The 10th anniversary of the landing of the rover on Mars is being celebrated.
Our understanding of the Red Planet has been greatly improved by the exploration and research done by the rover. The primary goal of the mission was to find out if Mars was a good place to live in the past. Water was once present on Mars and ice is now present on the red planet. Life is supported by water alone.
"Determining habitability requires knowing if there were things like organic molecule that life needs, sources of energy, other molecule that life needs, like nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen," Fraeman said. All of those were there.
There are amazing images of the 10 year anniversary of NASA's Curiosity rover.
The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) are instruments that can be used to analyze the results of drilling into the surface of Mars. Key requirements for life were discovered within the first few years of the rover.
It was found that Mars was a good place to live for tens of millions of years.
The research done by the rover yielded new information about the geology of Mars. "All of the rocks that we've driven through show not only the signature of water when they were originally deposited, but this later overprinting of one or two or dozens of cycles of Groundwater circulating through the rocks," Fraeman said. It emphasized the importance of the water on Mars, which would have been very important.
The building blocks of life have not been the only discoveries made in the past decade. Environmental science is one of the types of science that doesn't get a lot of attention, but is really important and interesting.
Environmental and atmospheric sensors have been used on Mars. The rocks blocking radiation from reaching it were detected by the rover's instruments when it approached geological formations. For future astronauts, we can use that model. Natural terrain can be used as shielding. Fraeman made a statement.
She's fascinated by the study of Martian weather, as well as the fact that last year Curiosity photographed beautiful noctilucent clouds, which appear at sunset during winter.
A decade out from the mission's end, the rover is in good health and still working. Fraeman said that they have a little bit of arthritis. The wheels have developed a few holes after traveling for over twenty miles.
She said that the science instruments are working as well as they did when they were on the ground. We are able to do the same quality and breadth of science that we were a decade ago.
Next up is an investigation into what happened to the once-habitable climate of Mars and how long it lasted as the water dried up. While the rover spent the past decade exploring lake environments, the team is now sending the explorer up Mount Sharp.
Fraeman said that they are close to reaching the part of Mount Sharp called the Layered-Sulfate unit. It has a different texture, a different mineralogy, and we think this is going to be a very different environment on Mars. We're excited to see what this environmental change was and how it's reflected in the rock record.
The team will celebrate the anniversary before they get to all that. We are going to have a party for people who live in Pasadena. Fraeman said they were going to get some Thai food and have a prize draw. It will be a happy occasion to celebrate the accomplishments and hopefully look forward to more fun science.
You can follow Stefanie Waldek on social networking sites. We encourage you to follow us on social networking sites.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
