The Verge - Curiosity: the latest on NASA's newest Mars rover

Life, death, and Mars: The New Yorker's definitive account of the Curiosity rover

2013-04-17T19:20:49Z

The Curiosity rover, NASA's most ambitious Mars mission to-date, has received plenty of attention since it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in November 2011, but The New Yorker's Burkhard Bilger has put together what may be the definitive account of the mission. Bilger tells not only the story behind Curiosity and those who worked on it, but the history of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The story puts the daring mission in the context of man's fascination with Mars and the long line of programs that have sought to explore the planet and explain profound questions about the origin of life.

Curiosity rover snaps panorama of massive Mars mountain

2013-03-16T16:54:02Z

NASA this week released new high-resolution panoramic images of Mars' Mount Sharp, captured by its Mars Rover Curiosity. Named after late geologist Robert Sharp, the massive Martian mountain is a gently sloping formation that sits at the center of the Gale Crater, where Curiosity recently uncovered evidence that the Red Planet may have supported microbial life forms. According to NASA, Mount Sharp rises three miles above the surface of the crater, making it higher than any point within the 48 contiguous United States.

Is there life on Mars? Why the question still eludes us after years of discovery

2013-03-14T16:00:02Z

"Is there life on Mars?" David Bowie crooned in the 1971 glam rock hit of the same name. Four years later, NASA launched the twin Viking missions to the Red Planet in part to help answer that very question. They became the first spacecraft to land on another planet in human history. Almost forty years and 1 7 attempted missions to Mars later, we still don't know for sure if the planet has or ever had life. Even with this week's exciting news that the Curiosity rover discovered the most conclusive evidence yet that Mars was able to support life, and despite many previous claims of evidence for life on Mars, it's going to take even more proof to be able to say for sure whether something ever actually lived on Mars and, most importantly,...

Curiosity discovers ancient Mars could have supported life

2013-03-12T17:18:50Z

NASA just announced that its Curiosity rover has discovered evidence that Mars had the conditions necessary to support life in ancient times, specifically microorganisms. The evidence comes comes from a drilling sample retrieved by the rover from a rock on the Red Planet. The powder was found to contain traces of "sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon," all key chemical ingredients of microbial life. NASA scientists just finished a live streaming press conference to explain the results.

Curiosity rover successfully switches over to backup computer after memory issues

2013-03-05T02:52:24Z

Over the weekend a memory problem with the Mars Curiosity rover forced NASA engineers to switch it into "safe mode" so a backup system could take over. According to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that process has proved successful and Curiosity will be back to normal operation by next week. The move to the secondary "B-side" computer began on Thursday, February 28th, with the rover exiting safe mode — with the secondary computer in control — on Saturday. It regained the ability to use its high-gain antenna the following day.

The cause behind the primary computer's memory problem has yet to be determined, but NASA does hope to restore it to some kind of working order. "One path of progress is evaluating the A-side with intent to...

Curiosity enters 'safe mode' after memory is corrupted, possibly by cosmic rays

2013-03-03T00:03:06Z

A memory issue on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has led engineers to switch the rover's operations onto its backup computer. NASA says Curiosity is currently in a "safe mode" while its backup computer is updated to take control of the rover — once it's running again, the rover will be able to use the backup system for it's primary operations. The issue shouldn't result in any long-term disruptions for Curiosity.

The memory issue was caught on Wednesday when engineers noticed that Curiosity had not sent recorded data back to Earth or switch into a daily sleep mode as it was expected to. The error was caused by corrupted memory files that led to a glitch on the rover's primary computer. The cause of the corrupted memory is still...

Curiosity rover spots strange hunk of metal on Mars

2013-02-09T05:34:04Z

See that mysterious silver object in the picture above? That photograph was taken on the surface of Mars, and yet it sure doesn't look like a red rock. On January 30th, NASA's Curiosity rover snapped shots of the Martian landscape with each of its two MastCam cameras with this mystery object in the shot. NASA doesn't seem to have commented on the horn-like item yet, but theories currently include a meteorite that landed on the planet, or a piece of ore exposed by erosion of some sort.

Elisabetta Bonora of Alive Universe Images, who spotted the mystery object in Curiosity's photo database, notes that it takes up about 35 pixels in the frame. Given the camera's resolution of 150 microns per pixel at two meters distant, and what seems like...

Curiosity Rover planning to drill into Martian rock for the first time, search for evidence of water

2013-01-16T19:00:06Z

NASA has announced that the Mars Curiosity Rover is planning to drill into Martian rock for the first time in an attempt to prove there was once water on the planet. Veins on the rock appear to be made up of hydrated calcium sulfate, or gypsum — a mineral that requires the presence of water to form. Once the rover reaches the rock in question, it will drill, ingest, and analyze samples of the rock to determine the makeup of the minerals in question as well as the more general chemical composition. "The orbital signal drew us here, but what we found when we arrived has been a great surprise," said Mars Science Laboratory project scientist John Grotzinger. "This area had a different type of wet environment than the streambed where we...