Monday, August 20, 2012

Rover's Laser Instrument Zaps First Martian Rock


I hope you are following the new adventures of Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover.

Gene sent me the following.  Hope you are getting the MSL  updates, but if not take a look.
- LRK -


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Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity Mission Status Report                        Aug. 19, 2012


Rover's Laser Instrument Zaps First Martian Rock
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: 
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/


PASADENA, Calif. - Today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."

The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.

The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.

"We got a great spectrum of Coronation -- lots of signal," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. "Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it's payoff time!"

ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark at each of the 30 pulses. The goal of this initial use of the laser on Mars was to serve as target practice for characterizing the instrument, but the activity may provide additional value. Researchers will check whether the composition changed as the pulses progressed. If it did change, that could indicate dust or other surface material being penetrated to reveal different composition beneath the surface. The spectrometers record intensity at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.

"It's surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio," said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. "It's so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years."

The technique used by ChemCam, called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, has been used to determine composition of targets in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, and has had experimental applications in environmental monitoring and cancer detection. Today's investigation of Coronation is the first use of the technique in interplanetary exploration.

Curiosity landed on Mars two weeks ago, beginning a two-year mission using 10 instruments to assess whether a carefully chosen study area inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

ChemCam was developed, built and tested by the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project, including Curiosity, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl 


and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/

marscuriosity and on Twitter at:http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

More information about ChemCam is available at http://www.msl-chemcam.com 


Guy Webster/D.C. Agle 818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Guy.Webster@jpl.nasa.gov / Agl


e@jpl.nasa.gov
news.cfm?release=2012-248&cid=release_2012-248&msource=2012248
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Another write up at Science News which you can also sign up for info on new posts.
Check out the images and links to more information.
- LRK -

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http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/19aug_curiosity3/

Curiosity Zaps First Martian Rock


August 19, 2012:  NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has fired its laser for the first time on Mars. On Aug. 19th the mission's ChemCam instrument hit a fist-sized rock named "Coronation" with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.
The energy from the laser creates a puff of ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the rock. The spectrometers record 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light.
"We got a great spectrum of Coronation -- lots of signal," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. "Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it's payoff time!"
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http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/
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You might be interested in following the suggested links for ChemCam.
- LRK - 

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index.php?menu=inc&page_consult=textes&rubrique=64&sousrubrique=223&soussousrubrique=0&titre_url=ChemCam
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What Will ChemCam Tell Us?
Simply stated, ChemCam will tell us what the rocks are made of in the Curiosity rover’s landing region. The primary objectives of ChemCam are to rapidly analyze rocks and soil to determine their compositions and to identify samples that would be of greatest interest to scientists for analysis by other instruments onboard Curiosity.
Rapid Analysis of Rocks and Soil
Determining the composition of rocks on the Martian surface is usually a laborious, time-consuming task, even for advanced spacecraft such as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Most rocks on the surface of Mars are covered with a layer of dust. Many rocks are also covered with a layer of material that has been altered by wind and possibly water. To determine the true composition of a rock, spacecraft must first clear away the dust and the altered layer of rock. This involves the spacecraft rolling up to the rock and using a tool to clear away the unwanted layers (Figure 1). Dust can be easily removed but altered layers of rock usually need to be removed by grinding away the material. Another obstacle is the rock grinder. They wear down. In fact the rock grinders on the MER rovers wore down long ago. When conducting a Mars mission, this seemingly menial task may require at least one day’s worth of operations, a long time by mission standards. ChemCam, with its unique laser system, will be able to perform the same task in a fraction of the time and without having to be in contact with the rock.
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A lot of information on Curiosity rover gathered here at Wikipedia'
- LRK -

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Curiosity_rover
The Curiosity rover is a robotic, car-sized rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars. The Curiosity Mars rover carries a radioisotope-powered mobile 
scientific laboratory and is part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission by the United States.
Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011 at 10:02 EST aboard the MSL spacecraft and successfully landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17:57.3 UTC.[5] The final landing place for the rover was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from its target after a 563,000,000 km (350,000,000 mi) journey.[6]
The rover's goals include investigation of the Martian climate, geology, and whether Mars could have ever supported life, including investigation of the role of water and planetary habitability, and preparing for human exploration.[7][8]

wiki/Curiosity_rover
wiki/Curiosity_rover#section_3

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And more uses for the technology right here back on Earth.
- LRK -

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pages/msl/news/msl20120819b.





