Selecting the Landing Site for the Mars Science LaboratoryNational Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC
Free, Tickets Required
4:30 p.m. Discovery Station (in front of Welcome Center) 5:45p.m. Planetarium presentation 6:45 p.m. Telescope observing at Public Observatory, weather permitting
John Grant will discuss why Gale Crater will be the landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory. This site is near the Martian equator and is just north of a five kilometer-thick stack of layered materials. The layers include clay and sulfate-bearing minerals that should help to unravel the changing conditions on early Mars and whether the site may once have been characterized by habitable conditions. Scheduled to launch in late 2011 and arrive at Mars in August 2012, Mars Science Laboratory is a rover that will assess the planet’s “habitability”—if it ever was, or is today, an environment able to support microbial life.
The Smithsonian’s Stars Lecture Series is made possible by a grant from NASA.
This artist concept features NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars' past or present ability to sustain microbial life. Curiosity is being tested in preparation for launch in the fall of 2011. In this picture, the mast, or rover's "head," rises to about 2.1 meters (6.9 feet) above ground level, about as tall as a basketball player. This mast supports two remote-sensing instruments: the Mast Camera, or "eyes," for stereo color viewing of surrounding terrain and material collected by the arm; and, the ChemCam instrument, which is a laser that vaporizes material from rocks up to about 9 meters (30 feet) away and determines what elements the rocks are made of.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
How to attend
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