Mars rover Curiosity set for Saturday launch

The day after Thanksgiving may be “Black Friday” for American stores and shoppers, but this year, it’s a red letter day for scientists in Pasadena, as Saturday is blast-off for the next Mars rover, called “Curiosity.”

Curiosity’s two-year mission — or one Martian year — is to find proof that organisms could have lived on Mars. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada says his colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Lab are “super excited.” He says at its peak, more than a thousand JPL employees were working on the Rover. “And then around the world,” he says, “we have over 200 scientists as well."

When the Atlas V rocket lifts off Saturday, it’ll carry a mini-science lab in a new Mars rover, but no humans. Curiosity will be paving the way for future human exploration of the Red Planet.

Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Program, says we still need to figure out a lot of details before his agency sends settlers to Mars. Like radiation. Curiosity carries a radiation detector that’ll allow scientists to understand how much radiation exposure astronauts would face on the planet’s surface.

McCuistion says the new rover mission lets NASA practice a number of techniques necessary for future human missions: precision landing, handling soil samples with a robotic arm and moving a whole lotta stuff 354 million miles. “You have to resupply astronauts on the surface as well as feed them and water and other kinds of supplies,” he says. “This is a good landing system to do that type of thing. And just learning how to get through the atmosphere with much larger masses will take us to humans.”

Landing the jumbo-sized rover meant finding something stronger than airbags. Scientists borrowed something familiar to science fiction fans. NASA calls it an “aeroshell,” but it looks like your standard silver flying saucer.

About 10 minutes before touchdown on Mars, the saucer separates from the spacecraft, using its shell as a heat shield. A parachute deploys, and then the descent vehicle pops out the bottom, firing eight retrorockets to slow its descent.

Pete Theisinger, project manager at JPL, says then the nail biting starts: the 2,000-pound rover is suspended below the descent vehicle by thin nylon cords called bridles. “They’re pretty small, the size of a pencil,” he says. “But they are very strong, they can carry the load very easily. You need to remember it’s a third [of Earth's] gravity. Which is helpful.”

The rover uses its own wheels and suspension system as the landing gear. Scientists hope that after a safe landing, the Curiosity will be ready to roll and explore Mars.

The new rover is twice as long and five times as heavy as the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. It’s not likely to break their Martian land speed record of a tenth of a mile an hour. But Theisinger says Curiosity will still cover more miles in a Martian day.

“We’re basically limited for safe driving on how far ahead we can see reliably and the rover, since it’s taller, will give us a better vision.” He says that for navigation, Curiosity will also use its eye in the sky, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, “so we could see things that might get in our way.”

Curiosity runs on rechargeable batteries instead of solar panels. Unlike the earlier models, Curiosity will be able to work through the dark and dusty Martian winters.

But there are dark days ahead for the American space program. Next year's House budget for NASA could be a billion dollars less than what the Senate has proposed. Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Program, says the good news is that no matter what funding crisis lies ahead for NASA, Curiosity’s trip and Martian research is already paid for.

Money is less than certain for two other unmanned Mars missions. The head of the American Astronomical Society says White House officials “were clearly not very keen on signing up” for the 2016 and 2018 missions.