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Mars rover sends back human voice recording
Tuesday August 28, 2012 12:31:50 PM,
IANS
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Los Angeles: The first
recorded human voice that travelled from Earth to Mars and then
back to Earth was released Monday at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera
views of the varied Martian landscape during a news conference at
JPL.
In spoken words radioed to the Mars rover Curiosity and then back
to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden congratulated NASA employees and the agency's
commercial and government partners on the successful landing of
Curiosity earlier this month, reported Xinhua.
"Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new
generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for
a human mission in the not too distant future," said Bolden in the
recorded message.
"With this voice, another small step is taken in extending human
presence beyond Earth, and the experience of exploring remote
worlds is brought a little closer to us all," said Dave Lavery,
NASA Curiosity program executive.
The telephoto images beamed back to Earth show a scene of eroded
knobs and gulches on a mountainside, with geological layering
clearly exposed.
The new views were taken by the 100-millimetre telephoto lens and
the 34-millimetre wide angle lens of the Mast Camera (Mastcam)
instrument.
Mastcam has photographed the lower slope of the nearby mountain
called Mount Sharp, according to JPL.
"Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune field is
between us and those layers. This is a very rich geological site
to look at and eventually to drive through," said Mastcam
principal investigator Michael Malin.
A drive early Monday placed Curiosity directly over a patch where
one of the spacecraft's landing engines scoured away a few inches
of gravelly soil and exposed underlying rock.
Researchers plan to use a neutron-shooting instrument on the rover
to check for water molecules bound into minerals at this partially
excavated target, JPL said.
The rover team at JPL reported results of a test on Curiosity's
Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which can measure the
composition of samples of atmosphere, powdered rock or soil.
The amount of air from Earth's atmosphere remaining in the
instrument after Curiosity's launch was more than expected, so a
difference in pressure on either side of tiny pumps led SAM
operators to stop pumping out the remaining Earth air as a
precaution. The pumps subsequently worked, and a chemical analysis
was completed on a sample of Earth air, according to JPL.
"As a test of the instrument, the results are beautiful
confirmation of the sensitivities for identifying the gases
present," said SAM principal investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"We're happy with this test and we're looking forward to the next
run in a few days when we can get Mars data," Mahaffy added.
Curiosity already is returning more data from the Martian surface
than have all of NASA's earlier rovers combined, according to JPL.
Curiosity is three weeks into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It
will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected
study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for
microbial life.
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