html
Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity Mission Status Report
PASADENA, Calif. - Today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."
The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.
The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.
"We got a great spectrum of Coronation -- lots of signal," said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. "Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it's payoff time!"
snip
The technique used by ChemCam, called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, has been used to determine composition of targets in other extreme environments, such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, and has had experimental applications in environmental monitoring and cancer detection. Today's investigation of Coronation is the first use of the technique in interplanetary exploration.
Curiosity landed on Mars two weeks ago, beginning a two-year mission using 10 instruments to assess whether a carefully chosen study area inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
ChemCam was developed, built and tested by the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and research agency, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
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Laser-induced_breakdown_





spectroscopy
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Will be looking up and watching.
- LRK -

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Monday, August 6, 2012

Where do we go next in our quest for knowledge of the Red Planet?


We in the USA had best watch the Mars Science Laboratory (CURIOSITY) carefully as we seem to be pulling out of further missions to Mars, unless you think we are going to send astronauts there without knowing how to survive the riggers of space.
- LRK -
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With all of the things that could have gone wrong, and have in the past, this mission is off to a great start.
- LRK -

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Historical Log

PROGRAM & MISSIONS
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Much to think about in this blog.
I second Alyssa's enthusiasm for Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars.
- LRK -

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The amazing men and women of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration landed the Curiosity rover on Mars last night. But the piece of writing that perhaps best encapsulates the wild joy at the Jet Propulsion Lab, and the meaning of their accomplishment, was published almost 20 years before, on January 1, 1993. I hope everyone will forgive me quoting Kim Stanley Robinson’s introduction to Red Mars, the first of his masterful trilogy about the colonization of the Red Planet, at length here, because it’s the most powerful meditation on the meaning of Mars that I know, and it’s so strikingly applicable here (and make it worth it by going out andbuying the book if my repeated proselytization for it hasn’t convinced you already).
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In Robinson’s vision, we sent the first colonizing mission to Mars in 2026. President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposes cutting NASA’s planetary science budget from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billionand ending the U.S. partnership with the E.U. to send probes to Mars on two planned missions in 2016 and 2018—this year, the Jet Propulsion Lab’s open house was marked by a bake sale to call attention to the proposed cuts. What the scientists at JPL did last night was a critical part of our future in space not simply because they did something extremely difficult that will advance our understanding of the planet that’s fascinated so many of us so deeply and for so long, but because they helped keep the dream alive at all, reminding of what it’s like to watch the future arrive, and how cheap it is to purchase in comparison to what we spend to maintain conflicts and policies that mire us in the past.
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Mixed opinions on where we go with missions to Mars.
- LRK -

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Should NASA Ditch Manned Missions To Mars?

NASA's overarching goal of sending astronauts to Mars may not be worth the time, money and trouble, a prominent researcher says.

NASA's human spaceflight efforts have long been geared toward eventually putting boots on the Red Planet. But the agency should think seriously about ditching this plan, for the benefits of a manned Mars mission may not justify its enormous costs, said space architect Brent Sherwood of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"Our rationale for exploring Mars, I think, is perhaps fatally weak," Sherwood said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations working group Wednesday (Aug. 1).
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If you live in the USA much at stake in where we go in the future. 
Watch how much money is raised for adds to support the presidential elections. Wonder what I could do with some of those $$$?

For some more thoughts you might be interested in what our Apollo 17 Astronaut, Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt has to say.
- LRK -

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By Dr. Harrison H. Schmitt. Prologue: (“Is there a path forward for United States’ space policy? When a new President takes office in 2013, he or she should propose to Congress that we start space policy and its administration from scratch. A new agency, the National Space Exploration Administration (NSEA), should be charged with specifically enabling America’s and its partners’ exploration of deep space, inherently stimulating education, technology, and national focus. The existing component parts of NASA should be spread among other agencies with the only exception being activities related to U.S. obligations to its partners in the International Space Station (ISS).” — HHS). The Foreword was written by Michael D. Griffin, noted physicist, aerospace engineer and NASA Administrator (2005-2009): (“Jack makes the case for space as no one else can, and he shows how and why we are on the wrong path— leaving the rest of us with the question: what can we do to obtain the leadership we need instead of the leadership we have?”— MDG).
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Enough single finger typing. :-)
Thanks for looking up.
- LRK -

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
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Did you have the opportunity to watch the Curiosity rover's 7 minutes of terror.


I hope you had the opportunity to watch the Curiosity rover's 7 minutes of terror.  I was pleased to follow along on CNN on our local cable TV.  

