NASA Rover Returns Voice and Telephoto Views from Martian Surface

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Aug. 27, 2012

Dwayne Brown 
Headquarters, Washington 
202-358-1726 
dwayne.c.brown@xxxxxxxx 

Guy Webster / D.C. Agle 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,Calif. 
818-354-5011 
guy.webster@xxxxxxxxxxxx / agle@xxxxxxxxxxxx 

RELEASE: 12-297

NASA ROVER RETURNS VOICE AND TELEPHOTO VIEWS FROM MARTIAN SURFACE

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Curiosity has debuted the first 
recorded human voice that traveled from Earth to another planet and 
back. 

In spoken words radioed to the rover on Mars and back to NASA's Deep 
Space Network (DSN) on Earth, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted 
the difficulty of landing a rover on Mars, congratulated NASA 
employees and the agency's commercial and government partners on the 
successful landing of Curiosity earlier this month, and said 
curiosity is what drives humans to explore. 

"The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of 
Gale Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars 
as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet. 
Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation 
of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human 
mission in the not too distant future," Bolden said in the recorded 
message. 

The voice playback was released along with new telephoto camera views 
of the varied Martian landscape during a news conference today at 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. 

"With this voice, another small step is taken in extending human 
presence beyond Earth, and the experience of exploring remote worlds 
is brought a little closer to us all," said Dave Lavery, NASA 
Curiosity program executive. "As Curiosity continues its mission, we 
hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who 
will become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars. And like the 
great Neil Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap 
in human exploration." 

The telephoto images beamed back to Earth show a scene of eroded knobs 
and gulches on a mountainside, with geological layering clearly 
exposed. The new views were taken by the 100-millimeter telephoto 
lens and the 34-milllimeter wide angle lens of the Mast Camera 
(Mastcam) instrument. Mastcam has photographed the lower slope of the 
nearby mountain called Mount Sharp. 

"This is an area on Mount Sharp where Curiosity will go," said Mastcam 
principal investigator Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems 
in San Diego. "Those layers are our ultimate objective. The dark dune 
field is between us and those layers. In front of the dark sand you 
see redder sand, with a different composition suggested by its 
different color. The rocks in the foreground show diversity -- some 
rounded, some angular, with different histories. This is a very rich 
geological site to look at and eventually to drive through." 

A drive early Monday placed Curiosity directly over a patch where one 
of the spacecraft's landing engines scoured away a few inches of 
gravelly soil and exposed underlying rock. Researchers plan to use a 
neutron-shooting instrument on the rover to check for water molecules 
bound into minerals at this partially excavated target. 

During the news conference, the rover team reported the results of a 
test on Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, which 
can measure the composition of samples of atmosphere, powdered rock 
or soil. The amount of air from Earth's atmosphere remaining in the 
instrument after Curiosity's launch was more than expected, so a 
difference in pressure on either side of tiny pumps led SAM operators 
to stop pumping out the remaining Earth air as a precaution. The 
pumps subsequently worked, and a chemical analysis was completed on a 
sample of Earth air. 

"As a test of the instrument, the results are beautiful confirmation 
of the sensitivities for identifying the gases present," said SAM 
principal investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight 
Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We're happy with this test and we're 
looking forward to the next run in a few days when we can get Mars 
data." 

Curiosity already is returning more data from the Martian surface than 
have all of NASA's earlier rovers combined. 

"We have an international network of telecommunications relay orbiters 
bringing data back from Curiosity," said JPL's Chad Edwards, chief 
telecommunications engineer for NASA's Mars Exploration Program. 
"Curiosity is boosting its data return by using a new capability for 
adjusting its transmission rate." 

Curiosity is 3 weeks into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will 
use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected study area 
ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial 
life. 

JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in 
Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 
NASA's DSN is an international network of antennas that supports 
interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy 
observations for the exploration of the solar system and the 
universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. 


The full text of the administrator's message, as well as a video clip 
with his recorded voice, are available at: 

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/bolden20120827.html 

To view the new images, and for more information about the Curiosity 
rover, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/msl 

and 

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl 

	
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