Curiosity on Mars!

An image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released last week shows NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and the wheel tracks from its landing site to the Glenelg area where the rover worked for the first half of 2013.

The orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured the scene on 27 June 2013, with the orbiter rolled for an eastward-looking angle rather than straight downward. The afternoon sun illuminated the scene from the western sky, so the lighting was nearly behind the camera. This geometry hides shadows and reveals subtle colour variations.

Curiosity that day was examining an outcrop called Shaler, the rover mission's final science target in the Glenelg area before commencing a many-month trek southwestward to an entry point for the lower layers of Mount Sharp. The rover appears as a bright blue spot in the enhanced colouring of the image.

The image also shows two scour marks at the Bradbury landing site where the Mars Science Laboratory mission's skycrane landing system placed Curiosity onto the ground just about one year ago on 6 August 2012.

The scour marks are where the landing system's rockets cleared away reddish surface dust. Visible tracks commencing at the landing site show the path the rover travelled eastward to Glenelg.

Curiosity may be 140 million miles away on a hostile planet but that’s no excuse for not sending home a self-portrait.

This incredible shot shows Curiosity on the surface back in February - it comprises dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day (or sol) of Curiosity's work on Mars plus three exposures taken during Sol 270 (10 May 2013) to update the appearance of part of the ground beside the rover.

The updated area, which is in the lower left quadrant of the image, shows grey-powder and two holes where Curiosity used its drill on the rock target ‘John Klein’.

The portion has been spliced into a self-portrait that was originally prepared and released in February before the use of the drill. The result shows what the site where the self-portrait was taken looked like by the time the rover was ready to drive away in May 2013.

MAHLI, which took the component images for the mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm and was able to capture the component images with wrist motions and turret rotations. The arm itself was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, used in the mosaic.

Thanks to the guys at NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS for some great photography work!

Curiosity's journey of discovery

The ‘promised land’ beckons for the Curiosity Mars rover but it is likely to be around six months before the car-sized craft arrives in the foothills of Mt Sharpe whose rocks may have preserved a geological record of the ancient Martian environment.

Just two months into its mission on the red planet, delegates at the 63rd International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Naples, Italy, were treated to a first-hand update on the progress of the Curiosity Mars on Thursday, 4 October during the second ‘breaking news' session.

Richard Cook, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Project Manager, described the mission as making a "great start" to a deeply interesting mission.

Reviewing the ‘seven minutes of terror landing', he said that what Curiosity is going to achieve on the surface will be equally inspiring as its spectacular landing.

He explained that the Gale Crater objective was chosen after a labourious process spread over several years - selected on the basis that it is most likely to offer a glimpse into the ancient history of Mars based on its rock records.

He likened Gale Crater - 150 km across with the central peak of Mt Sharpe rising to 4,000 metres - as similar in size and elevation to the ‘big' island of Hawaii.

"It gives you an idea of the scale and the challenge of trying to explore that - for the first two years, we will essentially be driving in the foothills."

He said that from a landing site safety perspective, mission planners couldn't have picked a better spot and that Curiosity would now be moving away from the direction of Mt Sharpe in order to explore a close by alluvial fan area in the opposite direction of originally planned travel.

Cook explained that the basic mission concept was to use either the onboard scoop or drill to acquire samples of rock or soil for testing.

In order to select which part or area of a rock to sample, Curiosity will use its ChemCam laser to vaporise a small portion of a potential target rock and analyse its spectral composition. This will help scientists determine which rocks or areas are of most interest to sample with the scoop or drill.

"We intend to use ChemCam repeatedly in any given area to help identify rocks that will be of the most interest," he explained.

Curiosity is capable of travelling around 200 metres a day but is unlikely to proceed at that kind of rate to the prime target area in the foothills of Mt Sharpe because scientists will want to "stop off on the way" to look at interesting features in closer detail.

Cook estimated that the journey to the lower reaches of Mt Sharpe would likely take around six months once extra stopping time for science work is factored in.

He showed a number of stunning Mars images, including one of the latest Curiosity releases of a conglomerate rock which has already given scientists their strongest indication yet that water once flowed in the landing area.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter images will be used to track the progress of Curiosity across the surface and he described a view showing the rover's first short traverse with its tracks in the Martian soil as a "gee wiz" image.

He said that cross-contamination from Earth had been a big area of concern during mission planning and in a pre-planned exercise, the rover team had already been using Mars' soil to clean through the sampling system prior to feeding in a collected sample for the first time.

Cook announced that they were preparing for the first scoop sample within the next 24 hours and that it would be about a month longer before the first drill sample is taken.

"The difference with this mission compared to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers is that you have to think about chunks of time rather than one day at a time - it is that much more complicated," he said.

"In a way the mission is still in 'cruise' phase," Cook added. "Curiosity is going to continue to surprise us and show us new things. This kind of mission doesn't get boring and the promised land is yet to come."

The above is one of a series of daily reports from the International Astronautical Congress 2012 held in Naples, Italy, written by Clive Simpson for the Paris-based International Astronautical Association (IAF) and first appearing on the IAF website