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Nasa mars rover first year hunting1/19/2024 Studying the make-up of these rocks - in a region where no spacecraft has gone before - will give NASA its best chance yet at answering the age-old question of whether life ever existed on Mars. Scattered throughout the crater are geological formations hinting at its watery past, including the remains of a lake and a river delta. The goal is to explore an area of Mars that was once much warmer and wetter, and perhaps even liveable. On 18 February, NASA plans to land its latest rover inside that pit, named Jezero Crater. But it’s going to take a lot of driving.About 3.9 billion years ago, a wayward rock slammed into Mars, punching a 45-kilometre-wide hole into its surface. ![]() We can’t wait to get there and figure it all out. Over the next few months the science team is real excited to get to Mount Sharp where we think the layered rocks there have captured the major climate changes in Mars history. ![]() We get a little bit closer to the base of that mountain every day. In our first Martian year, we’ve driven almost eight kilometers of total distance with the rover. ![]() The focus of the mission is really now on driving, as we approach the base of Mt. We took the Scarecrow rover to the Mojave Desert where we drove over similar sandy terrain to make sure that we know what’s going to happen once we get there. We tried to identify the best path for the rover. The rover took a selfie before drilling and after so you could even see where it drilled a hole on Mars.Īs we drive from the Kimberley to Murray Buttes at the base of Mount Sharp. It reached out its robotic arm just like me with my camera phone and it sued the MAHLI to take a series of pictures that it stitched together to take its self portrait. While the rover was at the Kimberley doing its drilling campaign, it even took some time to take a selfie. We drilled into one of those sandstones, acquired rock powder and fed it to our two analytical laboratories located inside the rover body. We drilled into a site where water flowed across the surface and deposited a series of sandstones. Using our new driving techniques we made it to a site called “the Kimberley,” where Curiosity drilled its third drill hole of the mission. We think we’ve got new techniques to be able to drive the rover safely and identify some safe paths. One of the other things we’ve done here in the Mars yard to understand the wheel wear issue is we built a half of a rover that we’re driving over the simulated terrain so we can watch how the wheels really wear. We think we understand what’s causing those holes from a lot of tests we’ve done here in the Mars yard and a lot of analysis of the terrain from our orbital images. Sharp embedded rocks on the surface of Mars were really giving trouble to our wheels. ![]() After we left Yellowknife Bay where we did our first drilling, we noticed that the wheels were taking much more damage than we had expected. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the rover on Mars. We found a lakebed on Mars that we drilled into and found the ingredients and conditions that could’ve supported microbial life, if life ever was on Mars. Our goal over that time was to find a habitable environment and we did! I’m Matt Heverly, a rover driver.Ĭuriosity has been on Mars for one Mars year. I’m Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist. Hear team members describe how the mission accomplished its main goal to find a past habitable environment on the Red Planet and the ongoing science studies. On June 24, 2014, NASA's Curiosity rover completes her first Martian year (687 Earth days).
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