Ready, Set, Rover does Mars: Curiosity Project Scientist Lays Out Mars Tour Plans
After engineers run a months-long setup of the Mars Science Laboratory, now parked in a crater, scientists will take the rover on a nearly two-year journey that includes a visit to a six-kilometer-high mountain
By David Appell | August 7, 2012
After a hair-raising ride through the atmosphere, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has landed safely on Martian soil with cheers all around. Now engineers are busy checking out the rover Curiosity's condition while the mission's science team takes a first look around the surface locale. In the months ahead (the prime mission is slated to last a few months shy of two years) scientists plan to drive Curiosity around its touchdown site in Gale Crater and then up the slope of Mount Sharp, which rises six kilometers from the basin floor. Along the way they will look for geologic evidence that water once flowed across the landscape as well as signs of ancient microbial life.
Scientific American talked Monday with John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist, to get an insider's perspective on the landing and upcoming plans. Grotzinger has been on the MSL team since 2007, working from his office at the nearby California Institute of Technology, where he specializes in sedimentology, stratigraphy, geo-biology and ancient surface processes on Earth and Mars.
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