ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2012) — With the Mars rover Curiosity's successful landing Sunday, Aug. 5, at 10:32 p.m. PDT, U.S. Geological Survey scientists continue their strategic role in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the most advanced mission yet to explore whether the Red Planet has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.
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Several USGS scientists are playing important roles in a mission that involves hundreds of people from many government and private agencies in the United States and other countries. Oftentimes, in missions this large, individual contributions are hard to isolate, but doing so allows for a deeper understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of space exploration. USGS brings its unique multidisciplinary scientific approach to the mission through the work of several scientists doing vital research.
USGS researchers mapped and helped to select the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission's landing site in Mars' feature-rich Gale crater. They also are working to capture video of the descent and landing, to safely guide the rover amid hazards such as deep sections of soft sediment, to record and analyze the chemical and mineral composition of martian rock and dust, and to evaluate the role water played in forming the martian landscape. USGS expertise in marine depositional processes will help ascertain where water might once have flowed on Mars -- an exciting prospect because, on Earth at least, environments that contain water almost always contain life.
Gale crater was chosen for the landing in large part because data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that alluvial and sedimentary processes possibly driven by water might have occurred there, according to geophysicist Randy Kirk, who led the group that created high-resolution terrain models of the leading candidate locations for the landing.
"The MSL mission would literally have been impossible without the fantastic imaging systems on the current generation of Mars orbiters like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the advanced techniques we now have for processing huge amounts of image and spectral data," Kirk said. "Not only did these instruments pinpoint the ancient sediments that may hold a record of habitable environments for MSL to investigate, their images allowed us to map every rock and slope in the candidate landing sites that could pose a risk to the mission."
Looking for Signs of Water
Among other things, the USGS scientists and their colleagues will be investigating a feature very near the landing site that appears to be an alluvial fan, which could be evidence of prior existence of water. In the months after the landing, Curiosity will approach Aeolis Mons (sometimes informally referred to as "Mount Sharp"), the three-mile-high mountain in Gale crater's center that shows signs of being formed of layered sediments, which may indicate a history of wind or water processes.
Geologist Ken Herkenhoff will use several specialized cameras and instruments aboard Curiosity to study landforms and surface processes on Mars for signs of past water as well as organic compounds that are associated with life on Earth. These instruments will take color video of the craft's approach and landing and, once it lands, color photos and high-definition video of the Martian terrain. Another instrument functions like a geologist's hand lens, providing close-up views of the minerals, structures and textures in martian rocks and dust. Herkenhoff and USGS astrogeologist Ryan Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow, will also work with Curiosity's onboard ChemCam spectrometer and remote microscopic imager, which will fire a laser at martian rocks and dust and analyze the elemental composition of the plasma generated by the laser. It will search for organic compounds, as well as analyze the inorganic geochemistry of rocks and soils.
"The laser lets us rapidly study the chemistry of targets up to 7 meters away, and it is sensitive to light elements like hydrogen and nitrogen that other equipment can't easily detect," Anderson said. A member of the USGS team whose research helped lead to the selection of Gale crater as the landing site, Anderson describes his countdown to Curiosity's landing in his "
Share This:
See Also:
Several USGS scientists are playing important roles in a mission that involves hundreds of people from many government and private agencies in the United States and other countries. Oftentimes, in missions this large, individual contributions are hard to isolate, but doing so allows for a deeper understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness of space exploration. USGS brings its unique multidisciplinary scientific approach to the mission through the work of several scientists doing vital research.
USGS researchers mapped and helped to select the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission's landing site in Mars' feature-rich Gale crater. They also are working to capture video of the descent and landing, to safely guide the rover amid hazards such as deep sections of soft sediment, to record and analyze the chemical and mineral composition of martian rock and dust, and to evaluate the role water played in forming the martian landscape. USGS expertise in marine depositional processes will help ascertain where water might once have flowed on Mars -- an exciting prospect because, on Earth at least, environments that contain water almost always contain life.
Gale crater was chosen for the landing in large part because data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that alluvial and sedimentary processes possibly driven by water might have occurred there, according to geophysicist Randy Kirk, who led the group that created high-resolution terrain models of the leading candidate locations for the landing.
"The MSL mission would literally have been impossible without the fantastic imaging systems on the current generation of Mars orbiters like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the advanced techniques we now have for processing huge amounts of image and spectral data," Kirk said. "Not only did these instruments pinpoint the ancient sediments that may hold a record of habitable environments for MSL to investigate, their images allowed us to map every rock and slope in the candidate landing sites that could pose a risk to the mission."
Looking for Signs of Water
Among other things, the USGS scientists and their colleagues will be investigating a feature very near the landing site that appears to be an alluvial fan, which could be evidence of prior existence of water. In the months after the landing, Curiosity will approach Aeolis Mons (sometimes informally referred to as "Mount Sharp"), the three-mile-high mountain in Gale crater's center that shows signs of being formed of layered sediments, which may indicate a history of wind or water processes.
Geologist Ken Herkenhoff will use several specialized cameras and instruments aboard Curiosity to study landforms and surface processes on Mars for signs of past water as well as organic compounds that are associated with life on Earth. These instruments will take color video of the craft's approach and landing and, once it lands, color photos and high-definition video of the Martian terrain. Another instrument functions like a geologist's hand lens, providing close-up views of the minerals, structures and textures in martian rocks and dust. Herkenhoff and USGS astrogeologist Ryan Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow, will also work with Curiosity's onboard ChemCam spectrometer and remote microscopic imager, which will fire a laser at martian rocks and dust and analyze the elemental composition of the plasma generated by the laser. It will search for organic compounds, as well as analyze the inorganic geochemistry of rocks and soils.
"The laser lets us rapidly study the chemistry of targets up to 7 meters away, and it is sensitive to light elements like hydrogen and nitrogen that other equipment can't easily detect," Anderson said. A member of the USGS team whose research helped lead to the selection of Gale crater as the landing site, Anderson describes his countdown to Curiosity's landing in his "