamed back to Earth show a scene of eroded knobs and
gulches on a mountainside, with geological layering clearly exposed. The
new views were taken by the 100-millimeter telephoto lens and the
34-milllimeter wide angle lens of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument.
Mastcam has photographed the lower slope of the nearby mountain called
Mount Sharp.
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“This
is an area on Mount Sharp where Curiosity will go,” said Mastcam
principal investigator Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in
San Diego. “Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune field
is between us and those layers. In front of the dark sand you see
redder sand, with a different composition suggested by its different
color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity—some rounded, some
angular, with different histories. This is a very rich geological site
to look at and eventually to drive through.”
A
drive early Monday placed Curiosity directly over a patch where one of
the spacecraft’s landing engines scoured away a few inches of gravelly
soil and exposed underlying rock. Researchers plan to use a
neutron-shooting instrument on the rover to check for water molecules
bound into minerals at this partially excavated target.
During
the news conference, the rover team reported the results of a test on
Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which can measure
the composition of samples of atmosphere, powdered rock or soil. The
amount of air from Earth’s atmosphere remaining in the instrument after
Curiosity’s launch was more than expected, so a difference in pressure
on either side of tiny pumps led SAM operators to stop pumping out the
remaining Earth air as a precaution. The pumps subsequently worked, and a
chemical analysis was completed on a sample of Earth air.
“As
a test of the instrument, the results are beautiful confirmation of the
sensitivities for identifying the gases present,” said SAM principal
investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. “We’re happy with this test and we’re looking forward to
the next run in a few days when we can get Mars data.”
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Curiosity already is returning more data from the Martian surface than have all of NASA’s earlier rovers combined.
“We
have an international network of telecommunications relay orbiters
bringing data back from Curiosity,” said JPL’s Chad Edwards, chief
telecommunications engineer for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
“Curiosity is boosting its data return by using a new capability for
adjusting its transmission rate.”
Curiosity
is 3 weeks into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10
science instruments to assess whether the selected study area ever has
offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
JPL
manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
NASA’s DSN is an international network of antennas that supports
interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy
observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.
The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions.
The full text of the administrator’s message
Source: NASA
