With Mars mission and rover Curiosity, NASA hunts building blocks of life
The last time the United States landed a mission on Mars to look for extraterrestrial life or its building blocks, Gerald Ford was president and the nation had just finished celebrating its 1976 bicentennial.
Next week, the long-delayed second attempt will try to deposit a rover on the planet’s surface.
Curiosity’s journey to Mars:?NASA’s sedan-size Mars rover is scheduled to land on the Red Planet’s surface Aug. 6 to learn whether it was, or ever could be, home to extraterrestrial life.
The descent and landing in the early hours of Aug. 6 will be the most complex and hair-raising in planetary history. The destination is a deep crater with a three-mile-tall mountain that NASA could only dream about using as a landing site until very recently.
It’s the most ambitious, the most costly ($2.5 billion) and the most high-stakes mission ever to another planet. It was also described last week by the agency’s top scientist, former astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, as “the most important NASA mission of the decade.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/with-mars-mission-and-rover-curiosity-nasa-hunts-building-blocks-of-life/2012/07/30/gJQAi7WALX_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
