NASA's next flagship mission to Mars, Mars Science Laboratory, has had an eventful development phase. There's still a slight problem with the nuclear plant that will power the mission, but NASA is still planning on a 2011 launch.
MSL will be the most capable robotic mission ever sent to another planet. It will consist of both a lander that is an upgrade over the Phoenix Mars Lander-- which carried out a highly successful mission just recently-- and a rover named Curiosity that will be bigger and more powerful than the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
No doubt the most famous investigator on the MSL team is James Cameron, the power behind the blockbuster movie Avatar. Cameron, reasonably enough, will have cameras on the mission. If things go well, one camera will document the final two minutes of MSL's descent to the surface, which would be quite a show. If things go very well, MSL will also sport a 3-D camera. That camera would provide amazing views of Mars, which would not only be extremely useful to scientists, but could also bring the public into real space exploration in a way not done before.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment