NASA Launches Super-Size Mars Rover to Red Planet

biggest extraterrestrial explorer, NASA's Curiosity rover, rocketed toward Mars on Saturday on a search for evidence that the red planet might once have been home to itsy-bitsy life.

It will take 8 1/2 months for Curiosity to reach Mars following a journey of 354 million miles.

An unmanned Atlas V rocket hoisted the rover, officially known as Mars Science Laboratory, into a cloudy late morning sky. A Mars frenzy gripped the launch site, with more than 13,000 guests jamming the space center for NASA's first launch to Earth's next-door neighbor in four years, and the first send-off of a Martian rover in eight years.

NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, had a shirt custom made for the occasion. Her bright blue, short-sleeve blouse was emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, "Next stop Mars!"

The 1-ton Curiosity -- as large as a car -- is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and analyze them right on the spot.

There's a drill as well as a stone-zapping laser machine.

It's "really a rover on steroids," said NASA's Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. "It's an order of magnitude more capable than anything we have ever launched to any planet in the solar system."

The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time -- or might even still be conducive to life now.

No actual life detectors are on board; rather, the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.

Curiosity's 7-foot arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the Martian red rock, and the 7-foot mast on the rover is topped with high-definition and laser cameras. No previous Martian rover has been so sophisticated or capable.

With Mars the ultimate goal for astronauts, NASA also will use Curiosity to measure radiation at the red planet. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned.

The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, most like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half of those quests have succeeded.

Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.

"Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the solar system," Hartman said. "It's the death planet, and the United States of America is the only nation in the world that has ever landed and driven robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, and now we're set to do it again."

Curiosity's arrival next August will be particularly hair-raising.

In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.

Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags like its much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, did in 2004. Besides, this new way should provide for a more accurate landing.

Astronauts will need to make similarly precise landings on Mars one day.

Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen as the landing site because it's rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it would be there.

"I like to say it's extraterrestrial real estate appraisal," Conrad said with a chuckle earlier in the week.

The rover -- 10 feet long and 9 feet wide -- should be able to go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer because of its power source: 10.6 pounds of radioactive plutonium.

The nuclear generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launch accident.
NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the Martian surface.

This is the third astronomical mission to be launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA since the retirement of the venerable space shuttle fleet this summer. The Juno probe is en route to Jupiter, and twin spacecraft named Grail will arrive at Earth's moon on New Year's Eve and Day.
NASA hail this as the year of the solar system.

Artist Inspired by Final Space Shuttle Launch

Standing on the grounds of Kennedy Space Center, facing the launch pad as a space shuttle lifts off, is an experience that defies words.  Friday's historic launch of Atlantis marks the beginning of the end for NASA's space shuttle fleet
It is an almost impossible experience to describe.  Upon liftoff, there is a bright blaze from the engines, a flaming trail that cuts the sky vertically, the cloud plume that begins in silence, going up, and then the thunder that mounts and rolls into a noise that seems to make both the sky and your stomach shudder.
Stephen Bach, a landscape painter from Orlando, Florida, watched the launch from the Kennedy Space Center, two paintings in progress on an easel before him, both of the shuttle.  He gazed directly across the water at Atlantis on the launch pad, and then, Atlantis in flight.

"It's just a really amazing sight, and I don't think you can describe it until you see it, you know," said Bach.  "I've seen it 30 times, I'm sure, through the years from Orlando or from some place off the Cape. But this is just another level."
But Bach is a painter, a man well versed in images and details, and he describes the seconds after Atlantis disappeared above the clouds.

"The plume is amazing, and it's cast a shadow across the bottom of the cloud layer which is just astounding," Bach added.  "It's almost as impressive as the launch, but in a different way.  You can see the yellow coming through the inside of the plume.  It's just a very remarkable sight.  It's nothing like you picture it when you watch it on TV.  It's just tenfold better, you know.  Amazing."

As Bach still gazed at the plume, barely able to look away, his painting of Atlantis taking flight garnered another shuttle watcher's attention.  The landscape painter who turned his talents to the sky had an offer to buy, before the plume had even vanished.

