Do yourself a favor and watch the amazing video from NASA on how this rover will get to Mars and then how it will land on Mars. I hadn’t heard anything about this 9 month mission to Mars. This new rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is the size of a car. To compare, the rovers from the 1997 mission were the size of skateboards, and the new rover weighs a thousand times more.
Watch the animation video below from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of how the rover will work from launch to landing on Mars. It’s simply amazing stuff, you might even say out of this world!
Here’s a video with narration about the mission by the people at JPL who designed and built the MSL-
Are You Curious about the New $2.5 Billion Mars Rover Set to Launch This Weekend?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (The Blaze/AP) — As big as a car and as well-equipped as a laboratory, NASA’s newest Mars rover blows away its predecessors in size and skill.
Nicknamed Curiosity and scheduled for launch on Saturday, the rover has a 7-foot arm tipped with a jackhammer and a laser to break through the Martian red rock. What really makes it stand out: It can analyze rocks and soil with unprecedented accuracy.
“This is a Mars scientist’s dream machine,” said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist.
Once on the red planet, Curiosity will be on the lookout for organic, carbon-containing compounds. While the rover can’t actually detect the presence of living organisms, scientists hope to learn from the $2.5 billion, nuclear-powered mission whether Mars has — or ever had — what it takes to nurture microbial life.
