06.12.09
The Mars Science Laboratory rover will sport the biggest, toughest robotic arm the red planet's ever seen! This super-limb must lift 34 kilograms (almost 75 pounds) of instruments to reach out and test martian rocks and soil, which may hold clues about whether Mars could have supported life.
06.08.2009
Twelve-year-old Clara Ma flew from Kansas to JPL to meet and sign the next rover that will zoom millions of miles to Mars. The trip is Clara's prize for winning an essay contest in which she named the rover "Curiosity."
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04.22.2009
Testing during March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., qualified the parachute for NASA's next Mars rover.
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04.22.2009
The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission opens to a diameter of nearly 16 meters (51 feet).
This image shows a duplicate qualification-test parachute inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
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04.22.2009
The parachute for NASA's next mission to Mars passed flight-qualification testing in March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, to be launched in 2011 and land on Mars in 2012, will use the largest parachute ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial mission.
This image shows a duplicate qualification-test parachute inflated in an 80-mile-per-hour (36-meter-per-second) wind inside the test facility. The parachute uses a configuration called disk-gap-band. It has 80 suspension lines, measures more than 50 meters (165 feet) in length, and opens to a diameter of nearly 16 meters (51 feet). Most of the orange and white fabric is nylon, though a small disk of heavier polyester is used near the vent in the apex of the canopy due to higher stresses there. It is designed to survive deployment at Mach 2.2 in the Martian atmosphere, where it will generate up to 65,000 pounds of drag force.
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04.22.2009
Testing during March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., qualified the parachute for NASA's next Mars rover.
The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, to be launched in 2011 and land on Mars in 2012, is the largest ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial mission.
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04.22.2009
Testing during March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., qualified the parachute for NASA's next Mars rover.
The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, to be launched in 2011 and land on Mars in 2012, is the largest ever built to fly on an extraterrestrial mission.
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04.14.2009
The parachute for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory passed flight-qualification testing in March and April 2009 inside the world's largest wind tunnel, at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
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03.28.2009
Trust--it's vital for each step of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Engineers must trust each other and all the tests they've done while building the rover.
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02.24.2009
Before leaving Earth, Mars Science Laboratory is really put to the test to make sure it can survive the trip to the red planet.
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