On Aug. 5, NASA’s Curiosity rover will celebrate its 11th year on Mars by conducting its primary task: studying the surface of the Red Planet. Recently, the adventurous robot explored a location called “Jau,” which is filled with numerous impact craters. It is rare for scientists to have such a close-up view of multiple Martian craters in one place. The largest crater is estimated to be as long as a basketball court, although most are smaller in size.
Jau serves as a pit stop on the rover’s journey towards the foothills of Mount Sharp, a mountain that stands 3 miles tall (5 kilometers). Billions of years ago, this mountain was surrounded by lakes, rivers, and streams. Each layer of the mountain represents a different era in Mars’s ancient climate. As Curiosity ascends, scientists gain more knowledge about the changes in the landscape over time.
Over the past few months, the path up the mountain has presented the most challenging climb for Curiosity. Although there have been steeper climbs and riskier terrains, this slope poses a unique set of difficulties: a sharp 23-degree incline, slippery sand, and rocks the size of wheels. These challenges led to the rover struggling through six drives in May and June, frustrating the team of drivers back on Earth.
“If you’ve ever tried running up a sand dune on a beach—and that’s essentially what we were doing—you know it’s hard, but there were boulders in there as well,” said Amy Hale, a Curiosity rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Hale is one of the 15 “rover planners” who write hundreds of lines of code each day to command Curiosity’s mobility system and robotic arm. They do not operate the rover in real time; instead, instructions are sent to Mars the night before, and data is received back on Earth only after the rover has completed its tasks. These engineers collaborate with scientists to determine the rover’s direction, capture images, and select targets for study using the instruments on its 7-foot (2-meter) robotic arm.
2023-08-03 20:00:04
Post from phys.org rnrn
