Curiosity is NASA’s Mars rover. he is the Robot The most advanced and ambitious ever to explore Mars. It was launched in November 2011 and landed on the red planet on August 5, 2012.
Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater in August 2012 to determine if the area experienced such conditions. Lead to lifewhich he did by showing that Mars was livable For a short period of its history, in the distant past, which is measured in billions of years.
To land on Mars, NASA has developed a new landing technology. Curiosity enteredatmosphere Mars at a speed of about 21,000 km / h, is protected by it Heat shield. Three minutes before landing, use the umbrella 50 meters in diameter and 16 meters in diameter. Five hundred meters before touching the ground, the re-terrorists began, then the upper part deposited rover On the roof at the end of the cable, like a construction hoist.
France and Cnes aboard Curiosity
gear Gate Ten devices and a mast equipped with cameras and lasers to study targets up to a distance of 7 meters. It also has a 2.1-meter articulated boom capable of digging up to 6 cm into the rocks and extracting material, which at that time did not happen on Mars.
This $2.5 billion mission was carried out with the help of partners in Germany, Canada, Spain, France and Russia. Spain provides one of Three communication antennas and the Rems weather station (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station). France collaborated on the development of ChemCam and Sam’s tools. ChemCam It is an instrument for the preliminary analysis of rocks and soils around the Curiosity rover at an altitude of up to 9 metres.
As for Sam (Sample analysis on Mars), is a set of measurement instruments capable of determining the chemical composition (molecular, elemental and isotopic) of Martian soil. Cnes is also involved in operations on Mars in real time. Finally, Canada provides a probe spectrometer with alpha and . particles X ray.
Unlike previous roving vehicles equipped with solar panels, Curiosity has a battery energy Nuclear – actually a Electrical generator Thermoelectric radioisotope (RTG) – allows it to operate day or night.
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[EN VIDÉO] Curiosity: Spectacular views from the side of Mount Sharp Nine years after landing on Mars and about the same length of time to cover the bottom of Gale crater, Curiosity continues its journey on the Red Planet on the side of Mount Sharp – also called Aeolis Mons. It continues to send extraordinary images to curious astronomers to learn more about the climatic conditions that may have prevailed on the Red Planet in the past. (in English) © NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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