CURIOSITY ON THE MOVE
by Hazed
The Curiosity lander on Mars has finished all its testing and prep work and is now ready to explore its environment. It’s started to move, leaving its landing site and heading for its first target, 400m away, where scientists want it to start using its drill to check out an area called Glenelg, which is the intersection of three different types of terrain.
“This drive really begins our journey toward the first major driving destination, Glenelg, and it’s nice to see some Martian soil on our wheels,” said mission manager Arthur Amador of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
Curiosity’s project scientist John Grotzinger, from the California Institute of Technology, said: “We are on our way, though Glenelg is still many weeks away.
“We plan to stop for just a day at the location we just reached, but in the next week or so we will make a longer stop.”
They haven’t decided where that longer stop will be. During that layover, Curiosity will test its robotic arm, and try out the contact instruments on the end of the arm.
Meanwhile, we can expect to see some photos of the location it stopped in for a day, where it used one of its cameras to take pictures of its ultimate destination, the lower slope of nearby Mount Sharp. Scientists will use those pictures to decide on Curiosity’s route to the mountain.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19423586
