Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Curiosity is a car-sized Mars rover exploring Gale crater and Mount Sharp on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. [2] Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17:57 UTC.
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, [2] which successfully landed Curiosity, a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. [ 3 ] [ 9 ] [ 10 ] [ 11 ] The overall objectives include investigating Mars' habitability , studying its climate and geology , and collecting data ...
The rover explored a ridge known as the Murray Formation for most of the mission. As of 3 October 2016, NASA summarized the findings of the mission, thus far, as follows: "The Curiosity mission has already achieved its main goal of determining whether the landing region ever offered environmental conditions that would have been favorable for ...
The Johnson Space Center is home to Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H), the NASA control center that coordinates and monitors all human spaceflight for the United States. MCC-H directed all Space Shuttle missions, and currently directs American activities aboard the International Space Station .
The first NASA rover, Sojourner (on the Mars Pathfinder lander), and twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, used a combination of parachutes, retrorockets, and airbags for landing. Curiosity, launched in 2011, weighs nearly 900 kg, and was too heavy to be landed this way, as the airbags needed for it would be too heavy to be launched on a rocket. [2]
Steltzner is employed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he designed, tested and built the sky crane landing system for the Curiosity rover. [6] Steltzner was phase lead and development manager for EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) of the lander, which successfully landed on Mars on August 5, 2012. [ 14 ]
As a field center of NASA, JPL's primary activities and projects are generally aligned with NASA's mission objectives in space exploration, Earth sciences, and astrophysics. The funding allocated to JPL comes as a portion of NASA's annual budget, which is itself part of the United States federal budget approved by Congress. [70]
Despite the high-profile success of the Curiosity rover landing in August 2012, NASA's Mars Exploration Program was in a state of uncertainty in the early 2010s. Budget cuts forced NASA to pull out of a planned collaboration with the European Space Agency which included a rover mission. [13]