This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012. A shorter 4-minute version of this animation, with narration, is also available on our youtube page.
She’s a b1g one this time, about the size of asmall car ….. The rover Curiosity is 10 ft (3.0 m) in length, and weighs 1,984 lb (900 kg) including 176 lb (80 kg) of scientific instruments.
The Mars Exploration Rover (left) and Sojourner rover (center) compared with the MSL mockup (right) by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on May 12, 2008 --- This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Commons is a freely licensed media file repository.
Short version with narration.
If MSL arrives at Mars, it will attempt a more precise landing than attempted previously and then help assess Mars’s habitability. A primary mission objective is to determine whether Mars is or has ever been an environment able to support life, though it will not look for any specific type of life. Rather, it is intended to chemically analyze samples in various ways, including scooping up soil, drill rocks, and with a laser and sensor system.
Nice videos. This rover sure has some awesome features: a laser to analyze rocks from 9m away, and a nuclear battery to work days and nights during the mission. I describe all these features in http://www.about-robots.com/curiosity-rover.html
Let’s hope it will land safely on Mars, now.