IS CURIOSITY CURIOUS
First of all, Curiosity is a Mars Rover. It was created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory by NASA. It took them 2 years and spent 2.5 million dollars on Curiosity. Their have been many other Rover mission’s that have succeeded, but this rover is very different than all the others.
Curiosity was launched off of Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2013. It was a total of 350,000,000 miles to get to Mars from Earth. The journey took approximately 8 months.
Curiosity’s landing date on Mars was on August 6, 2012. It took 150 scientists to narrow down Curiosity landing point, which eventually was Gale Crater, Mars. They had to be so specific while choosing the site to land, that another optional landing site was only 1.5 miles away from Curiosity’s touchdown.
Curiosity has many goals and some that they have already overcome. One of those goals is finding water on Mars. That is one they have overcome because they have found many signs of water in rocks and the closest evidence that they have found was that there is ice on the poles of Mars. NASA’s main goal is to find signs of life (aliens) on Mars.
To get all of this information, Curiosity has a Rover Arm that is full of science equipment. That science equipment is full of rover goodies like cameras, a X-Ray spectrometer, and instruments that can grind into rocks to get out information. The rover arm itself fully extended equals up to 7 ft. tall.
Curiosity was made to overcome all geological features and part of that was the wheels. The rover has 6 wheels and they are all free moveable. For example, if Curiosity is on a hill and only one side is raised up, the other side we be completely flat.
Another major factor is the weather patterns on Mars. Curiosity needs to figure out the weather patterns to see if it is safe for life, and it needs to know them because the safety of Curiosity. We already know that the atmosphere is very thin and the sky itself is full of dust.
Still Curiosity is on the quest never of us even thought we could do, but like usual we found way to over come challenges. I guess Curiosity is actually curious.
Credits: Google Wiki