Also encouraging was KTVU showing the folks at NASA Ames Research Center Visitor Center gathering watching on a large screen. 
Today they have a number of links to check out.
mars-rover-landing/aFLw/

KTVU also has a mobile App to keep up with the news. You might find this link interesting that I shared with myself. 
- LRK -
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wap/news/text.jsp?sid=242&nid=
1534912266&cid=21225&scid=-1
In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet's past.
KTVU mobile News
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Maybe the Internet will help more folks to think about what might be found out there in space.
Consider this blog at Centauri Dreams'
- LRK -

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org/?p=23978

After Curiosity (whew!), Thoughts on Enceladus

by PAUL GILSTER on AUGUST 6, 2012
At $2.5 billion, NASA’s Curiosity rover didn’t cost quite as much as Cassini ($3 billion), but what a relief to Solar System exploration both near and far to have it safely down at Gale Crater. This Reuters story tells me that 79 different pyrotechnic detonations were needed to release ballast weights, open the parachute, separate the heat shield, detach the craft’s back shell and perform the rest of the functions needed to make this hair-raising landing a success. All of this with a 14-minute round-trip radio delay that left mission engineers as no more than bystanders.

Congratulations to the entire Curiosity team on this triumphant event! As we now move into the next several weeks checking the six-wheeled rover and its instruments out for exploration, let’s ponder future targets beyond the Red Planet. For at some point, no matter what we find on Mars, we’re going to want to push on to the outer planets, where intriguing moons like Titan, Europa and Enceladus await. The latter’s stock seems to be rising, as witness this recent article in The Guardian forwarded by Andy Tribick. Although they face major challenges, astrobiological missions to Enceladus offers rich prospects indeed. Two are being studied, and it’s easy to see why.
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article/2012/08/06/us-usa-
mars-idUSBRE8721A920120806
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Continue to follow the mission.
- LRK -

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Thanks for looking up.
- LRK -

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.
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Sunday, August 5, 2012

Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) on Mars and sending pictures.


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NASA's Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars

After 8 months of flight, spacecraft survives '7 minutes of terror' and lands safely

By Alan BoyleScience editor
PASADENA, Calif. — After eight years of planning and eight months of interplanetary travel, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory pulled off a touchdown of Super Bowl proportions, all by itself.
The spacecraft plunged through Mars' atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, "I made it!"
That message was relayed by the orbiting Mars Odyssey satellite back to Earth. A radio telescope in Australia picked up the message and sent it here to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When the blips of data appeared on the screens at JPL's mission control, the room erupted in cheers and hugs.
Because of the light-travel time between Mars and Earth, throngs of scientists and engineers — along with millions who were monitoring the action via television and the Internet — celebrated Curiosity's landing 14 minutes after it actually occurred.
Even the engineers who drew up the unprecedented plan for the landing admitted that it looked crazy. But the plan actually worked.
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MARS Science Laboratory

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First Images from Curiosity Rover on Mars

  • By Adam Mann
    •   
  • August 6, 2012 |  
  • 1:55 am
This is one of the first images taken by NASA’s rover, Curiosity. Taken with the rover’s Hazcam cameras, the image shows rocks, dust, and the rover’s shadow on the surface of Mars

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There are more images at JPL but folks copying may hinder viewing.
- LRK -

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Curiosity Lands on Mars

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:32:54 PM PDT

NASA's Curiosity rover has landed on Mars! Its descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it to the surface. Nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the "sky crane" maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown, the connecting cords were severed, and the descent stage flew out of the way. The time of day at the landing site is mid-afternoon -- about 3 p.m. local Mars time at Gale Crater. The time at JPL's mission control is about 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5 PDT (early morning EDT).
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Great job!.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover) team counting down to 7 minutes of terror.


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Mars countdown: NASA rover on track for '7 minutes of terror' plummet through atmosphere

NASA counting down to nail-biting Mars plunge

By ALICIA CHANG

The Curiosity rover was poised to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph. If all goes according to script, it will be slowly lowered by cables inside a massive crater in the final few seconds.
NASA was ready for the "Super Bowl of planetary exploration," said Doug McCuistion, head of the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters.
"We score and win or we don't score and we don't win," said McCuistion.
If all goes well, mission control at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory should hear a signal at 10:31 p.m. PDT. The space agency warned that confirmation could take longer if an orbiting spacecraft that's supposed to listen for Curiosity during the descent is not in the right place.
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MARS Science Laboratory

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Curiosity Closes in on its New 'Home'

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 04:20:24 PM PDT

With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon, as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion system. As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).
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Wishing the team the best of luck.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -

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