Mars Rover FAQs: What's Next

06.08.2012
The fact that the Mars rover "Curiosity" didn't crash during its 7-minute landing sequence Sunday night PDT is, in itself, huge.

The agency's largest and most complex rover so far landed safely on the red planet and will spend the next two years investigating it for signs of microbial life.

The flawless, albeit complicated, landing was confirmed Sunday at 10:32 p.m. PDT after Curiosity set down near the foot of a mountain three miles tall inside Mars' 96-mile-wide Gale Crater.

Curiosity is equipped with 10 science instruments that, combined, have a total mass 15 times larger than science payloads on the previous Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the high-tech apparatuses are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a tool that can check the elemental composition of rocks by firing a vaporizing laser at them from a distance.

Curiosity's robotic arm will drill into, scoop, sieve, parcel out, and analyze samples of the planet's surface. NASA says its orbital observations have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating the planet, at one time, had a wet history.