Curiosity is Having Some Problems as it Reaches Mount Sharp

After two years, the Curiosity rover is now approaching Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, its primary mission site.  While it has conducted other experiments along the 6 mile route to this final site, it has also taken a beating and damaged its tires.  In discussing the damage caused to Curiosity's tires by jutting rocks (see below), Project Manager Jim Erickson stated ""We misunderstood what Mars was...Strongly cemented ventifacts are not something that we saw on Mars before."

And now NASA's Planetary Senior Review panel is asking if the $2.5 billion Curiosity Mars rover, known as the Mars Science Laboratory, is getting us the science we paid for.  So far Curiosity has examined five surface samples over a two year period and is expected to analyze eight more as part of this mission.  The panel noted:

It was unclear from both the proposal and presentation that the Prime Mission science goals had been met. In fact, it was unclear what exactly these were. Upon detailed questioning, the team noted that the Level 1 requirements were actually engineering capability requirements with which the mission launched and are not reflective of the state of fulfilling mission success criteria, which were not addressed quantitatively.

The panel even criticized the Curiosity team for not taking the panel meeting seriously and not sending the lead Project Science to the meeting.  In the letter, the panel stated, "This left the panel with the impression that the team felt they were too big to fail and that simply having someone show up would suffice."  Ouch! 

The Curiosity team received more funding to continue with parts of its mission, but was told to come back with a plan showing how it could justify continued funding.  Not a very good place to be considering all the cheers two years ago. 

Hopefully, NASA will take away a few lessons that can be applied to the Mars 2020 Rover mission (shown below), which is still being planned.  In fact, the press release for the new rover states "The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years ago, and currently is operating on Mars."  Let's hope the design will be a little different to address the concerns of the review panel.  And maybe upgraded tires would help.

Curiosity Landing Takes Place Next Month

NASA's Curiosity rover is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on August 5th (at exactly 10:31 pm PT).  It will be nice to see more U.S. exploration of Mars, even if it is only a robotic mission.  Launched aboard an Atlas V on November 26, 2011, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the car-sized rover has been slowly making its way to the Red Planet these past seven and a half months.

NASA has put together a nice video called 7 Minutes of Terror describing the 7 minutes from the time the spacecraft carrying Curiosity hits the Martian atmosphere to the point of landing on the surface.  I would all it 8 months of terror given the complexity of the mission, but I am not writing the script.  Given the fact that the entire landing had to be perfectly choreographed long ago and will happen without any intervention from NASA once it starts, in some ways the mission is more amazing and complex than one including human intervention.  I away find these missions, be it landing on the surface of a planet to looping around the solar system for the perfect fly-by of a distant planet, to be a more spectacular demonstration of mankind's ability than the construction of the pyramids or Notre Dame. 

If all goes well, which is always a question when traveling to Mars (just ask the Russians), Curiosity will begin its two-year exploration of Gale Crater and the informally named Mount Sharp, described by NASA as follows:

Mount Sharp rises about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the landing target on the crater floor, higher than Mount Rainier above Seattle, though broader and closer. It is not simply a rebound peak from the asteroid impact that excavated Gale Crater. A rebound peak may be at its core, but the mountain displays hundreds of flat-lying geological layers that may be read as chapters in a more complex history billions of years old.

Twice as tall as the sequence of colorful bands exposed in Arizona's Grand Canyon, the stack of layers in Mount Sharp results from changing environments in which layers are deposited, younger on top of older, eon after eon, and then partially eroded away.

A successful landing will be the start of a new period of exploration and hopefully offer new insights to the life of Mars and maybe even the likelihood of prior life on Mar.  One can also hope that this mission will renew interest in future trips to Mars, including a manned mission down the road.  It is worth recalling that Curiosity itself was planned before President Obama took office and quite possibly would not have been possible under this Administration.  Moreover, the United States has already pulled out of ExoMars, another Mars mission planned with our European friends, forcing them to look to Russia for a reliable partner. Let's hope we can get past our current Earth-bound problems and reach for the stars (or at least neighboring planets) again.

Note:  Mount Sharp (shown below in terms of size) pays tribute to geologist Robert P. Sharp (1911-2004), a founder of planetary science, influential teacher of many current leaders in the field, and team member for NASA's first few Mars missions. Sharp taught geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena, from 1948 until past his retirement. Life magazine named him one of the 10 best college teachers in the nation.