11 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do

TheNextCorner writes "NASA is getting set to launch its next Mars rover this week. The car-size Curiosity rover is the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, slated to blast off Saturday (Nov. 26) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rover will employ 10 different science instruments to help it answer questions once it touches down on the Red Planet in August 2012."

Comments

Can it convert

[Oswald McWeany]

Can it convert imperial measurements to metric measurements?

Re:Can it convert

[LifesABeach]

No, it cost a little bit extra.

Re:Can it convert

[ozbird]

Can it convert imperial measurements to metric measurements?

No, but the crater it will leave in the Martian surface is impressive in any measurement system.

If there is life, the Dutch will find it...

[TheNextCorner]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neoUi4poCXI

No terraforming?

[drobety]

It can not terraform? Bah.

Re:No terraforming?

[Oswald McWeany]

Sure it can... it will just take a few billion years.

One misplaced micro-organism and it could set off evolution on mars that will slowly terraform the planet over the next few billion years.

Re:No terraforming?

[blair1q]

Um, no. Unless that micro-organism is already adapted to conditions under which no micro-organisms can grow.

However, one misplaced primordial soup, and we could be saying hello to Grzpltrx on the return journey in a few billion years.

Re:No terraforming?

[Oswald McWeany]

Bacteria have been found alive on the outside of satellites that have not had contact with earth for months.

If they can survive on the exterior of man made objects in space- it is potentially possible they could survive on Mars.

One of the theories of origin, pan-spermia, is that simplistic organisms (or their precursors) spread to earth via space debris.

Re:No terraforming?

[blair1q]

Earth was the best place for them to land.

As for those stories of bacteria living on satellites yada yada, just how did we find those bacteria without bringing the satellite back in contact with Earth?

Re:No terraforming?

[Oswald McWeany]

I'm not saying it is likely- just possible. Get the right extremophile bacteria on mars and the potential is there.

Even if they are not ideally suited- all they need to do is be able to survive and reproduce. Thriving is not required.

There are species that can survive wild temperatures and dry conditions. Species that can survive all sorts of conditions. Bacterial species are not like animal species- genetic information is easily spread.

If one species can survive the temperature- one species can "feed" on mars-etc, etc, - if they're all there in a rare event they could exchange the right genetic information and survive on mars.

Re:No terraforming?

[jfanning]

That has been discounted. It was most likely biological contamination when the Surveyor cameras were brought back to Earth.

http://www.space.com/11536-moon-microbe-mystery-solved-apollo-12.html

#1

[Baloroth]

It can go to MARS! Well, assuming all the measurements are in metric (although if they aren't, it'll still go to Mars, just a little faster than expected.)

Ok, now that's out of the way

Curiosity's ChemCam instrument can vaporize rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away with a laser. Three spectrographs will analyze the composition of the vaporized bits.

Anyone else find it disturbing that we are putting lasers on robots now? And putting them in space? It's like we're asking for Skynet to develop. Let's hope we just don't see the headline "Curiosity killed the human" next.

Re:#1

[Oswald McWeany]

Psychotic laser-equipped misanthopic robots don't kill people.

People kill people.

Re:#1

[SJHillman]

We're only putting them on robots because we ran out of sharks. Once we run out of robots, then I suppose we'll start putting them on lawyers.

Re:#1

[ColdWetDog]

Psychotic laser-equipped misanthopic robots don't kill people.

People kill people.

Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?

First, Grunt-Phobus 'doesn't get out of orbit'. Now, we have rock-vaporizing lasers on another 'Mar's' satellite.

They're both large complicated machines with quite a bit of computer power.

I just don't like the vibe I'm getting from this. Not at all.

Re:#1

[theshowmecanuck]

You are sort of trivializing an important point. Perhaps the most important point, at that. At this stage there is only ONE cool thing that this rover needs to do. And that is land safely on the surface of Mars. No mean feat considering how complex this new landing system is. Retro/landing rockets, hovering, winching down, etc. etc. etc. At this point I don't give a good God damn (take that Pakistani censors!) about the other 11 cool things. They don't mean shit if it can't land. Articles like this just make me feel like we are patting ourselves (humans in general) on the back before it's time. I am an optimistic pessimist, so counting my chickens first makes me nervous.

Re:#1

[tgd]

Anyone else find it disturbing that we are putting lasers on robots now? And putting them in space? It's like we're asking for Skynet to develop. Let's hope we just don't see the headline "Curiosity killed the human" next.

Its proof that NASA knows there's life on Mars *AND ITS HOSTILE!!!!!*

I bet its the Decepticons.

Re:Martians?

[Zephyn]

First we send a shoebox sized rover. Then we send one the size of a Power Wheels kids car. Now it's a rover the size of a jeep with a nuclear RTG. What's next, a bus sized rover? When does this start to piss off the resident Martians?

When the traffic volume starts having an effect on their morning commute.

#0

[0123456]

I'll be impressed if it actually manages to land there. Otherwise the things it can do after landing are pointless.

Re:#0

[anwaya]

The landing strategy is quite spectacular, though unfortunately no-one's going to be there to observe it.

Re:#0

[0123456]

It's a shame they couldn't roll one of the other rovers out there to film it :).

Re:#0

[camperdave]

It's no different than what they used to land Spirit and Opportunity, except the rover is going to be placed gently on the surface instead of being dropped from 4 or 5 storeys up with a series of 40G impacts.

Re:#0

[camperdave]

Landing on a planet goes WAY beyond the last 20 metres of the descent. I'm saying that the aerobraking, the parachutes, the retro-rockets, the tether... everything except the actual touchdown is more or less the same as the MER landings.

