Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While millions of American shoppers are hitting the nation's malls on Black Friday looking for the best sales and prices, NASA scientists will be setting their sites on a launchpad in Cape Canaveral Florida. NASA personnel will be watching the weather conditions and monitoring instruments and machinery ensuring that it is operating at peak efficiency.
Sitting atop an Atlas V Rocket, NASA plans to launch the Mars Science Laboratory on Black Friday. The first launch window for the Mars Science Laboratory will be on November 25th, 2011 just one day after Thanksgiving. If this launch window is missed due to weather or equipment malfunctions, the spacecraft will have until December 18th to list off.
Part of the mission package for the Mars Science Laboratory is the Curiosity Rover. The Curiosity Rover will have the capability to split rocks and use a laser spectrometer can study any gases that are released and send its data on the gas make-up back to Earth. By looking into ancient gases that may be locked up inside of rocks that are billions of years old, scientists hope to find out whether there was a time when the Martian environment was favorable the the existence of life.
The Mars Science Lab is expected to reach Mars in August 2012. The Curiosity Rover will then separate from the spacecraft and make an attempt to land within the Gale Crater. There is a landing site will be at the foot of a mountain just south of the Martian equator. The mission of the Curiosity Rover is expected to last about two years as measured on Earth. The Curiosity Rover is about the size of a small car, about twice the size of any of the previous rovers that studied the Martian surface. There are a total of 10 scientific instruments that will search for microbial life.
Source:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html
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