Curiosity: the latest on NASA’s newest Mars rover – The Verge

Curiosity rover reaches long-term goal: a massive Martian mountain

2014-09-14T02:09:02-04:00

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A little over two years after landing, Curiosity has reached a milestone. NASA recently announced that the rover has arrived at the base of Mount Sharp, a 3.4-mile-high mountain that Curiosity has been heading towards since July of 2013. The initial landing was in Gale Crater, and the total journey has been around 9km or 5.5 miles - a number that becomes more impressive if you consider that Curiosity was designed to travel a maximum of 660 feet per day and navigate difficult terrain on its six wheels. The Spirit rover traveled only 4.8 miles over its lifespan, although the still-active Opportunity rover has logged about 25 miles since 2003. …

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Curiosity photo casts Earth and moon as ‘evening stars’ in Martian sky

2014-02-06T20:06:58-05:00

earth from mars (nasa)

Many photos of Earth taken from space have entered into legend; The Blue Marble's beautiful, glowing globe is one of the most recognizable images of all time, and Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot put our planet's place in the vastness of the universe into poignant perspective. The first image of Earth from Mars shot by NASA's intrepid Curiosity rover might not reach those heights, but it provokes a similar sense of wonder nonetheless.

Taken with Curiosity's Mastcam, the shot casts Earth as the brightest object in the night sky, with the Martian landscape lending scale at the bottom of the frame. It's been processed to remove interference from cos …

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Mars Curiosity Rover becomes a Lego set, while real rover wheels suffer damage

2013-12-27T20:40:01-05:00

Mars Curiosity Rover lego cuusoo 640

Here's another use for your newfound holiday cash: On New Year's Day, the Mars Curiosity Rover will become an official Lego set. It's the latest success from the crowdsourced Lego Cuusoo project, which previously brought us the Back to the Future Lego DeLorean and - fittingly - a miniature Minecraft world. Now, the company's offering an articulated version of the six-wheel Mars rover designed by an actual NASA engineer who worked on the Mars Curiosity project. It'll cost $29.99 on January 1st.

No cause for concern

In other Curiosity news, the real rover scuttling about the Martian landscape has sprung a few holes. In October, Emily Lakdawall …

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Martian lake was able to support life for thousands of years

2013-12-09T13:31:32-05:00

via mars.nasa.gov

An ancient lake on Mars was capable of supporting life for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, researchers reported today based on findings from NASA's Curiosity rover. In March, NASA announced that the lake was once capable of supporting microbial life, but little more was known. Now researchers have shown that the lake existed around 3.5-3.6 billion years ago and actually contained an "Earth-like" environment. "There would have been some snow, maybe ice up in the mountains around the crater rim," John Grotzinger, project scientist for Curiosity, said at a press conference this morning. "It's pretty darn similar to Earth."

"It's pretty …

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Mars Curiosity rover to continue operation despite federal government shutdown

2013-10-01T20:15:03-04:00

curiosity

The shuttering of the federal government has resulted in NASA shutting down almost completely - but for the time being at least, the Mars Curiosity rover won't be affected. A spokesperson for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which operates both Curiosity and the older Spirit rover, has clarified to International Business Times that JPL is a private contractor owned by the California Institute of Technology. As such, its personnel aren't among the 17,701 NASA employees that were furloughed today after the US Congress was unable to pass a funding bill. That means at the moment Curiosity will continue to operate as scheduled, even if its Twitter …

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NASA’s Curiosity rover is now driving itself

2013-08-28T12:08:40-04:00

Curiosity self portrait

NASA engineers have been piloting the Mars rover Curiosity for over a year now, but yesterday, Curiosity finally took the wheel. On Tuesday, the rover switched to its autonomous navigation system and took its first drive into unapproved territory, as part of a general shift that will help the rover to cover more ground.

Curiosity can cover an extra 10 meters a day

Previously, the rover's routes had been pre-approved by NASA drivers, based on stereotactic images sent back to earth. But the autonav system allows Curiosity to analyze the images itself and map out the least strenuous route to its destination. It's similar to the autonomous navig …

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Mars Curiosity rover sings ‘Happy Birthday,’ dares Earth to collect royalties

2013-08-05T20:18:01-04:00

curiosity

One year ago today, NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on the surface of Mars and began studying the planet. The rover may be lonely out there on its first birthday, but it won't go entirely without celebration: NASA has repurposed Curiosity's soil analysis system to play the tune of "Happy Birthday to You" out loud for all of Mars to hear.

Though the analysis system doesn't include a loudspeaker, it does include a motor that can loudly vibrate at very specific frequencies. Normally, the motor is used to help move soil through the analysis system, but it's been modified for the day to produce the exact frequencies that make up "Happy Birth …

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NASA Curiosity rover’s first year on Mars captured in two-minute highlight video

2013-08-01T13:59:11-04:00

Curiosity rover year one

It seems like just yesterday that NASA landed its largest-ever interplanetary rover, Curiosity, on the surface of Mars. But now, after quite a bit of roving, drilling rocks, zapping them with lasers, and uncovering evidence of past liquid water and an environment previously hospitable to microbial life, Curiosity is gearing up to celebrate its first full year of operations on the Red Planet (in Earth time, that is). In advance of the milestone on Tuesday, August 6th, NASA published a two-minute long video today of 548 images Curiosity captured along its mission so far.

The imagery, taken with Curiosity's forward facing, fisheye lens hazard- …

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New image from NASA shows where the Curiosity rover has been since landing on Mars

2013-07-25T09:25:46-04:00

Mars surface

It's been almost a year since the Mars Curiosity Rover completed its 36-week trip to the red planet, and NASA has now just released a high-resolution image of the landing site as well as the path the rover took from its landing until the photo was shot on June 27th. The image itself was shot from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, a massive device that's been shooting images of Mars since 2006. Curiosity's landing site shows up on the left side of the image, marked by two blueish dots and some scorch marks - from there you can follow the rover's trails to the Glenelg area …

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Life, death, and Mars: The New Yorker’s definitive account of the Curiosity rover

2013-04-17T15:20:49-04:00

mars

The Curiosity rover, NASA's most ambitious Mars mission to-date, has received plenty of attention since it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in November 2011, but The New Yorker's Burkhard Bilger has put together what may be the definitive account of the mission. Bilger tells not only the story behind Curiosity and those who worked on it, but the history of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The story puts the daring mission in the context of man's fascination with Mars and the long line of programs that have sought to explore the planet and explain profound questions about the origin of life.

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