CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- On April 27, 2012, NASA's Mars Science
Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, was within 100
days from its appointment with the Martian surface. At that moment, the
mission has about 119 million miles (191 million kilometers) to go and
is closing at a speed of 13,000 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour).
"Every day is one day closer to the most challenging part of this
mission," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Landing an
SUV-sized vehicle next to the side of a mountain 85 million miles from
home is always stimulating. Our engineering and science teams continue
their preparations for that big day and the surface operations to
follow."
On Sunday, April 22, a week-long operational readiness test concluded at
JPL. The test simulated aspects of the mission's early surface
operations. Mission planners and engineers sent some of the same
commands they will send to the real Curiosity rover on the surface of
Mars to a test rover used at JPL.
"Our test rover has a central computer identical to Curiosity's
currently on its way to Mars," said Eric Aguilar, the mission's
engineering test lead at JPL. "We ran all our commands through it and
watched to make sure it drove, took pictures and collected samples as
expected by the mission planners. It was a great test and gave us a lot
of confidence moving forward."
The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will
deliver Curiosity to the surface of Mars on the evening of Aug. 5, 2012,
PDT (early on Aug. 6, Universal Time and EDT) to begin a two-year prime
mission. Curiosity's landing site is near the base of a mountain
inside Gale Crater, near the Martian equator. Researchers plan to use
Curiosity to study layers in the mountain that hold evidence about wet
environments of early Mars.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .
You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
PHOTO: Spectators watch the Kennedy Space Center launch of the Mars Curiosity mission from the nearby Space Coast Art Festival in Cocoa Beach Florida on November 26, 2011.
