- Five years ago tonight, I was rappelling out of a jetpack onto the surface of #Mars. Where were you? https://youtu.be/zervvVw2dnU
When Curiosity landed on Mars?
At WSWS, Bryan Dyne noted:
Since its remarkable and complex landing on the Martian surface on August 6, 2012, the Curiosity rover has proven to be the most fruitful astrobiological study of the red planet to date. For the past five years, Curiosity has provided a deluge of scientific data on the planet’s geological history, organic compounds, atmospheric conditions, radiation levels, liquid water and past and present potential for human habitability and alien life.
Curiosity has so far lived more than twice its original specifications. When it first landed on Mars via sky-crane, it was only slated for a two-year mission to land in Gale Crater and explore the slopes of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp). The mission was extended indefinitely in December 2012 and has allowed Curiosity to return 427,000 images to Earth, traverse a total of 19 kilometers and climb more than 180 meters while deepening our knowledge of the 4.5 billion year history of the red planet.
The rover’s major achievement is showing that the conditions of early Mars may have been able to sustain terrestrial-like life. It is now thought that a primordial Martian ocean covered the planet’s northern hemisphere and reached depths of 1.6 kilometers. Moreover, this ocean likely lasted for around 900 million years. While Curiosity’s scientific instruments aren’t equipped to actually find the remnants of life from early Mars, they do provide evidence for a primordial ocean, and further evidence of various organic compounds from that period strongly suggest that, at the very least, Mars once had a rich reservoir of the diverse set of chemical environments needed for Earth-like life.
Other accomplishments? Michael Zhang (PETAPIXEL) notes, "NASA's Curiosity rover has captured a series of photos showing what clouds look like as they float across the sky on Mars. The photos are the clearest images of clouds seen so far by Curiosity since the rover arrived on Mars 5 years ago."
Hey, you! Get a load of my #clouds! These are my best views yet of Martian clouds, likely made of ice-water crystals https://go.nasa.gov/2wv8DIw
NASA explained:
Wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth's ice-crystal cirrus clouds move across the Martian sky in some new image sequences from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.
These clouds are the most clearly visible so far from Curiosity, which landed five years ago this month about five degrees south of Mars' equator. Clouds moving in the Martian sky have been observed previously by Curiosity and other missions on the surface of Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in the Martian arctic nine years ago.
Researchers used Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement. A midday look at the sky with the same camera the same day showed no clouds.
Mars' elliptical orbit makes that planet's distance from the Sun vary more than Earth's does. In previous Martian years, a belt of clouds has appeared near the equator around the time Mars was at its farthest from the Sun. The new images of clouds were taken about two months before that farthest point in the orbit, relatively early in the season for the appearance of this cloud belt.
"It is likely that the clouds are composed of crystals of water ice that condense out onto dust grains where it is cold in the atmosphere," said Curiosity science-team member John Moores of York University, Toronto, Canada. "The wisps are created as those crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as 'fall streaks' or 'mare's tails.' While the rover does not have a way to ascertain the altitude of these clouds, on Earth such clouds form at high altitude."
York's Charissa Campbell produced the enhanced-image sequences by generating an "average" of all the frames in each sequence, then subtracting that average from each frame, emphasizing any frame-to-frame changes. The moving clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a sequence of raw images.
The Curiosity mission has been investigating the environmental conditions of ancient and modern Mars since the rover landed on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, EDT and Universal Time). For more about Curiosity, visit:
https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl
Still blinding you with SCIENCE. Check out the top discoveries of my mission's first five years. https://youtu.be/IxvODcuFb1s
SPACE.COM defines Curiosity's 10 biggest moments on Mars. AUSTRALIA's ABC looks back on the start of the mission five years ago.
Our own Betty's long covered Curiosity (such as here, here and here -- for starters). And she's long advocated for TIME to declare Curiosity its person of the year.
We agree and argue that the country needs to pay more attention to science.