Missions, Gremlins and the final (red) frontier

Artist depiction of the Curiosity rover on Mars

Space, the final frontier! These are the voyages of the spacecraft Curiosity. Though in this case the specific frontier is Gale crater on Mars.

Hello to anyone who is reading this and welcome to this humble new blog where we will journey to a place we couldn't have ever imagined going to, literally. The new mission seeks to answer questions on the 'habitability' of Mars by landing at Gale crater and performing some complicated forms of laboratory tests and examinations. That IS why it's called MSL, the Mars Science Laboratory. This is all very nice and well and will make for good topic in upcoming posts.

Mars is a hard place to go to. Since the beginning of the Space age the planet has claimed almost two-thirds of all the missions ever sent. The Soviets got most of the rotten luck notwithstanding the recent loss of Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission (seriously, you'd think after their successful Venus robotic missions in the '60s up to the '80s Mars should have been a piece of cake for them). The US after the successful Viking program in the '70s have since been effectively running a sort of monopoly though they have suffered their share of botched missions. Europe launched it's highly successful Mars Express orbiter in 2003 and has been working merrily since 2004. The Japanese gave it whirl too but I guess the Martian gremlin got to them.

So where does the new mission stand. Let me surmise for now with 3 words that describe it accurately; bigger, better and meaner. This gal is going to blow everyone's minds away when it lands early next month. Guaranteed. If this new video posted by the NASA/JPL doesn't convince you I don't what will!

So there you have it in a nut shell. Next post I will talk about the Curiosity mission's PR past roots, the evolution of landing on Mars. In the mean time here's an MSL FACT: the Curiosity spacecraft is also referred to as 2011-070A (hence the title in this blog's banner). Why? For identification purposes of course. Every craft launched into space is given an International Designation called COSPAR. It has 3 components, the year of launch (2011), the number of spacecraft launched for that year (70th) and the type (A represents launch vehicle and B deployed vehicle).

We are as of this post 12 days away. If you have watched the video (link above) I am sure you have joined me in getting the goosebumps!