Space Shuttle Endeavour's Last Launch: See Photos From The May 16 Blastoff

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL - MAY 16: The space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on May 16, 2011 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. After 20 years, 25 missions and more than 115 million miles in space, Endeavour is on its final flight to the International Space Station before being retired and donated to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Mission STS-134 will deliver the Express Logistics Carrier-3 (ELC-3) and the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-2) to the International Space Station.

New Experiments Headed to Station on STS-134/ULF6

 
The Space Shuttle Endeavour launched to the International Space Station on May 16, carrying with it a mix of research that will be performed on the station during and after the shuttle mission. Nearly 150 experiments are continuing aboard the station as the transition from assembly work to expanded research on the international laboratory progresses. They span the basic categories of biological and biotechnology, human research, physical and materials sciences, technology development, Earth and space science and educational activities.

Among the new experiments flying will be several experiments, flown by NASA in cooperation with the Italian Space Agency, including one that looks at how the same kind of memory shape foam used in beds on Earth might be useful as a new kind of actuator, or servomechanism that supplies and transmits a measured amount of energy for mechanisms. The U.S.-Italian experiments also will look at cellular biology, radiation, plant growth and aging; how diet may affect night vision, and how an electronic device may be able used for air quality monitoring in spacecraft.

One NASA experiment known as Biology will use, among other items, C. elegans worms that are descendants of worms that survived the STS-107 space shuttle Columbia accident. The Rapid Turn Around engineering proof-of-concept test will use the Light Microscopy Microscope to look at three-dimensional samples of live organisms, tissue samples and fluorescent beads.

A NASA educational payload will deliver several toy Lego kits that can be assembled to form satellites, space shuttles and a scale model of the space station itself to demonstrate scientific concepts, and a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency experiment called Try Zero-G that will help future astronauts show children the difference between microgravity and Earth gravity.

Research activities on the shuttle and station are integrated to maximize return during station assembly. The shuttle serves as a platform for completing short-duration research, while providing supplies and sample-return for ongoing research on station. For a full list of investigations available on this flight, see the STS-134 

NASA's Black Hole: After Last Shuttle Launch, Will U.S. Space Dominance End?

 
To some veterans of the American space program, the liftoff of the Space Shuttle Endeavor Monday morning was bittersweet.
After decades of American dominance in space exploration, the next-to-last shuttle flight brings country to the threshold of a period that experts are calling "The Gap," -- the first significant stretch of time in decades during which the U.S. will be unable, on its own, to put astronauts into space.
"I don't like it at all," said Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat who has led oversight of the space program. "The previous administrations have not made space a priority. It's expensive. Now we're in this situation."
If the fears of some in Congress come true, a period of unprecedented drift for the space program could follow the final Shuttle launch, now scheduled for July. With no American vehicle capable of carrying astronauts into space, the U.S. will be forced to pay the Russians a steadily escalating price -- eventually hitting $62.7 million per seat -- to carry Americans and international partners to the International Space Station through 2016.
Meanwhile, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told ABC News that the U.S. will be relying on a relatively young collection of private companies to build the rockets that will restart American-led missions to the space station, which he estimates will begin launching by 2015.

"Everybody knew it was coming," Bolden said of The Gap. "The primary hurdle it creates is that people will become comfortable with it. We tend to be short-sighted and our memory is short." NASA officials are quick to note that under the Bush administration's space initiative, known as Constellation, The Gap would have lasted eight years. A six-year gap, if all goes as planned, would pass more quickly than the eight-year gap between the end of the Apollo program and the launch of the first space shuttle in 1981.
The public posture of NASA officials has been to focus on a modernized program that relies far more on private companies to handle the increasingly routine work of hoisting satellites and servicing the space station, while dedicating U.S. government resources to planning the more complex task of taking astronauts deeper into space. Bolden says NASA will be developing a separate, heavy-lift rocket to explore deep space and eventually, maybe, take astronauts to an asteroid, the moon, and Mars.

NASA TV: Space Shuttle Endeavor Launch

 
Even though the launch happened later than it was supposed to a lot of people were there the morning of May 16 to see the launch. The launch was supposed to happen days ago but was canceled because of mechanical difficulties. There were thousands of people there and waiting on the launch. This crowd included President Obama and family.
NASA TV showed the launch on live streaming. There were thousands of viewers watching the Space Shuttle Endeavor launch on living stream. This is the last launch of this shuttle so everyone wanted to be able to see it. Did you watch on NASA TV?