Re:#12

[Anonymous Coward]

When the most important thing in your life is money you're a sad excuse for a human being.

Re:#12

[0123456]

When the most important thing in your life is money you're a sad excuse for a human being.

If money isn't important to you I suggest you take all the money you have and send it to the poster you were replying to.

$2.5 Billion?!

[ModernGeek]

They could have flown the shuttle like two more times for that!

Re:On the red planet ....

[M8e]

Curiosity killed the cat!

Late Breaking News from the Council: CONVERT!

[Tackhead]

Can it convert imperial measurements to metric measurements?

Dispelling rumors of the threat posed by a nuclear-powered, laser-armed robotic invader, K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, said:

Already one invader flails haplessly in low orbit, while its successor sits on the pad, its launch delayed for yet another four days.

The denizens of the Evil Blue Planet call them by many names - Newtons, Pounds - but what the blueworlders fail to understand that the only force that can do meaningful work is a unified force. Our strength is their weakness: we are one species, we live on one world, we use one system of measurement. We are one force. A red planet, united, to never be divided!

Current intelligence reports suggests that denizens of the Evil Blue Planet have taken note of our effective planetary defense, but seem unaware of the extent to which their activities have made us angry. We are not hurt; we are angry. Very, very angry indeed.

Having been reminded that the gelsacs of many metrication consultants were punctured to bring them this information, there were no questions from the press corps.

Re:#12

[Anonymous Coward]

So money is either "the most important thing" or "not important"?

It needs swarmbots.

[blair1q]

It should have a cargo-hold full of Wall-E type devices that can scatter during the day and return home to charge at night.

Give more than one scientist at a time a chance to drive.

(And reduce the risk of total mission failure in case of a Walowitz incident.)

If I had say in the matter. . .

[kimvette]

If I had say in the matter, I would include more redundance.

Instead of one of each type of camera on the mast, I would include redundant cameras on each mast.
Instead of one mast, I would require two masts, with separate motors, computers, etc.

I would include both mechanical (or pneumatic if compressors that work in that environment can be made compactly enough) and electrostatic lens cleaning mechanisms.

I would include redundant "legs" and wheels, with the primary set being ejectable in the event of failure.

The cost would go up, but given that when you come down to it this amounts to a $2.5bil RC car, spending a few million more on extreme redundance to guarantee reliability (after it hopefully lands safely) is very cheap insurance - it's not like you can just send out a minimum-wage Geek Squad "technician" to (hopefully) repair it and upsell it on gold-plated HDMI cables and Norton AntiVirus. ;) It'd suck if the one mast failed, or one "leg" failed without a backup unit or mechanism.

Re:If I had say in the matter. . .

[camperdave]

I'd go with an ATHLETE styled base, and deploy several probes rather than just one.

Re:If I had say in the matter. . .

[R3d M3rcury]

The problem, of course, is that you end up adding weight with all that redundancy. The added weight makes it more difficult to land, making it less likely the mission will succeed.

Personally, I'd just build more than one rover. While I can believe that building one cost $2.5 billion, I tend to doubt building a second one would cost another 2.5 billion. And, if everything works as planned, having two rovers wouldn't be a bad thing.

Re:If I had say in the matter. . .

[mmustapic]

Why do you suppose it doesn't have redundancy or failback mechanisms? For example, it has SIX wheels. The Spirit rover could still work (and did) with only four wheels. Also, the whole rover is a complex laboratory capable of doing many experiments. If one of them fails, it can still do science with the others. Adding a secondary mast, computer, etc, adds weight besides redundancy.

Re:If I had say in the matter. . .

[UnknowingFool]

If I had say in the matter, I would include more redundance.

Unfortunately redundancy means more weight. And less space with less functionality. The limitations on the payload are space, weight, and cost. In comparison the original Mars Viking landers cost about half as this rover and they did far, far less.

I would include both mechanical (or pneumatic if compressors that work in that environment can be made compactly enough) and electrostatic lens cleaning mechanisms.

More mechanical moving parts == more points of failure. Eventually moving parts will break down. The Spirit and Opportunity rover lost functionality of their wheels after a few years. As for pneumatic, that is really not feasible. The atmosphere of Mars is less dense than Earth and would require much larger equipment to achieve the same result.. As for electrostatic lens cleaning, the question is how. The solution to cleaning the lens would take away from payload and have minimal effect against the Martian dust.

Re:If I had say in the matter. . .

[UnknowingFool]

The added cost vs. weight for redundance to all instruments is negligible compared to the overall budget

It costs about $22,000 per kg to reach LEO. For a one-way to Mars, it will be about $154,000 per kg. At 900 kg, the cost of sending just the rover in rocket costs is $125-136M. The other problem is not so much the cost but the practical limitations of launch. You can't send any size or weight you want. There are size and weight restrictions on payload because of limitations on rocket technology. If you want to increase the size of the payload, you have to R&D bigger rockets. NASA is currently using Atlas V as this is one of the largest rockets they can use today. A Saturn V would launch a larger payload but it doesn't exist anymore and in today's dollar, the launch itself would be $1.11B just for the rocket.

So the choice is either have 10 instruments recording 10 different things or 5 instruments doing5 things and 5 of them not doing anything at all. By the way you have one shot at launching and landing.

Re:I like how they can't decide between 10 and 11

[SteveFoerster]

Well, it's one more amazing thing, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most rovers, you know, will have ten amazing things. You have ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you have ten amazing things on your rover. Where can you go from there? Where?

Re:On the red planet ....

[mcgrew]

No, curiosity was merely the bait, ignorance killed him.