[meteorite-list] Next Mars Rover Gets a Test Taste of Mars Conditions

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:39:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201103181639.p2IGd7h7019917_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-086
  
Next Mars Rover Gets a Test Taste of Mars Conditions
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 18, 2011

A space-simulation chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., is temporary home this month for the Curiosity rover,
which will land on Mars next year.

Tests inside the 25-foot-diameter chamber (7.6-meters) are putting the
rover through various sequences in environmental conditions resembling
Martian surface conditions. After the chamber's large door was sealed
last week, air was pumped out to near-vacuum pressure, liquid nitrogen
in the walls dropped the temperature to minus 130 degrees Celsius (minus
202 degrees Fahrenheit), and a bank of powerful lamps simulated the
intensity of sunshine on Mars.

Images of Curiosity in the chamber just before the door was sealed are
at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13805 and
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13806.

Other portions of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, including
the cruise stage, descent stage and backshell, remain in JPL's
Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where Curiosity was assembled and where
the rover will return after the simulation-chamber tests. In coming
months, those flight system components and the rover will be shipped to
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final preparations before the
launch period of Nov. 25 to Dec. 18, 2011.

The mission will use Curiosity to study one of the most intriguing
places on Mars -- still to be selected from among four finalist
landing-site candidates. It will study whether a selected area of Mars
has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and
for preserving evidence about whether Martian life has existed.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. For more information about the mission, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/msl.

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2011-086
Received on Fri 18 Mar 2011 12:39:07 PM PDT