Curiosity informational Book
Curiosity Is a rover sent to mars, its original mission to see if there was any indication of water in rocks or the soil in mars. If it succeeded in finding water of any type, including gas or a solid, it would be given another mission that would be very difficult to tell.
Mars, as you might know, has no sign of life that we can see or water. This is why curiosity was sent, to either find a sign of life or get water, and if succeeded, finding out if we can live on mars one day.
One day, The rover found water in a rock when it drilled into it (not ACTUAL water, for it was just water vapor, but it is still considered water). This was a very big discovery and is a huge and helpful clue to find out if there ever was life on mars because if there was, we ourselves could live there one day if we made the conditions right.
Curiosity was launched at 2011 November 26th. Its other missions were to find geological features and weather patterns. It may have had more missions that we don’t know about yet but I’m not sure. If it does, I wonder if NASA will ever tell us about it, being with the government and all, they might hold some secret things so we don’t know about them yet, so we won’t bring attention or trouble to NASA.
It’s scientific tools (or equipment) include a drill, a microscope, cameras, and a chem cam. Like I said before, it was also sent to see if humans could live there eventually. Curiosity and 2 other rovers called opportunity and Spirit are still there today, one is broken, but 2 of them are still looking for evidence and ways to live on mars without much trouble. That last mission will be very difficult, but I’m sure they will be able to pull it off.
This particular rover was much more advanced then opportunity and spirit. Those are other rovers as I mentioned before. Curiosity was roughly the size of a car, and had many more tools than the 2 other rovers. It was much more difficult to allow it to actually find out a way for it to land safely. It used rockets and a parachute. The 2 other rovers used a parachute too, but instead used giant air bags, like the one in cars, and landed like that. Fortunately, the landing was a success.
If you are Curious about the 2 other rovers (no pun intended) Then I’ll tell you a brief overview about them. Opportunity and Spirit were both like curiosity, except they were made around 2003. They both had the same mission: find any water on mars or evidence of it, like curiosity. It had no other missions however, so if they succeeded they would keep looking for more other places to find evidence of water. They also weren’t as advanced as curiosity because they were made before curiosity.
Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover) This is where I got most of my info from. I got most of my pictures from google images and bing images. I also got some info from the nasa official site. http://www.nasa.gov/