Curiosity Rover

scientific paper

The Mars rover Curiosity

                Modern humans have always been captivated by space. In the early days, the stars were all we could see. Occasionally there would be a very bright star, one you could easily point out before the sun had even set. Those were planets. With the naked eye, one could find five other planets in our solar system. Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781 and Neptune in 1846 by John Couch Adams. The first telescope was invented in 1609, but even before then man has always dreamed of flying up, up, and away; into space and onto another planet. We walked on the Moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong, but it was not good enough. The Moon was not a planet! So the world turned its attention to
the closet planet, Mars.

                Seven rovers from three countries have landed on Mars. The first two, Chinese’ Mars 2 and Mars 3, failed. The third, America’s Pathfinder, was successful for a few months, but ultimately failed as well. The last three rovers were all successful, but are no longer useful to us. So they lie, dead and alone, in the hot, alien sand. NASA needed more. So they developed a new rover. He was stronger, bigger, faster, and far more technologically advanced. He was Curiosity.          

                Built to explore Mars’s Gale Crater, assess water and carbon dioxide levels, determine the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds, and characterize surface radiation, the Curiosity rover is a spectacular machine. He is the size of a normal sedan and powered by plutonium. He has dozens special instruments for exploring this new world, six of them being different kinds of camera. He even has X-ray lasers, meant to vaporize small rocks (as far as seven meters away) so their dust can be analyzed. As fun and as great as rocks are, the Curiosity does even more. Science has shown that large amounts of water once ran through the crater and mountainside Curiosity landed on. This is our best chance at finding extraterrestrial life yet. Whether it is Greys or microscopic plants, life is life. It could mean that we are not alone. Now everyone is holding their breath to see what the Mars rover Curiosity unearths next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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