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NASA's Next Mars Rover
An anonymous reader writes "In August 2012, the NASA rover Curiosity is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars. The size of a small car, it's four times as heavy as predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and comes with a large robot arm, a laser that can vaporise rocks at seven meters, a percussive drill and a weather station. Oh, and 4.8kg of plutonium-238. Wired has some high-resolution photographs from lab that is putting the next rover together."
Curiosity's destination on Mars has reportedly been chosen: Gale Crater. The 150-kilometer wide depression 'includes a tantalizing 5-kilometer-high mound of ancient sediments, [and] may have once been flooded by water.' The Planetary Society blog has a couple of additional pictures and a time-lapse video of the delicate, lengthy process of preparing the lander for transport. Curiosity will launch near the end of 2011. No cats were harmed during its construction.
silly bunny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238
this emits alpha particles. hard to make something explosive I figure. Do you figure at all? Probably much too much.
Here is a little background of general interest. http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=598732652
Figure we are out of the 238 and I suppose the way things are, we might never have any more. Another way to shut down the space program.? But the slug is from a year ago. So, you tell me, is the supply situation any better? If not, maybe you should look around for some patterns to get a handle on this sort of thing.