On a hopeful evening in August 2012, a roomful of NASA employees held their breath as they watched a rover named Curiosity attempt a landing that was no short of a miracle. After what they dubbed the "seven minutes of terror," the control room erupted with emotion as Curiosity's wheels safely touched the surface of Mars.
Curiosity rover will drive around the Gale Crater in a mission to determine if Mars could ever support microbial life. This information will serve as the foundation for possible manned missions to the Red Planet.
Curiosity — who has assumed a female personality on NASA's social networks — is different from the any other rover to ever land on Mars. For starters, Curiosity is 10 feet long, 7 feet tall and five times heavier than her predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers that NASA launched in 2003. To put it in more tangible terms, Curiosity is about the same size as a car at 1,928 pounds.
No space is wasted on the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover. She is packed with a cutting-edge scientific payload that allows her to explore Mars like a human would. Here is a rundown of just some of the hardware that the rover uses on the mysterious Red Planet.
How Curiosity Snaps Photos of the Red Planet
If you've kept up with the latest news about Curiosity's findings, you have probably seen the incredible, high-res images she has beamed from the Red Planet. The rover uses 17 different types of cameras to snap these images — in both black and white and color — and high-definition video.
The first camera the rover used was her Mars Decent Imager (MARDI), which was turned on as she completed her white-knuckle descent onto the Red Planet. The 2-megapixel wide-angle camera recorded a full-color, HD video of that landing so that we can relive those seven minutes whenever we want.
Next up on the rover is the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which captures extremely close-up images of things like soil, rocks and ice. Mounted on Curiosity's arm, this camera is so advanced that it can reveal details of materials that are smaller than the width of a human hair. Curiosity has also used this camera to snap incredible self portraits.
Built at about human-eye level, Curiosity's Mars Science Laboratory Mast Camera takes color photos and video of the rover's surroundings. Essentially, this camera sees what she "sees" — the Red Planet terrain or materials collected with the rover's arm, for example. This camera can take incredible 360-degree panoramic views of Mars by stitching together images slowly taken in a rotating circle.
The Tools Curiosity Uses to 'Do the Science'
Curiosity's suite of instruments, called Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), analyzes material the rover collects using her arm. All of these tools are used to complete her ultimate mission of assessing carbon-based molecules — the building blocks of life — on the alien planet.
For this instrument, Curiosity will deliver powdered samples to one of two funnels on her "back" and then to small cups for processing inside the rover's "body." The entire box is about the size of a microwave oven and weighs about 88 pounds.
For studying Mars' atmosphere, Curiosity has a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and a tunable laser spectrometer with combined capabilities to identify a wide range of organic compounds and determine the ratios of different isotopes of key elements. To identify materials in rocks and soils, Curiosity uses an on-board an X-ray diffraction and fluorescence instrument called CheMin.
The rover uses an instrument named ChemCam to vaporize thin layers of material from Martian rocks or soil targets up to 23 feet away. It took eight years for the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory and France's national space and research agencies to build the ChemCam. And Curiosity didn't waste anytime before firing it. Using 30 pulses of laser for 10 seconds, Curiosity blasted her first fist-sized rock called "Coronation" in August.
The rover first used SAM in early November. NASA released the initial results of those findings at the first of December. Despite a rumor that turned out to be a major misunderstanding, those first soil samples did not contain an "earth-shaking" discovery. However, the data did show that Martian soil is a complex makeup of water, sulfur and chlorine-containing substances.
How the Rover Drives Around Martian Surface
So Curiosity has all this fancy equipment, but how does she know what to use and when to use it? NASA released this handy 60-second video showing how the control center here on Earth sends commands to a rover that's about 140 million miles away.
To complete drives or tasks, NASA engineers send computer commands to the six-wheeled Curiosity the night before she is set to complete them. When it comes to driving, engineers have two options: specific commands (like "drive forward 10 feet") or they can write commands that allow the rover think on her own (such as "see that rock over there? Drive toward it.").
For the latter situation, the rover uses her hazcams — she has four pairs of these cameras — to get a 3D view of hazardous obstacles to avoid while driving. These cameras also help engineers plan where Curiosity will scoop up her next soil sample.
What Curiosity Has Done So Far
Just five months into her mission on Mars, the Curiosity rover has already made history. In September, her photos revealed an ancient streambed on Mars where water once flowed several billions of years ago. Curiosity Chief Scientist John Grotzinger noted that "a long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment."
In November, NASA scientists analyzed the rover's initial radiation measurements and found that levels at the Martian surface appear to be similar to those astronauts experience in low-Earth orbit. That means that astronauts would be able to survive this environment, putting us one step closer to putting a human on Mars.
The Curiosity mission has been such a success so far that NASA is now planning another robotic science rover that will launch in 2020. Mars Science Laboratory will use the same framework as Curiosity for the next rover's development and design.
"Curiosity's mission is producing an unprecedented volume of valuable science data," Grotzinger told Mashable in November. "Much of this will help us better glimpse the very ancient environments of Mars, that are regarded to have been the most habitable in the planet's history. We have only just started on this journey back in time."
Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL