This image shows Mars' Gale Crater. NASA on 22 July 2011, announced the selection of Gale crater as the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. The mission's rover will be placed on the ground in a northern portion (top) of the crater in August 2012. The Gale crater is 154 km in diameter and holds a layered mountain rising about 5 km above the crater floor. The portion of the crater within the planned landing area north of the mountain has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
This oblique view of the lower mound in Gale crater shows layers of rock that preserve a record of environments on Mars. Here, orbiting instruments have detected signatures of both clay minerals and sulfate salts, with more clay minerals apparent in the foreground of this image and fewer in higher layers. This change in mineralogy may reflect a change in the ancient environment in Gale Crater.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/UA
WASHINGTON: One of the tallest climbable mountains in the Solar System will be explored by NASA's unmanned Curiosity rover to discover if signs of life ever existed on the red planet.
The landing site for the US$2.5 billion dollar Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) was unveiled the day after the 30-year shuttle era ended with the return to Earth of Atlantis after its final mission to the International Space Station.
Clues sent home from Mars are important to NASA as it aims to build a spaceship capable of toting humans there by 2030, while private companies race to replace the shuttle with a capsule suitable for low-Earth orbit.
Tallest mountain in the Solar System
More than 150 scientists have spent years whittling down the landing site for Curiosity, the largest U.S. rover ever, set to launch later this year and land in August 2012.
From an initial set of 30 potential spots, they finally decided on the Gale crater, which contains a five-kilometre-high mountain, over its leading rival the Eberswalde crater, which is home to a dried-up river delta.
"In the end we picked the one that felt best," said John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This could be the tallest mountain in the Solar System that we could actually climb with a rover," he said.
The search for interesting rocks
The mountain, tucked inside the 154-kilometre-wide crater, is shaped like a broad mound so the six-wheeled rover can climb at least halfway up.
When Curiosity arrives over Mars, the car-sized craft will be lowered onto a flat part of the crater by tethers suspended from a rocket-powered sky crane, while a camera on the rover's base snaps high resolution images of the terrain beneath.
The vehicle, which uses a radioisotope power source for heat and electricity, will carry 17 cameras and 10 science instruments, as well as a potent laser beam, drill and robotic arm.
Its main job is to hunt for rocks that look interesting. When it spots one that appears worthy, it will zap it with a laser beam that can reach up seven metres creating a spark of light that scientists can analyse for hints about the chemicals contained inside.
Reading chapters of Mars's history
If NASA wants an even closer look, Curiosity can grab the rock with its robotic arm, drill a hole creating a powder, then dump that powder into one of two holes in the rover where instruments are waiting to analyse the dust. The project is meant to last two years, but NASA hopes that like other some of its other rovers in the past, Curiosity will outlive its expected potential.
John Grant, a geologist at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, described the mountain as "this enormous stack... of layered material which represents the opportunity to literally read chapters in a book of the history of past deposition on Mars."
