(NEWS) Curiosity To Foreign Planet Mars Day 2

b.a#16

Second Day On Mars

NASA rover Curiosity's second day on Mars went "flawlessly," NASA said Wednesday, confirming the antennas, communication links and generator on the $2.5 billion robot are all working well.

 "We feel very confident we have a lot of data capacity now, that we have all these links, and that was one of the major objectives of that first part of the mission," mission manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters at a press conference at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The four main pieces of hardware that arrived on Mars with NASA's Curiosity rover were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera captured this image about 24 hours after landing.

 

She added that a pair of cameras -- set like two large eyes on the newly extended remote sensing mast -- will be used Thursday to give scientists their first full-color panoramic 360-degree view around the rover.

"The first impression you get is how earth-like this seems," commented John Grotzinger, a scientist for the mission.

"All those materials are derived from the erosion of those mountains," he added, explaining that the sediments were brought down into the crater by water that once pooled there.

 This image comparison shows a view through a Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover before and after the clear dust cover was removed. Both images were taken by a camera at the front of the rover. Mount Sharp, the mission's ultimate destination, looms ahead.

 NASA released a low resolution black and white panoramic Wednesday that shows a vast sediment-covered plain, with low mountains in the distance.

These signs of water on Red Planet hint that some form of life was once likely -- even though Mars is now a dry place with a thin atmosphere, extreme winters and dust storms -- and they're Curiosity's reason for being.

The color image captured by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Tuesday, August 7, has been rendered about 10% transparent so that scientists can see how it matches the simulated terrain in the background.

The nuclear-powered rover is designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life on the Earth's nearest neighbor and send back data to prepare for a future human mission.

It is the biggest robot ever built for planetary exploration -- weighing in at a ton, about the size of a small car -- and carries a complex chemistry kit to zap rocks, drill soil and test for radiation.

 This first image taken by the Navigation cameras on Curiosity shows the rover's shadow on the surface of Mars.

Grotzinger noted that the images show the rover's harrowing and complex descent on Monday "did more than give us a great ride, it gave our science team an amazing freebie."

"The thrust from the rockets actually dug 0.5 meter (1.6 feet) trench in the surface," he said. "It appears we can see Martian bedrock on the bottom."

Knowing how far the bedrock lies beneath the surface is "valuable data we can use going forward," he explained.

 

This color full-resolution image showing the heat shield of NASA's Curiosity rover was obtained during descent to the surface of Mars on Monday, August 13. The image was obtained by the Mars Descent Imager instrument known as MARDI and shows the 15-foot diameter heat shield when it was about 50 feet from the spacecraft.

In other good news, Trosper said the indications are that Curiosity's electricity generator is making "more power that was expected."

That's going to keep the rover operating longer, she explained, and added that the team was also able to resolve an anomaly that had been hindering the rover's weather-sensing equipment.

She noted that the data shows temperatures around Curiosity are a little warmer than predicted, but they "are still looking at why."

She did not give any specific temperature readings, but NASA had initially predicted frigid temperatures at Curiosity's landing site of between -90 and zero degrees Celsius.

  

 A close-up view of an area at the NASA Curiosity landing site where the soil was blown away by the thrusters during the rover's descent on August 6. The excavation of the soil reveals probable bedrock outcrop, which shows the shallow depth of the soil in this area.