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.

Great Image: The Curiosity Rover From Above

In the image above from earlier this month, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is looking down on Mars' surface and caught a shot of the Curiosity Rover as it explored the surface of the planet.  Here is the story from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: 

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks from its driving are visible in this view from orbit, acquired on April 11, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The rover is near the largest butte in the lower left quadrant of the image, at about a two o'clock position relative to the butte. It appears bright blue in the exaggerated color of this image.

The multi-layered location filling much of the left half of this image is called "the Kimberley." Curiosity's science team chose it, based on other HiRISE images, as a potential gold mine for the rover mission. Black gold, that is, as organic material that, if found at the Kimberley could be a biomarker (sign of past life) -- the holy grail of Mars exploration.

Curiosity entered the area included in this image on March 12, along the tracks visible near the upper left corner. The distance between parallel wheel tracks is about 9 feet (2.7 meters). The area included in the image is about 1,200 feet (about 365 meters) wide. This view is an enhanced-color product from HiRISE observation ESP_036128_1755, available at the HiRISE website at http://uahirise.org/releases/msl-kimberley.php. The exaggerated color, to make differences in Mars surface materials more apparent, makes Curiosity appear bluer than the rover really looks. A stereo view combining information from this observation with topography derived from earlier HiRISE observations, for a three-dimensional appearance, is at PIA18082.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona