This mosaic from the Mast Camera on NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the view looking toward its first science destination, the Glenelg area, where three different types of Martian terrain come together. (Image: NASA)

The Mars rover Curiosity is about to undertake its first major scientific experiment on the Red Planet.Before Curiosity heads off to its primary destination, the foothills of Mount Sharp, scientists want to learn more about the terrain surrounding the rover’s landing site.

The Mars mission team members are  fascinated with the geology of the area, according to Rob Manning, the Mars Science Laboratory’s (MSL) chief engineer.  They’ve noticed  the surface is covered with a type of gravelly material, rocks called cobbles and various collections of compressed soil.

“It may very well be that we’re on a place that has been affected by water in the past, and that’s very exciting because that’s what we had hoped for,”  Manning said.

Photo of the Martian surface, including a map of the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover on its trip to the Glenelg area on the 43rd Martian day of Curiosity’s mission on Mars – Sept. 19, 2012.  (Image: NASA)

Since landing seven weeks ago, Curiosity (as of 9/19/12) has traveled about 91 meters, approximately the length of an American football field. The rover is now traveling in a different direction toward a location called Glenelg, which lies about 400 meters east-southeast of Curiosity’s landing site.

One  type of terrain  scientists want to learn more about is a kind of bedrock which could be suitable for eventual drilling by Curiosity.

The next is an area  marked by many small craters and scientists believe it might represent an older or harder Martian surface.

The third terrain is similar to  the type where the rover landed.  It’s of particular interest to team members because they’d like to determine if it contains rocks with the same kind of texture as those found in an area close to the landing site where blasts from the descent stage rocket engines scoured away some of the surface.

On its way to Glenelg this week, the rover came across an unusual pyramid-shaped rock. The rover team is planning to touch this mystery rock with a spectrometer to determine its basic composition. They’ll also use an arm-mounted camera to take close-up photographs.  This encounter will likely be the first time  the rover  uses its robotic arm to touch a Martian rock.

Curiosity will then continue on its voyage to Glenelg, where the team will choose another rock for the rover’s first analysis of powder drilled from interiors of rocks.

On it’s trip to Glenelg, Curiosity came across this pyramid-shaped rock, which NASA says will be a suitable target for the first use of the rover’s contact instruments. (Photo: NASA)

Once the rover’s side trip to Glenelg concludes, Curiosity will head toward its primary destination, Mount Sharp, which may take a year or two to reach.

Manning tells us everything on the rover has worked perfectly so far except for one of Curiosity’s wind sensors, which was damaged when Martian pebbles hit it.  Since the rover has other wind sensors, the mission should not be impacted.

In fact, the mission is going so well the rover team is amazed everything is working so much better on Mars than it did while undergoing testing here on Earth.

Manning says the rover experienced problem after problem during testing. After seeing the rover perform so well on the Red Planet, the MSL team has concluded Curiosity would rather be on Mars than on its home planet.

And it’s a good thing because Curiosity’s visit there could be extended.

The rover’s older sibling,  Opportunity, has continued to roam and examine the planet, long after the planned end of its mission. Manning expects Curiosity will do likewise.

There are several factors which justify that optimism. The rover’s power source, according to Manning, is producing more energy than expected. The team also found the Martian climate is better than was anticipated so the unit doesn’t need as much heating as was first thought.  Also, with NASA’s orbiting spacecraft flying overhead, the rover has been able to save a great deal of energy while sending back information, which could allow Curiosity to operate longer.

Curiosity’s primary destination, the base of Mount Sharp. (Photo: NASA)

If  Curiosity’s time on Mars is extended, Manning expects the rover to continue its voyage up Mount Sharp, which is made up of various layers of material, with the oldest at the bottom of the mountain and the youngest at its peak.

At each of these layers, Manning says that, there will be an opportunity to look back in time into the Martian geological history.  So as long as the rover keeps working and NASA extends its mission, “we will continue going up and explore and explore and there is a chapter, chapter and chapter of books telling us about Mars just ahead of us.”

This weekend on the radio edition of Science World, Rob Manning joins us to provide an update with the latest on Curiosity’s mission.

Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen now to the interview below.

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Artist rendition of the InSight Lander at work on the surface of Mars. (Photo: JPL/NASA)

NASA just can’t get enough of Mars.  Two weeks after successfully landing  the much-ballyhooed rover Curiosity on the red planet, officials at the U.S. space agency announced that yet another  mission to Mars is set for 2016.

The InSight mission, which stands for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport,” will investigate deep below the Martian surface to see why the planet developed differently than Earth.

InSight, according to NASA, will be more than a mission to Mars. Officials hope  this terrestrial planet explorer will  answer some long-held questions about planetary and solar system science, including the processes that went into forming the rocky planets of the inner solar system -Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars- more than four billion years ago.

Unlike the Mars explorers currently cruising the planet’s surface, the InSight lander is designed to stay put while several sophisticated instruments do the heavy lifting.

While a robotic arm and two cameras help set and monitor all of the gear placed on the planet’s surface, an onboard geodetic instrument will determine the rotational axis of Mars.

Other devices include one that measures the seismic waves traveling though the interior of Mars, as well as a subsurface heat probe designed to gauge the heat flow from the planet’s interior.

The InSight mission is getting assistance from international partners including the French space agency, CNES, which is contributing the seismic monitoring equipment. The German Aerospace Center is slated to  provide the subsurface heat probe.

Mission team members for InSight, the new Mars lander mission selected by NASA to launch in 2016, explain how the spacecraft will advance our knowledge of Mars’ history and rocky planet evolution.

The InSight mission was selected from three finalist proposals which were chosen from many in May 2011. The two rejected missions included putting a spacecraft on the surface of a comet, while the other proposed a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

“The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of InSight ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanized public interest in space exploration and today’s announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come.”

Scheduled for launch in March 2016, InSight is expected to land on Mars in September 2016 for a 720-day mission.

First color image of the Martian landscape returned from curiosity 08-06-12 (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

On its first full solar day on Mars, the Curiosity rover is under going a month-long series of health checks before getting down to its mission of exploring the chemistry of Mars.

Curiosity isn’t expected to drill its first drill hole in a Mars rock for about another month or two, according to Rob Manning, the Mars mission’s chief engineer.

However, we’re already getting some interesting images of the red planet.

Almost two hours after Monday’s  touchdown, the rover started snapping pictures of its new home in  Mars’ Gale Crater.

But even before that, some of Curiosity’s trip through the thin Martian atmosphere and subsequent landing were caught on camera by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the planet for over six years.

Curiosity and its parachute were spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on 0500 UTC 08-06-12. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, caught Curiosity while it was still connected to its almost 16-meter parachute as it descended to its landing site.

A camera aboard  Curiosity itself took a sequence of self-portraits of its trip through the Martian atmosphere as well.

According NASA, the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) snapped over 1,500 images which are being stored within Curiosity’s onboard memory banks.  When those images are put together at the highest resolution, they should produce a video showing the rover’s descent from the time its heat shield was released, all the way until it touched down on Mars.

This stop-motion video shows 297 frames from the Mars Descent Imager aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover as it descended to the surface of Mars. (Video: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Until  we get that detailed video of Curiosity’s descent and touchdown, we’ll have to be satisfied with  297 color, low-resolution images the rover recently beamed back to Earth.

This image taken by Curiosity shows Mars’ Mount Sharp. The rover’s shadow can also be seen. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“The image sequence received so far indicates Curiosity had, as expected, a very exciting ride to the surface,” says Mike Malin from Malin Space Systems in San Diego, the imaging scientist for the Mars mission. “But as dramatic as they are, there is real other-world importance to obtaining them. These images will help the mission scientists interpret the rover’s surroundings, the rover drivers in planning for future drives across the surface, as well as assist engineers in their design of forthcoming landing systems for Mars or other worlds.”

Other activities planned for the Curiosity today include setting up its high-gain antenna, collecting science data from the system’s Radiation Assessment Detector and Rover Environmental Monitoring Station instruments, as well as picking up  additional imagery of its surroundings.

This is all part of the mission’s characterization activity phase, which tests how Curiosity’s subsystems and instruments are functioning after landing and within the environment and gravitational field of Mars.

Artist concept of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars’ past or present ability to sustain microbial life. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Excitement is building at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.  A little over eight months after its November  2011 launch, NASA’s newest and most advanced Mars rover  is set to land on the red planet on Monday, Aug. 6.

The Curiosity rover carries the most sophisticated payload of scientific equipment  ever used on Mars’ surface. It’s  10 times the size of earlier Mars rovers, the size as a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) rather than the golf cart size of previous rovers. Scientists hope Curiosity will help unlock the mystery of whether life could exist on the red planet.

So far, the Mars mission is on track but its biggest challenges will come when the spacecraft carrying Curiosity executes its entry, descent and landing on Mars.  The procedure is so complex mission team members refer to it as “seven minutes of terror.”

Rob Manning, the Mars mission’s chief engineer, says  setting  Curiosity safely on Mars  is the culmination of about a decade’s worth of “thinking, designing and building, involving thousands of people” from around the world.

Artist’s concept of Mars Science Laboratory entry, descent and landing (the 7 minutes of terror’). (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The Mars Science Laboratory mission is the first of its kind, according to Manning. Although there have been a number of missions to Mars,  Curiosity will be the first rover to robotically explore; drilling into rock and  performing geochemistry,  to gain a better understanding of the chemistry of Mars.

The work performed by Curiosity is expected to allow scientists to learn more about the early history of Mars and whether planet may have, at one time, been  habitable for life. Other exploratory missions have shown Mars was a very wet planet.

Although a smaller  Mars rover named Opportunity is still working, sending back valuable observational data after more than eight years on the red planet, Manning says Curiosity alone will allow scientists to gather and analyze data on the microscopic, chemical composition of Mars through the vehicle’s advanced on board geochemistry laboratory.

The Mars  mission scientists also hope to learn about Mars’ environmental conditions on a microscopic scale,  since Curiosity’s drilling function allows it to gather samples from a much earlier time in the planet’s history.

Artist’s conception of Curiosity using the rover’s ChemCam instrument to identify the chemical composition of a rock sample on the surface of Mars. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Data gathered from  other rovers  suggests Mars has water underground. Scientists believe that water was on the surface long enough to chemically alter rock and that the planet has a rich water-based history.  Mission scientists now want to determine whether Martian water was around long enough for conditions to sustain life and for life itself to have evolved.

“If we can find signs that Mars was a habitable place and, even more excitingly, if we can find residue of life on Mars in the form of complex organic compounds, we might be able to say something about how life is not ubiquitous on this planet,” says Manning. “In every crack and every crevice of this planet you will find life, maybe Mars itself is the same way, and maybe life got started there too.”

Once safely on the ground, Curiosity won’t move from its landing spot for about five days, to allow the engineers on Earth to make sure the surface directly beneath the rover’s wheels doesn’t present an immediate hazard.

Manning doesn’t expect Curiosity to drill its first hole in a Mars rock until a month or two after landing.

According to NASA, the Mars Science Laboratory’s primary mission will last one Martian year, or about 687 Earth days, surviving at least one Martian winter in the process.

Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, actor William Shatner, narrates this video about NASA’s Curiosity rover, from its entry and descent through the Martian atmosphere to its landing and exploration of the Red Planet. (Video: NASA Television)

Rob Manning joins us this weekend on the radio edition of ‘Science World’. He talks about the Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory mission and what scientists hope to learn from its work. Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen to the interview with Ms. Wallace below.

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